Host: Welcome to today's Star Trek Book Club chat with John Vornholt.

John Vornholt: I'm very glad to be here, I love talking to readers!

klingonbob: Where did you get the idea for the demon flyer?

JV: The Demon Flyer I originally wanted to do years ago as weapon in the Dominion Wars, but it didn't work out. But I kept it mind, a shapeshifting spaceship, as the nemesis for "A Time to Be Born" and "A Time to Die."

GimmeTrellium: Have you ever done any convention appearances as a Star Trek writer, what's that like?

JV: When I first started, and I've been doing this for 15 years now, my first Star Trek book "Masks" came out in summer of 1989, and I did a lot of conventions the first few years, and I kind of tailed off after that, there have been fewer cons in the last few years. But I really love the ones where everyone's in costume. I remember one time I had to fill in for Colm Meaney in Texas, and I had no idea what I said, but everyone liked it. I was under the weather, I just adlibbed and everyone liked it. I'm an old ham though, I've done standup comedy and acting.

DavidN: Who is your favourite Star Trek author?

JV: You know, I hate to keep giving Peter David credit, but I thought the first "Imzadi" was the best Trek book I've ever read. I also like Judy and Garfield Reeves-Stevens' books.

DavidN: Will there be any further "Genesis" novels?

JV: I wrote, counting the Young Adult (Trek) movie novelizations, I've written about eight Trek books in the last few years, and half of them were hardcovers. So I'm kind of taking a break for the moment.

PrancingJackson: What kind of research did you do, did they give you scripts from the episodes?

JV: They would give me a script of video if I needed them. I remember when I first started in the 80s there were no reference books, nothing online, and you had to either be an expert of have some experts around you could ask. It's much easier now with all the encyclopedias and onmipedias, you don't have to have everything in your head, you can look things up.

klingonbob: When did you first want to write Star Trek books?

JV: I grew up, as a teenager, watching the Original Series, every Friday night. Most unpublished writers want to shoot me when they hear this story: It was 1988 and the Next Generation had just started, Pocket Books put out a SOS to agents to send in proposals for Star Trek books from Science fiction writers, and I was not a sci-fi writer, I was a non-fiction writer at that time, and I had written a computer book for Simon & Schuster way back in 1985, and so I was on their list of approved writers.

My agent had about ten proposals to send in from real Science Fiction writers and he said "If you can come up with an outline tongiht and it to me in the morning, I'll send it in with the others." Six months later, that book "Masks" was in the stores, based on a six page outline I wrote one night. It was the first TNG book to make the NY Times bestseller list, which was only 15 places back then. And it started a run of almost 60 weeks. So basically I was in the right place at the right time.

Psiqueue: Lately, the current trend in Trek novels seems to be fewer and fewer stand-alone novels, and more multi-book series. How successful is this approach over the older method?

JV: Well, ever since my two Dominion War books, #1 and #3, I've been writing duologies, so I guess I might have something to do with this trend.

Host: (Books #2 and #4 were novelizations of what was seen on DS9)

JV: I believe it reflects the fact that "series" Science Fiction and Fantasy books in general sell better when there are more in a series. I don't think that Pocket Books was doing something unusual by going in this direction.

TrekBookFan: For the writer, what is the difference between writing a hardcover novel and a paperback?

JV: A hardcover novel, is first, much longer, and it has to have a broader sweep involving what I think of as a bigger cast with lots of guest characters. I often go back into Trek and pick a more obscure character and make them the star of my book. Like I did with Maltz, who was one of the only surviving Klingons from "Star Trek III." I like to bring in lots of characters when I'm writing a hardcover. I think the paperbacks are a bit more action - oriented.

FlavinMeister: What's your favorite Star Trek time period to write about, do you prefer TOS, TNG, etc.?

JV: I think most of my books are Next Generation - I've been told I do Picard pretty well, I stick to the line and star Picard in my books, he's a great character. Especially the movie novelizations of the TNG books, I stick with Picard the whole way. So I would have to say that TNG is my favorite. but I've written classic Trek and DS9 and one pre-Voyager Voyager book, which was "Quarantine."

vulcan3324: Have you met with any Star Trek cast or producers for your books?

