Greg Cox

[00:00:00] This is the Big Sci-Fi Podcast, the biggest sci-fi podcast in the galaxy, a proud part of the Trek Geeks Podcast Network. Season 6 was a blast, but Season 7 is going to be even more fun as we continue to go where no podcast has gone before, deep into the sci-fi universe. Join Idina, Brian, Chris, and Steve as they explore television, film, and literature for the best sci-fi has to offer.

[00:00:26] Even if you're not a sci-fi fan, you'll love the banter and the epic tangents as these four friends talk about what they love. We invite you to sit back and relax because the journey is just beginning on this season of The BIG Sci-Fi Podcast. Welcome back, listeners of The BIG Sci-Fi Podcast. Today, we're thrilled to be joined by an author whose imagination and storytelling prowess have brought countless sci-fi adventures to life.

[00:00:55] If you've ever wandered into the world of tie-in novels, there's a good chance you've come across the incredible work of Greg Cox. Greg is a master of expanding beloved universes, having written novels for Star Trek, Alias, The Librarians, and more, and lots of short stories set in a variety of universes and franchises. In Star Trek in particular, his novels and short stories span many of the different series, and we are definitely going to talk about some of those today.

[00:01:24] If there's a story to be told about the unexplored corners of our favorite franchises, Greg is the author you want writing it. In this episode, we'll dive into Greg's incredible career, explore what it's like to expand these iconic worlds, and learn how he captures the voices of our favorite characters. So sit back, relax, and let's welcome the one and only Greg Cox to The BIG Sci-Fi Podcast. Hi, Greg. Hi, thanks for having me. Thanks for being here today.

[00:01:51] We're going to really just dive right into talking about writing right away. I'm here with Brian, Steve, and Chris, our co-hosts. Say hi, guys. Hey, everybody. Hey. Hello, hello, hello, hello. Yeah. And I think we want to start, Greg, with just understanding, you know, what drew you to writing. Well, it's funny. In hindsight, I guess I was always meant to be a writer.

[00:02:14] As far back as I can remember, I was scribbling and writing my own stories in my school notebooks about my favorite superheroes and movie monsters and things. You know, writing what would basically be called fanfic, although I did not know that term back then. And, you know, stapling them together and making my own little homemade books.

[00:02:36] But the funny thing is I didn't actually start thinking about actually doing it as, you know, professionally until college when I discovered organized science fiction fandom. At which point I started going to conventions and actually, you know, meeting and seeing actual writers in the flesh. It's funny that, you know, intellectually I knew books didn't grow on trees and that there were things called authors. Growing up where I did, I didn't know anybody who was in publishing.

[00:03:06] None of my parents' friends were in publishing. I didn't know any writers. I actually had to, like, go and see Paul Anderson and Vonda McIntyre and the likes in the flesh to realize, oh, wait, how does this work? And, you know, you send your stories out and then sometimes they give you money to sort of start thinking about being publishing and to realize that this was actually possibly something one could do as a career.

[00:03:31] So, yeah, like I said, writing for as long as I can remember, suddenly in college, well, studying to be a chemist, actually. I was going to ask, what were you originally doing in college? I was a chemist teacher who was spending 90% of his time hanging out with the Science Fiction Fantasy Club and spending more time with the Science Fiction Fantasy Club, you know, running conventions and things than actually working in my lab. But, yeah, suddenly realizing that, oh, writing is a thing, publishing is a thing. How does this work? There are agents.

[00:04:01] And, yeah, so that's when I got serious about it and started sending stories out to Amazing Stories Magazine and selling just enough of them to get me hooked. Getting lots of rejection slips, but selling just enough of them to get me hooked, you know. Yeah, keep you going. I am now umpteen years later. Did you finish? Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Adina. Did you finish the chemistry degree or did you actually switch majors? I mean, at that point, I was deeply invested in it. And, yeah, I got my chemistry degree. Nice.

