Category: Books

TrekMovie had some very nice things to say about my story in Star Trek: The Manga:

Wil Wheaton skipped the easy Wesley Crusher story (are there any other kind?) to pen a TOS tale for Tokyopop’s second Star Trek: The Manga collection that debuted last year, and it’s easily one of the best in the book. Drawn by E.J. Su, recently of IDW’s Transformers comics —official non-Trek plug accomplished!— Wheaton’s “Cura Te Ipsum” (Latin for “heal thyself”) tackles a Kirk vs.
the Prime Directive tale with surprising skill, and establishes his
cred as a comics creator well beyond his celebrated cult of geek.

Uhm. Wow. Thanks! I was scared to death the entire time I worked on it, but I had a lot of help from Andrew, and I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out, myself.

I was at Trekmovie yesterday, reading this great editorial by Andre Bormanis, and I would have missed the review if reader T hadn’t pointed it out to me. Thanks, T!

Speaking of the manga, I’m was lucky enough to work with E.J. Su again on the next one, and he sent in his pencils yesterday. I wish I could show just a little bit of them, because even though it’s only pencils, it’s absolutely magnificent. Once again, he took my descriptions and turned them into something cinematic, while capturing all the emotional weight of the story. Tokyopop plans to release this one, called "Aratanaru Michi He", in summer, so we can have it available during the big summer convention season. I didn’t think I could reveal any details about the story, but I see that my editor, Luis, told Trekmovie pretty much the same thing I’d say if I had permission:

The story, "Art of War" shows Kirk dealing with his hatred of Klingons,
but for the first time sympathizing too (foreshadowing the peace treaty
between the Federation and the Klingons).

Writing scenes between Kirk and a Klingon commander was as much of a thrill as it was a challenge. I knew that I was taking a huge risk with the story, and it was going to live or die based upon how these two guys interacted. I had this awesome and unexpected Writer moment while working on a scene between them, when I just got out of the way and let the characters talk to me. I know it sounds very "ooga booga" but I felt, for the first time in my life as a capital-W writer, like I was transcribing something real, rather than making something up. It was kind of a big deal for me.

This time around, we got 10 more pages to work with than volume two, so I was able to make the story richer than last time without sacrificing any action. In fact, I deliberately put more action into this story, so it would be more of a traditional manga than my last one. In fact, I told Luis, "I want to bring manga to Star Trek this time, since I brought Star Trek to manga last time."

Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense now, either, but it made sense in my head when I said it. Having drinks with your editor rules.

I know that there are a dozen or so outstanding Happiest Days
orders from February. I’m going to process them all today and tomorrow,
so domestic orders should arrive by the end of the week, and
International orders should arrive within 2 weeks. I’d like to apologize to everyone who is waiting.

It’s so weird to feel like I’ve completely lost over a month of my life. It’s kind of like looking at a faded photograph with most of the details blurred out, or trying to remember a dream that runs away as soon as you wake up.

"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."
–Tycho, at Penny Arcade

Yeah, let that roll around in your head for a little bit. It’s really as simple and beautiful as that, isn’t it?

I see a bookshelf, filled with different books from different authors, all acting as portals to different worlds and different times. The author may give them birth, but it’s the readers who keep them alive.

It would appear that I found my motivation, which has been MIA since the end of last year.

The key was answering some questions for an interview I’d agreed to do several weeks ago, but never finished because I was doing other stuff. I knew it had to be done, though, so part of my brain was constantly working on it, while other parts of my brain checked in on its progress, and bugged me to give it the attention it deserved.

If I think of my brain as a computer (and what geek doesn’t, really?) it was like my CPU was maxed out and my machine load was in the double digits, because of this process. Once I closed down everything else and let it finish, performance returned to normal.

With my CPU back to normal, a ton of creative ideas started popping up, so to shake off the cobwebs and stretch the muscles that haven’t moved very much in over a month, I wrote a new ficlet. It got the job done for me, creatively, and it would be okay on its own, but became worthy of mentioning on my blog when two other ficlet writers did sequels. Mine is called A Godawful Small Affair:

“I want to move to Mars, and open up a bar,” Gregor said.

Matti inhaled deeply, and let a cloud of pale blue smoke surround his head.

“What would you call it?” Matti said.

“Moonage Daydream.” Gregor said.

Check it out, and be sure to read both sequels. I think they’re great, and illustrate exactly why Ficlets is  such a great place to take creative risks: I didn’t much care about these characters when I wrote mine, but after reading the sequels and seeing my rough sketches develop some shading and depth, I want to know what happens next. I may even write it myself, once I get my "real" work done.