JV: When I used to live in Los Angeles I used to meet them at parties and restaurants and places. I ate in the same restaurant as Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner in Silverlake, where we all lived. I also meet them at conventions, we all feel the same way, Trek changes your life, it's hard to believe. It may not last forever... but actually it DOES last forever, it's a great thing to be associated with.

DavidN: Who are your heroes/idols? Writers, actors, etc.

JV: Ah... Well, growing up, I loved Doc Savage books, and I also loved Robert Louis Stevenson. I think "Treasure Island" is responsible for the structure of 90% of adventure stories today. I myself mostly read non-fiction, but I like mysteries like Tony Hillerman. At one point early in my career, I was going to be a playwright and I think my books are influenced a lot by playwrights like Eugene O'Neill and Shakespeare.

Yatta!: Do you have a favorite book you've written?

JV: I do look back at "Masks" which was my first Trek book in 1989 , I look fondly on it because it did start me writing novels. It also allowed me to do lots of tie-in work, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Babylon 5, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and it opened lots of doors for me, that book, so I have a fond feeling for it.

Guest: Why did you decide to fill in the gaps between the TNG movies?

JV: Well, it's really the editor, John Ordover, who's gone now, and he was always trying to get me to figure out what the Enterprise crew was doing in those moments. In fact after the show went off the air, we were always trying to place books in those unknown periods there. It's worked out well, I don't think we've messed up the timelines much!

vulcan3324: Do you enjoy writing Trek books more than other genres?

JV: The nice thing about writing a Trek book is that you can jump right into the story. You don't have to introduce the setting and all these charactres and bring the reader up to speed. They alreacdy know the main characters. When I write one of my own books like "The Troll King" I have to introduce everybody, and first chapters are really hard in those books. I never felt constrained writing Trek books. I always felt I could tell whatever story I wanted.

darrik: Who is your favorite character to write about, other than Picard?

JV: That would have to be Geordi La Forge. I wrote a very successful Young Adult book called "Capture the Flag" and Geordi proved to be a real good character in that, and I also featured him in the Genesis Wave Books One and Two. I think Geordi is a great character because he does have a disability but it never really bothers him or anyone around him and he's not sure of himself all the time, especially around women, so that makes him kind of an interesting, flawed character I really like using.

ChairmanYao: There are so many Star Trek books, if a fan wants to start reading Star Trek books, is there a good place to start?

JV: I would say the current book , the current series, the 'Time to..." series, if you like TNG, you've got nine straight books of entertainment!

vulcan3324: It was a fascinating idea to bring back Wesley Crusher for these books. Where did you get the idea?

JV: I've been wanting to do a Wesley Crusher book ever since TNG went off the air. I kept suggesting it to John Ordover and he kept saying "Are you crazy?" because they could mention at any time in a movie or on Voyager that Wesley Crusher died a week after leaving the Enterprise and then we'd be hosed.

When I was writing the Young Adult novelization for "Nemesis," I saw that Wesley was back! He hadn't died! In fact there hadn't been anything said about where he'd been or what he'd been doing, so I said 'there we go, it's the perfect chance.'

I was very fascinated with thefact he went off with the Traveler and I thought after six or seven years he'd become a Traveler, and now he's become essentially a superhero. But as usual, I wanted it to be a superhero story with a twist that he had a lot to learn, that it wasn't easy using these powers and he still couldn't prevent things from going wrong.

We were very worried, though, when we heard that Wesley's lines had been cut out of the movie. Both Ordover and I were official script readers, so we could talk about this, and fortunately, although Wesley's lines were cut out, he was left in the crowd scenes, at the table with his mom at the wedding and so on. That turned out even better, because we knew he was still alive and we had no information about him at all, no front or back story, so I was free to fill in the blanks.

DegraNation: Have you been watching Enterprise this year? What do you think of the Xindi storyline?

JV: Yes, I think Enterprise is really improved this year, almost everyone I know thinks that. I hope they stick around for another year or two! Although I happen to be one of those people who think that Paramount should bring back classic Trek with Kirk and Spock and McCoy, with a new cast.

trekky1: What do you think about Data? As a character in your books.