[00:04:30] But I've never actually used it. And, in fact, it was funny. I had another epiphany near the end as I was getting ready to graduate. I started looking at my college transcript and realizing that I was actually getting B's and C's in chemistry, which was my major. Whereas all the creative writing and English courses I had, electives, I had taken, quote, for fun. I got in, like, A's and A's. But, okay, there's something wrong here, you know.

[00:04:59] And it kind of slowly, that maybe I got on the wrong track here. I had the idea back then that if something was fun and easy, it wasn't serious and you needed to get a real job. And chemistry and math was hard. Or to put it another way, I suddenly realized I was actually much better at science fiction than at real science. I was a pretty mediocre chemist, truth be told. I kind of sunk in looking at my transcript that, you know. Oh, actually, just to elaborate, I remember there was another turning point.

[00:05:28] That near the end as we were getting ready, my class was getting ready to graduate. There was a chemistry department picnic for all the students. And I went there and I suddenly realized as I was hanging out with the other chemistry majors that, A, I didn't know any of these people. I hadn't been, you know, I mean, I'd been working side by side with them in labs for years. But like I said, I had been spending all my free time over at the science fiction and fantasy club. And, you know, organizing sci-fi film festivals and trivia contests and things.

[00:05:57] I also listened to them and realized they were all, hey, did you see that article about accetulation reactions in the latest issue? I thought, oh, Jesus Christ. You guys don't care about this stuff. I mean, I'm a good student. I can apply myself. I can put my nose to the grindhouse. I can get B's and C's in chemistry. But I was like, oh, my God, you guys are actually passionate about this stuff. Whereas what am I passionate about? Oh, well, I've got a meeting of the science fiction fan club tonight, you know. Right.

[00:06:20] That was my transcript and realizing that I was getting A's in creative writing and B's in chemistry and C's in chemistry. That I was clearly not, I did not have the passion for it or the talent. And like I said, going to conventions and meeting Paul Anderson and Theodore Sturgeon and Vonda McIntyre and the like and realizing, oh, this is what I want to do, not work in a lab somewhere. Which I'm having fun.

[00:06:46] There was never a moment your college counselor said, Craig, let's talk about a different direction for you. I didn't bother seeing a counselor about it. Really? Graduate. You had to sit through and that's when I kind of I looked at my transcript. So, Craig, you have, you know, you have A's in, you know, Dostoevsky and Shakespeare and creative writing. I even took a course in writing commercial fiction. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Which I really enjoyed. But I feel like, oh, but again, that was for fun.

[00:07:16] Those are my electives. Mm hmm. My major, you had to major in something hard and difficult and demanding. And that was, you know, science. Was there an author or a book, either or, or a TV show or movie that particularly got you hooked? Like, what was the road to yours loving science fiction so much? I got to give a lot of credit to my dad.

[00:07:42] My dad, you know, had had science fiction fandom existed in pure all of Washington in the 1950s and 1940s, he would have been a fan. But, you know, he loved all this stuff. He grew up on The Shadow and comic books. And growing up, he made sure that I was exposed to all the classics like Star Trek, Twilight Zone, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Forbidden Planet, The Day of the Year, It Stood Still. You know, so I came by this very, you know, he took me to drive-ins that I went and saw, you know.

[00:08:12] So, yeah, I, at the risk of showing my age, I watched, he would let me stay up past my bedtime to watch Star Trek on NBC during its original run. So, yeah, thank you, Dad. So, yeah, I think Dad's, you know. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see. I know my dad was very influential on me watching Star Trek, liking Star Trek, but also science fiction. You mentioned Forbidden Planet.

[00:08:39] I remember watching that on television at a very young age and just being like, whoa, you know. So, yeah, I think, I wonder how many people have that dad or mom or, you know, influenced them that way that helped them. No, I am very grateful for that because occasionally online I run into people who, you know, had parents or families who were not supportive of this weird, crazy sci-fi fantasy stuff. And I, oh, it always makes me feel very grateful for, you know, my parents.

