Michael A. Ventrella

VENTRELLA: Today I’m pleased to be interviewing David Mack. David is the New York Times bestselling author of 38 novels of science fiction, fantasy, and adventure. His writing credits span several media, including television (for episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), games, and comic books. He has worked as a consultant for Star Trek: Prodigy, and in June of 2022 the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers honored him as a Grandmaster with its Faust Award. His web page is here.

David, we have to start off with your newest book: FIREWALL, which is based on the Star Trek: Picard series. I very much enjoyed it — a fast-paced adventure which shows what Seven of Nine was doing with the Fenris Rangers before showing up in the Picard TV show. (I was a bit confused at first because Picard doesn’t appear in the book!) The book leads directly to the TV show, introducing us to characters we will later meet.

Tell us about the book!

MACK: FIREWALL is, at its heart, a coming-of age story for Seven of Nine.

Having been robbed of her childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood by the Borg, she has struggled since her liberation from the collective to reacclimate into the culture of the United Federation of Planets.

Consequently, it should come as no surprise that after the Starship Voyager returns to Earth from its long journey through the Delta Quadrant, Seven discovers that life on Earth is not at all what she was promised. For a start, her shipmates — her “found family” — all scatter to new assignments, leaving her isolated and alone on a world she doesn’t recognize.

Because of her Borg implants and nanoprobes, Seven is treated with fear and suspicion by the people of Earth. In addition, her rejection of her birth name, Annika Hansen, in favor of her Borg designation, Seven of Nine, alarms both Starfleet and the Federation government, prompting them to deny her applications for both citizenship and a place in Starfleet.

Angry, humiliated, and justifiably fearful, Seven decides to leave Earth and blaze her own path to independence out on the edges of Federation space — a decision that leads her to join the Fenris Rangers and meet the first great love of her life, a Trill woman named Ellory Kayd.

That’s how the story begins; from there, Seven goes on a perilous journey that will cost her the last remnants of her innocence and force her to confront evil in a way she never has before — and also confront the evils of her own past as a Borg drone, as part of her journey to finding out who she is, and who she wants to be.

VENTRELLA: Seven is a fascinating character, of course. How much of the plot of Picard were you aware of when you started writing?

MACK: I had seen the first two seasons of Star Trek: Picard when I began plotting FIREWALL. While I was developing the story for FIREWALL with my editors and Kirsten Beyer (the co-creator of Picard and also Secret Hideout’s liaison to licensees who create narrative tie-ins to their shows), I watched season three of Picard unfold. By the time I had a final, approved story outline, I had seen the entire series.

VENTRELLA: I admit that I have not read every single Star Trek novel out there, so I’m curious if any of the other characters in the book are from previous novels or shows (other than the obvious ones like Janeway, of course). How about the places?

MACK: The majority of the supporting characters and key locations in FIREWALL are my own creations. There are a few characters from Star Trek: Prodigy, members of the crew of the Starfleet vessel U.S.S. Dauntless. And the world known as Freecloud is from Star Trek: Picard’s first-season episode “Stardust City Rag,” written by Kirsten Beyer.

The reason I avoided bringing in characters, places, or ships from past Star Trek novels is that I want FIREWALL to stand alone. A reader doesn’t need to have read any other Star Trek books before this in order to appreciate this one fully. As long as the reader has seen enough of Voyager to know who Seven is, and the first season of Picard, to know who Seven becomes as of 2399, they will know all they need to jump in and enjoy FIREWALL.

VENTRELLA: Authors often have specific actors or people in mind when creating characters for their stories. Who did you have in mind when creating the characters?

MACK: I indulged in “fantasy casting” for only two of the supporting characters in FIREWALL, but they are the two most important ones.

The first of them is the character of Fenris Ranger Keon Harper, who acts as Seven’s sponsor into the Rangers, as well as her mentor, training officer, and surrogate father. In my mind, I conjured the likeness and voice of actor Jeff Bridges as he is in the FX series The Old Man.

The second character I felt compelled to cast in my imagination was Fenris Ranger Ellory Kayd, who becomes the first great love of Seven’s life. I patterned her appearance, mannerisms, and speech patterns on those of actress Jessica Henwick (Colleen Wing in the Marvel series Iron Fist).

VENTRELLA: How much control of the plot do you have? Do you have to get an outline approved by the license-holder beforehand? Have they ever said no to an idea you had?

MACK: Authors hired to write Star Trek novels are expected to develop their stories’ plots — that is, after all, why the editors and publisher hire us. But control always belongs to the licensor (i.e., the owner of the copyright), CBS Studios, and, for books based on the new run of Paramount+ series, the team at Secret Hideout also gets to weigh in.

It is standard practice when writing licensed fiction (i.e., novels based on other parties’ intellectual property, such as a TV series, movie, or game) to submit a long and very detailed outline of the full story before beginning the manuscript. The licensor often asks for at least a few changes; sometimes they insist upon many. Each story is different.

In the 23 years that I’ve been writing licensed fiction for Star Trek, I have had a couple of ideas rejected by either editorial or by the licensor, for assorted reasons. It’s just par for the course. The few times that has happened, I went back to work and wrote a new story.

VENTRELLA: What was your involvement with the animated Star Trek TV series Lower Decks and Prodigy?