JV: Data is a great character, I use him often. The only problem is it's kind of difficult to be inside his head, when you're in his point of view. Unlike humans, who think things out, fret about them, etc., Data can figure things out in a millisecond. And I found in the Genesis Wave books I kind of cheated by making him use his emotion chip a lot, and when he has that in, he's more introspective and more prone to worry.

And then in "A Time to Be Born," I got to explain how he loses his emotion chip, which is kind of cool, since they really don't explain it in the movies. I miss Data and I missed Worf when he left the crew and I had to write TNG books without him for a while. But then I got to pick up Worf's story in "Genesis Force," the paperback which just came out last month.

klingonbob: Are there ever any days where you just can't seem to write?

JV: I have days where I get a little lazy and don't write as much. My cure for writers block is , if nothing is coming to me in the scene I'm on, I'll move ahead to somewhere else in the story and I'll write a book out of sequence, because some of these books have to be written awfully fast and you have to do your ten pages a day or whatever, so if I can't do these ten, I'll find annother place where it's clearer in my mind.

DavidN: Do you follow news about Space exploration?

JV:  Sure. I try to keep up as well as I can on the scientific stuff, though I'm probably not the world's best researcher. I did write one Trek book called "Contamination" that has a lot of research in it about clean rooms and microscopic manufacturing and for my classic Trek book "Sanctuary" I took some balloon rides, hot air balloon rides, for research.

Gareth: If you could take ST: TNG in any direction in a post-Nemesis book, where would you take it?

JV: Boy, that's a hard question. I'd probably... I would like to see what happens to Captain Riker and his crew. I think, without being too critical, that the movie focused too much on Picard and Data and it might be better to see how Riker and Troi run a ship, that might be fun.

vulcan3324: Are you writing any Trek books at this time? If so, can you give us any hints as to what it is about?

JV: No, I'm not writing any Trek books, they haven't bugged me for one and I haven't given them one!

vulcan3324: I highly enjoyed reading about the Medusan ambassador in the books. I have wanted to learn more about the Medusans since I saw "Is There in Truth No Beauty?." Is this where you got the idea for Korgan?

JV: Absolutely. I often have used classic Trek characers in TNG stories. The Medusan was one I was trying ti figure out as a place to use for a long time and I thought a prosecuting attorney would be a great place for one.

vulcan3324: Do you ever visit message boards to get a feel for how fans liked your books?

JV: Yes, I do. In fact, back ten, 12-15 years ago I was very involved in Genie, which was an online service which was text-based and predated the fancy browsers we have now. But these days, since folks like Ordover and Marco Palmieri and Keith de Candido are so knowledgeable, on those boards I tend to lurk and not leave messages.

Psiqueue: What advice you would have for those people wanting to write a Star Trek novel?

JV: I would say that it's always problematic to sit down and write a book that you can only sell to one place. If you want to write a Trek book for practice, for fun, go ahead and do it, but if you're trying to write books to sell, you're better off having your own universe. So you can sell the book to any of a dozen differnent publishers.

The Strange New World Anthologies is a great place for Trek writers to break in. And you only have to write a short story instead of a whole book.

vulcan3324: Do you ever feel pressured because of the canon that you have to follow when writing Star Trek books?

JV: No, I don't. And my theory has always been that it's like borrowing your dad's car, you can run it off a cliff, into the swimming pool, but all you have to do is fix it up, so it looks the way it was when you borrowed it so when you give it back it's fine.

DavidN: Would you ever write an Enterprise novel or series of novels, possibly about the Birth Of The Federation?

JV: Sure, I'd write an Enterprise novel.

teentimetraveler: Have you always wanted to be a writer?

JV: Yes, I've been a writer since I was 13 years old, that's when I started submitting short stories to magazines, I started selling non-fiction when I was about 20 years old. And I've been a fulltime freelance writer since 1982. I think I've done this by always being able to go with the flow, because trends change, work changes, I've never been one of those people who says "I've got to write romantic thrillers and nothing else" I'll write for young adults, I'll try anything.

In fact, I am writing romance novels under the name Caroline Goode and my first one is a fantasy for young adults called "Cupidity." That comes out next December. I'm looking forward to my career in my new sex.

DavidN: Have you met any of the Star Trek cast, or any of the writers from the show(s)?