[00:09:09] Now, my mom didn't understand this stuff at all. But to her credit, she was already very supportive. She, you know, let me fill my room up with comic books and Aurora monster models and, you know, so cross-described the famous monsters in film land. I think she would have liked me to be outside getting more fresh air. You know. As all moms do. And again, in my mom's defense, she proud, once later on, she proudly displayed all my books. Oh, that's great.

[00:09:38] And I am under no illusion she read any of them. And I don't think, you know, Godzilla books and Star Trek books, not her things. But she would show them to the nice church ladies who would come over and listen. Yes, yes. Here's my boy's new book, you know. In fact, my mom got into a habit. Very similar, yeah. I would always send two copies of each new book to my parents. One for my dad to carry around and show everybody and invariably get coffee stains on and, you know, forget and leave at a diner somewhere.

[00:10:05] And one for my mom to have a pristine copy, you know, just to take a piece in the family. My mom could have a pristine copy for her collection. And dad could have the one he dragged around and showed to waitresses at Denny's, you know. Yes, yes, yeah. Right. Oh, that's great. Yeah, I didn't. You're lucky because my parents really didn't care. Yeah. So I just had to learn about it by myself.

[00:10:29] Like I always say, I learned, the first thing I learned about science fiction was turning on the TV and watching television and movies and things like that. So you kind of went the same route, but you had a dad that was supportive, which is pretty, that's really great. That's really wonderful. And as time goes by, I am more and more grateful for that because I run into people who did not have that experience. So were they as supportive when you wanted to, you know, when you decide you wanted to write? They were actually, yeah.

[00:10:56] You know, or like not worried that like, wait a second, you went to have a degree in something that, you know, was meant to be in theory. I do not, I mean, sure, they must have really a writer. Yeah. But no, they were supportive and I would, like I said, I would, you know, they were very proud and would show off the books.

[00:11:17] And, you know, there were, and I went through my starving author period where I was literally waiting tables and washing dishes at an airport cafeteria, you know, for a living. But no, they were, they were always very supportive, you know. How did this, you know, you started out doing the short stories. How did it turn into your first novel? Um, well, a lot of that, honestly, I can cite another person. I, I, I, I have had good people helping me. David Hartwell.

[00:11:47] Do you know who David Hartwell is? No. I don't think so. David Hartwell was a legendary science fiction editor. Among other things, he's the guy who launched the Star Trek book line at Pocketbooks way back, you know, in the 1970s. So, um, and I took a creative writing course from David once. David was, became kind of a mentor of mine.

[00:12:11] And it was David who kind of twisted my arm to say, Greg, um, you need to come to New York City. I was living in Seattle at the time. Um, the phrase wasting your life in Seattle may have been used. Um, you need, if you're really serious about this, Greg, you need to move to New York City. You need to get involved in publishing. I'm not sure that's as quite as much a case today in these days of the internet. But, you know, I was living in Seattle.

[00:12:39] Um, you need to come out to New York City and get involved in publishing because this is where the action is if you're serious about this. And I actually stalled for two years because, you know, I grew up in Seattle. I was where my roots were. All my friends and family were. I had never been farther east than Spokane. So the idea of just upping a movie to New York City was absolutely terrifying. What would I even do there? So true story. At one point, I finally called.

[00:13:06] I sent David a letter by snail mail because this was a long time ago because I'm old. Um, and said, hey, David, if I was really going to do this, how would I do this? I don't even know what I would do. He said, tell you what, great. Funny you should mention this. He called me on the phone like a week later because snail mail. Um, my nanny just quit. How fast can you get out here? You can get out here like in a week or two. Um, I'll give you free room and board.

[00:13:31] You can take a look after my kids and I will introduce you around New York publishing. Wow. Oh, that's amazing. And so I had to shut down. I had to shut down my whole life in Seattle very quickly, moved across country, terrified. And yeah, I joked my first job at publishing was as David Hartwell's nanny. Wow. But yeah, true to his word, he took me around parties, offices, introduced me around and got me my first job as an editorial assistant at Arbor House.