MACK: I was an expert Star Trek consultant on the first ten episodes of Lower Decks and the first twenty episodes of Prodigy. (My official credit on both series reads merely “consultant.”) The producers sent me story outlines and/or scripts for my feedback. I read them and queried bits that seemed not to fit with Star Trek for whatever reason. Most of the time, if I “bumped” against something, I tried to explain why and offered an alternative that I thought would work better and stay true to the producers’ intentions.

I have described my role as a consultant as being a lot like a sherpa. The producers had a goal: to reach the peak of Mount Star Trek. My job was to be their guide up those icy slopes, help them avoid the pitfalls and crevasses, and nudge them toward what I thought were the best, Trekkiest paths to their goal. And, when the producers and writers reached the peak and posed for their victory photos, my final task was to stay out of the picture.

VENTRELLA: Hey, can we talk about the recent anthology THE FOUR ???? OF THE APOCALYPSE (since both you and I have a story in it)? Tell us about your story “The Apocalypse Will Be Televised,” which opens the anthology.

MACK: That was a fun anthology to write for. It was conceived and edited by my friends Keith R.A. DeCandido and Wrenn Simms. Keith pitched it to me as “instead of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, how would other quartets end the world?”

What I found intriguing about the concept was how open-ended it was. The tales it might inspire could be of nearly any genre and any style.

I opted for a very dark comedy of a highly profane nature with my tale of the Four Hollywood Development Executives of the Apocalypse taking a meeting with the original, Biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The crass idiocy of the ensuing pitch session was in no way based on my own experiences pitching stories and series to television executives in Los Angeles … is what my lawyer advises me to say when asked about this story.

VENTRELLA: Let’s talk about writing and let’s separate writing from storytelling for a minute. Writing skills can be taught, but do you think it’s possible to teach how to tell a good story, or is that just some kind of talent that not everyone has?

MACK: Honestly, that’s a difficult question to answer with any certainty. Much of what is or isn’t possible depends upon each individual.

Some folks are naturally gifted, seemingly touched by the hand of Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, and thereby fated to spin great tales with the same ease as breathing. Other writers, perhaps, are born with either a little or a lot of talent and then they work to develop the skills to put that talent to work. And I’m sure there must be successful writers who, despite not having any special “gift,” per se, simply committed themselves to mastering the skills and tools of storytelling until they figured it out. So I guess I’m of the school that believes writing is a skill and an art that can be taught, but I also believe that innate talent will always give some authors an advantage that can’t be duplicated.

To be truthful, I’m not entirely sure where I fall within that imagined hierarchy of scribes, though I’m relatively certain I’m not part of the first echelon. As the late great Neil Peart once wrote, “I lined up for glory, but the tickets sold out in advance.”

VENTRELLA: What writing projects are you working on now?

MACK: I recently finished the last of four Star Trek short stories I was commissioned to write for upcoming issues of Star Trek Explorer magazine. I am looking forward to seeing my new tales appear in either the printed magazine or its digital supplement in issues 11 through 14.

I also have two original short stories coming up in themed anthologies. For the anthology COMBAT MONSTERS, edited by Henry Herz for Blackstone Publishing, I wrote a World War II yarn titled “Bockscar.” For the Baen anthology LAST TRAIN TO KEPLER 283-C, edited by David Boop and coming November 5, 2024, I wrote a space-western tale titled “Living by the Sword.”

At the moment, I am doing some script-doctor work for an audio-drama project, and I am also tinkering with a proposal for a new original novel that still needs a lot of work before I can ask my agent to shop it around for me. Fingers crossed.

VENTRELLA: With a time machine and a universal translator, who would you invite to your dinner party?

MACK: These parties always sound like such a great idea, but seating always turns out to be a headache, and planning the menu to accommodate everyone’s allergies, diets, and fiddly preferences requires a logistician greater than any that planned the D-day landing. But, okay, let’s see if I can find four guests who would fit at my dinner table with me and my wife, and not kill one another or us before the dessert-and-coffee service.

I’d have to start with Neil Peart, the percussionist and lyricist of Canadian prog-rock trio Rush. I once traded emails with Neil, who wrote to thank me for naming a character in his honor in my first two full-length novels, but I never had the privilege of meeting Neil in-person before he passed away of brain cancer in January 2020.

My second guest would probably be the only other celebrity I’ve ever revered to a degree approaching that of my awe for Neil, and that would be Leonard Nimoy. Another great person who I never had the opportunity to meet, he was the first celebrity whose death actually made me cry. I’d give anything to be able to talk with him about art, photography, and philosophy.

Guest three would be my favorite author, Richard Brautigan, who committed suicide in 1985. He was, by all accounts, a peculiar fellow, one committed to the Beat lifestyle, but how could I not want to break bread with the genius who wrote In Watermelon Sugar?

Who gets that last seat? Maybe late-1930s-era Hedy Lamarr. She was a brilliant scientist and inventor as well as an acclaimed actress. It would be illuminating to hear what a genius like Hedy would say about the modern world and its ever-accelerating technology.

VENTRELLA: FIREWALL is available now wherever good books are sold. And bad books, too, for that matter. Here’s the Amazon link.

Filed under: writing | Tagged: David Mack, Picard, Star Trek, writing advice |