JV: I lived in Los Angeles for 17 years and I met quite a few of the actors and I pitched to the TV show a couple of times.

klingonbob: How long did it take you to write these books?

JV: Wow. I can write an adult book in a month, but that's really hauling, if I have three months to write an adult book I feel that is kind of a reasonable, though still short, period of time. The Genesis Wave books are typical, a couple were written in a month, some three months and one I had six months. I have the advantage of being a full-time writer, people who juggle this with a day job have to give themselves more time.

vulcan3324: I found it very interesting how you changed Counselor Cabot's character from a very hateable character in ''A Time to be Born'' to a very likable character in ''A Time to Die''. Can you tell us how you worked this? It was very well done.

JV: My feeling has been that the best villains are not like superficial "Im out to conquer the world" villains. They're just people who are in conflict with our hero, they don't think they're the villain, they think they're the hero. And I knew that Counselor Cabot was going to be a villain essentially in "A time to be born," but would come around to our side in "A Time to Die" one of those characters who doesn't figure prominently in the outline, but once you start writing the book, they just jump up and want to be noticed. That's always fun writing a book, to see those secondary characters turn into more important characters.

eMailbag: Have you written any children's books?

JV: I wrote several books in the Sabrina the Teenage Witch line, called "Salem's Tails," and I also wrote a book called "The Witching Well," and all of those were second grade reading level, which is very hard to write. I never written any picture books for very young children, but I have written a lot for the middle grades and young adult level.

vulcan3324: Other than writing, what are some of your hobbies?

JV: I like to roller skate, snow ski, and I like to take apart and put together old computers, specifically old Macintoshes. It's great to have one of these, buy on eBay, a computer for $40 which would have cost $400 six years ago.

firstofall: What about the change of attitude between Capt. Picard and Adm. Nacheyev? They weren't real 'friends' throughout the series. Besides being one of my favourite side characters, how did she deserve this change after a long absence in the whole series of Star Trek since TNG?

JV:  With Admiral Necheyev, that's also a character I had used a lot, she's not a super minor character. I think my favorite scene is TNG is when she chews out Picard. She chews him out for the first time and it's like -- you realize he has to answer to people, too! Ever since then, I've loved to use her because she's all business and doesn't treat Picard any different than anyone else. And we all need that person in our lives that's not going to cut us any slack.

Even though my books are not canon, I tend to think of them having a certain continuity, and in my books Picard and Necheyev work together in several more missions than we saw onscreen, so in my mind they have a little bit closer relationship, due to their experiences in my own books.

darrik: Sidra, Zemusta, Vernok, how do you come up with such strange names?

JV: (laughter) You know, names are like titles, sometimes you put a dummy name in there because you can't think of anything better, sometimes you agonize over a character, trying to find the right one. It's kind of magical, naming a character.

vulcan3324: Do you have a "Star Trek Encyclopedia" that you use when writing?

JV: Yes, I use all of the reference manuals, the old Technical reference books have always been a big help and I still have a couple experts I can call and you can find out more stuff online than ever before.

Host: Especially here at STARTREK.COM!

DavidN: Do you have any Star Trek memorabilia in your home?

JV: I have a couple of things. I've got a big portrait, a hand-painted portrait that was given to me of Picard and Riker that's over the TV and I have some of my slipcovers ... I have a Star Trek alarm clock I really like, it's Original Series, it's got a panorama and a ship.

trekkie776: Do you do a basic plot outline before you sit down and write?

JV: Yes, I always try to do an outline even if it's not required,. I think that saves time when you're writing, even though I do know writers who claim not to use one. Sometimes I never look at the outline, but it's nice to know it's there.

Host: We have time for one more question ...

Gareth: The age old question; who would win a fight between Picard and Kirk?

JV: Kirk would beat his ass.

Host: Thanks very much for joining us today, John!

JV: This has been great fun! I've really enjoyed this. Keep on reading!

firstofall: Thanks a lot!!!

Guest: I thank you for writing these books. i love them.

JV: Thanks!

klingonbob: i love your books

geochara: Thanks you mr.Vornholt!

darrik: Thanks!

Psiqueue: thank you for all the great hours of entertainment

trekkie776: great books!

vulcan3324: Thanks for coming! Keep up the great writing!