[00:14:01] And then, like I said, I actually, uh, at that point, you know, I was for a long time, for several years, I worked nine to five at a full time job as a science fiction editor. Actually not just as an editor on the other side of the desk while doing a little freelance writing on the side. Interesting. And I kind of over the years saved from being a full time editor at Tor Books. I eventually moved over to Tor Books when there was an opening for a science fiction editor.

[00:14:30] And while doing some freelance writing and doing tie-ins on the side to eventually becoming someone who wrote tie-ins full time while still doing a little editing on the side. And one of the things that happened there, this brings us to Star Trek again, by this point, the editor of the Star Trek line was a guy named John Ordover. John, in fact, I, at that point, I knew fairly well because it's the New York, the science fiction community was fairly large, fairly small.

[00:15:00] We all knew each other. And, in fact, John and I had worked together at Tor. We were both assistant editors at Tor Books at the same time. I stayed at Tor. John eventually moved over to Pocket Books and became a Star Trek editor. But he knew I was a Trekkie. We were friends. And also then DSpace9 came around. And when DSpace9 came around, suddenly the folks at Pocket Books realized they needed to expand their stable of Star Trek authors. Because at that point, they're doing TOS books.

[00:15:29] They're doing TNG books. Now we have to launch an entire line of... So that was how I got my foot in the door. And John called me up and, you know, he knew me. He also knew at that point I'd written some Batman tie-ins for DC. Hey, Greg, we've got this new thing called DS9. We're looking for new authors. You want to send me an outline? You know. And that's how I got my foot in the door doing Star Trek novels. That led to more tie-ins. And eventually, the tie-in work started coming in so obvious that I finally kind of had to

[00:15:59] sort of scale down the Tor work. I stopped doing 9 to 5 and became a consulting editor at Tor. Then for many years, I was writing tie-in novels full-time while also still serving as a consulting editor on Tor. Often editing tie-ins. Part of it because it's a whole small world. I started out editing tie-ins before I started writing them. I was editing Farscape books for Tor. I did Mortal Kombat books. I did Freddy Krueger books. I was the tie-in guy at Tor.

[00:16:28] And like I said, it's a small world. All us tie editors know each other. We go to the same conventions. We used to have lunch. There was a whole bunch of us young, up-and-coming editor types. We had lunch every Wednesday at the Malibu Diner on 23rd Street. And this was our version of the Algonquin, you know. And you'd be amazed how many deals and projects got hatched at the Malibu Diner on 23rd Street. Oh, that's cool.

[00:16:56] And so, yeah. That's how I kind of saved from being a starving writer in Seattle while busting tables and washing dishes and eventually draining blood from winos. At one point, I ended up working as a hero phlebotomist. Oh, my gosh. At a plasma center in downtown Seattle, draining blood from winos for a living.

[00:17:22] While writing a book on vampire, writing a non-fiction book on the history of vampire literature. That's a whole other sideline. But, you know. That's so cool. So, just wondering. So, when you go from, I guess, how did this impact your writing process going from an editor to becoming a full-fledged author? Well, I honestly like to think that it is a good thing that I have worked both sides of the desk.

[00:17:48] I actually think this is a useful experience because I sometimes feel a bit schizophrenic. Like, you know, authors, they're all temperamental children. Oh, wait, I'm an author. Editors, they're all philicemen. So, no, wait, I'm an editor, you know. But, no, I think it works for you. As a writer, it means that I like to think that I am receptive to editorial advice because I've been on the other side of the desk. And I understand where the editor is coming from.

[00:18:15] And as a editor, I think I understand how writers feel and how they are attached to their work and how to talk to them and how to do it in a way that is constructive and positive and not just, okay, here are the 75 things that are wrong with your book, change them. And as a writer, like I said, one thing I've learned that I've incorporated into my editing is that I think at least I do. We all have a knee-jerk response of, no, the book is perfect the way it is. You know, no, you're all wrong. I, you know.

[00:18:44] And I understand I have to get over that. And you have to, you know, okay, you're going to have the first response of, no, the book is perfect the way it is. What do you mean you have to fix it? To, okay, stop, sleep on it, go away, come back to it. Okay, now let me see what you have there. And now I do that as an editor. Part of my boilerplate when I write an editorial letter to an author is, hi, don't respond to me right away.

[00:19:10] Take the weekend off, sleep on it, don't think about the book, you know, go mow the lawn, go get an ice cream sundae, whatever, go see a movie, take the kids to the park. Like, sleep on it for a couple days and now let's revisit this next week, you know. And then hopefully we can then talk and, you know, rather than saying, you know. And I'm always trying to, like, communicate that, you know, it's your book.

[00:19:38] I'm trying to make it the best book you want to be. I'm not trying to change your message. I'm trying to figure out what you're trying to do and help you to do it. Yes. I gave the writer a cooling off. Experimental avant-garde, poorly uncommercial novel. I'm going to make it the, help you make it the best avant-garde, experimental, you know, upscales, uncommercial science fiction novel it can be. Yeah.

[00:20:05] So you would consider yourself, you're really a developmental editor as opposed to, like, a copy or line editor. I have done, yeah, I'm not a copy editor. I mean, give me a manuscript. If I see typos, I will fix them because I'm an editor and I can't help it. Yeah. But honestly, one of my sidelines these days, I do a lot of, there's a company called ReadSee that is a website where aspiring authors can connect with editors. And the service I offer there is developmental editing. That's what I'm ready for and that's what I do, you know. Yeah. And for our listeners that might not know.

[00:20:35] That's one of my side hustles, as the kids say these days. I do developmental editing for people at ReadSee. Right. So I think a lot of people, when they, what I've encountered is a lot of people, when we talk about editing, their first reaction is they're only thinking about copy editing. That's what they assume. It seems to be copy editing and editing is lost in alignment. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So, yeah.

[00:21:01] So developmental editing is when, you know, people, someone is helping, you know, well, really anything. I would, I think it's like really like, you know, all aspects. It's, you know, character development, plot development. You know, this concept doesn't work or this scene doesn't work or this scene needs something or needs to be cut. You know, it's not just the grammar and everything. You know, it's like, okay, the plot doesn't actually start until chapter five, you know. Okay.

[00:21:29] I see where you're going here, but this is anticlimactic. Hi. This whole subplot with the Baron's wife ends up just kind of petering out. Do we really need the subplot with the Baron's wife? That kind of thing. Or, oh, this is a lovely book. I think this one ghastly, you know, splatter horror scene. It's a lovely splatter horror scene, but it doesn't belong in this whimsical fantasy about fairies. You know. These are actually true incidences.

[00:21:58] But, you know, that kind of thing. Getting into it sort of, you know. I love the opening. It falls apart at the end. Or I think it drags a little bit in the middle. Maybe we can speed things up. Or slow things down. Or, okay, we've had a buildup. But we've had five chapters of buildup to the fight with the dragon. The fight with the dragon needs to last more than two paragraphs. You know. Not after five chapters of buildup, you know. Yeah. I wrote a novella and my sister-in-law, who has some history in editing,

[00:22:28] helped me with a copy editing on it first. And then she went through a second time to help with character development and plot and all that stuff. And consistency. And she actually caught some really crucial things for me, though. I was so thankful for. But she said something really helpful to me as someone who is, for the first time, endeavoring to write something more than 5,000 words. She said, I want you to be successful. And I want this to be as good as it can.

[00:22:57] So just know if there's a lot here that I come back at you, it's because I believe in you. And I want this to be as good as it can. And that was just really helpful for me in my mindset to chill out. I also try to always get my editorial letters with what I call, you know, two very crowds of shameless flattery. But it's not just flattery. It's like, I want to be positive. Yeah. Back when I was a choir editor for Tor, I was stressed. Look, there's a reason I bought this book in the first place. I love this book.

[00:23:25] I would not have acquired this book for Tor if I didn't love this book in the first place. Yeah. Yeah. And then when I get into the page notes and the line notes, I do try to occasionally go, oh, really great part. I love this part. Because I have had editors, because I'm both sides of the cap, where, hi, we're just kind of, okay, you know, brusque and, okay, oh, thanks for the book. Now, here's the 75 things I all hate about the book. You know. But you can be a little gentler on my feelings there. Good notes.

[00:23:53] And the other thing I've learned is you can't get sarcastic and facetious. Because I've discovered even authors who are great guys who have wonderful senses of humor don't have sense of humor about their, you know. That makes sense. That feels true. I certainly go through all my notes to make sure that I don't end up being too arch or sarcastic or sort of snarky. How dare you say my baby's ugly? How dare you? Talking to friends on Facebook, I will be snarky.

[00:24:20] When you're dealing with somebody's baby, you don't get snarky. Exactly. Yeah. That's something I have. Yeah, that's one of my – and I do a final, indeed, review of my edits to make sure that I have – there's no snarky. It's all very sincere and earnest. Yeah. There is no snarkiness or sarcasm. Yeah. Thanks. I just finished a short film for film school, and I found my professor was very much the same way, where he would go through – and obviously he'd give feedback. But it was very much like, hey, I believe in what you're doing.

[00:24:51] Here's what I think would enhance your scene. But then he'd also – like you were saying, he would go through and be like, oh, I love this scene. I love the way this was shot or the way this was acted. So it was such a great blend of knowing that he's not just going to say things just to make sure you don't feel bad. And he'd get good feedback. But it was – how do I say it? It was a good balance of knowing that I could trust him and that his feedback was genuine.

[00:25:16] He wasn't doing it to be mean, but he also really felt like, okay, I see your potential here. So I think that's so helpful to hear when you're receiving the feedback. Because, yeah, I guess – and I am sure you feel the same way when you're writing a book or you feel like, oh, everything I did is so perfect. Then it's like, okay, now let me hear what someone else thinks to see, okay, what can be improved. Like I said, the other side of the desk, when I'm on that – I'm on the author's side of the desk.

[00:25:42] I try to be receptive because I've been in the case of getting occasionally an author who gets all defensive. I don't want to be that author. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So when you're in the author's chair and you're writing the tie-ins and – so Star Trek is just – I'm just going to use this as an example. One of the things that impresses me is how you're able to capture the voice of the different characters that are not inherently your characters. You know, someone else created these characters.

[00:26:11] They were already established. And so I was, you know, recently reading from one of the recent Star Trek Explorer magazines, your story with Hakara Sulu. And with his dialogue, yes, I can hear George Takei in my head. And that's one thing that actually, like, scares me about writing tie-in fiction. Like, oh gosh, getting someone else's character voice wrong. Like, is that kind of conscious on your effort or do you just do it?

[00:26:40] Do you – how much research do you do on the characters ahead of time? Well, it depends. I will say, in all modesty, one of my talents, I think I have a fairly good literary mimic. When it comes to capturing the characters' voices. For whatever reason. And, yeah, that's important in doing tie-ins because the last thing you want is somebody to go, well, Riker wouldn't say that. For whatever reason. Right, right. I have a good ear for that.

[00:27:08] But part of that is, you know, it depends also, you know, it's immersion and being familiar with the character. Now, with Star Trek, especially with TOS, I don't really need to do research because I've known these characters since I was six. So, you know, when it comes to writing Sulu's voice, it's there, you know. If it's something newer or a brand new series, I may have to do immersion or I may try to – I'm very thinking about immersion.

[00:27:34] If I'm writing a Voyager book, I watch Voyager episodes in the evening. If I'm – yeah, I listen to the soundtracks. But recently, a while back, I wrote a book that involved Seven of Nine. Hmm. I was visiting the – it was actually a Voyager TOS crossover where Seven of Nine failed back in time and met Captain Kirk and Sulu and all that. Oh, I need to read this. And I still am amazed CBS let me do that.

[00:28:04] But at that point, I actually went into it realizing that I hadn't watched Voyager for some time. And actually, I'd never actually written Seven of Nine before. I wrote my one and only Voyager novel back in the Kess era. Hmm. So, what I did is I actually did a Seven of Nine marathon. I, you know, went to my DVDs and I made up a playlist, as it were, of a bunch of Seven of Nine intensive episodes. Mm-hmm.

[00:28:30] I watched seven or eight of them just to – I'd watched the show religiously when it was on, but it had been a few years. So, in that case, just to get back into the groove. And also because I needed to write some Voyager scenes for the framing sequence in that book, and it had been a long time since I'd written those characters. That had been many years since I'd written those characters. I sat down and did kind of a binge watch in Voyager just to, okay, get myself back in the groove.

[00:28:56] And if I'm doing something new, a new series, but, again, I'll do the same thing and I will just binge watch. I tell a true story. The TV series Leverage. Oh, yeah. Yeah. At one point, one of my editors, Ginger McCannon, called me and asked me, Greg, are you a Leverage fan? Now, the truth of the matter is I'd never seen the show. But you say yes. Well, actually, I consider bullshit either in saying absolutely, but no, Ginger's an Leverage friend of mine. I'm not going to do that. So what I told her was, no, but I can be. Okay.

[00:29:26] Sure enough, you know, in this wonderful modern era, I took a week off. I got the box sets. I binge watched the show. I went on the website to see what the fans liked about it. And after about a week, okay, now I understand these shows. I understand these characters. And in terms of, go back to your original question. Now I have their voices in my head. I can sit down and write a Leverage book. And I did. Okay.

[00:29:50] Yeah, because that was when I was writing for, you know, my story in Explorers, I was, and one of the things that I was always interested in, in writing fiction in those universes, was really staying away from the main characters and writing. I've noticed that maybe all your stories are not about actually. Yes. Yeah. Because I'm terrified of, right, having, getting it wrong. So I like to do other things in the universe or use a character that we don't know well enough that I'm kind of a little bit more free to make it up.

[00:30:19] Because, yeah, I'm terrified of getting it wrong. Well, like I said, in my case, it's immersion. If I just sort of sit down and listen to it, I start to pick up the rhythms of it. You know, if it means sitting down and, you know, binge watching three seasons of Leverage in like a week, you know. Do you have, you know, favorite characters that you like, you know, you prefer to write and you think are, I don't know, easier, just more enjoyable than others?

[00:30:45] Well, I will say on Star Trek front, Captain Kirk is the most fun to write of the captains. One of the reasons I like writing Captain Kirk, besides just the fact that that's, I'm old and that's the Star Trek I grew up on. So TOS is my Star Trek as well. Is that, again, I don't have to rationalize why Captain Kirk is throwing himself into the throes of danger and rushing, you know.

[00:31:11] So, well, gee, well, you know, why isn't he delegating? You know, with Picard or Cisco, you have to kind of figure out. I remember I struggled with the captains when I wrote my DS9 book and my Voyager book because it seems like if the captain is doing their job, there won't be a, he won't be in danger and there won't be, you know. Whereas Kirk is like, oh, there's a security. We've got a crisis down on Delta Vega 5. There's, you know, we received a mysterious security, you know, distress signal that was cut off.

[00:31:40] Let's beam right down in. Let's just, yeah, let's just go. Let's do it. Okay, you know. And, you know, so, you know, maybe I'm lazy. Kirk is that fun that way. I don't have to try to contrive to. Well, my philosophy with the captains on Star Trek is to try to get them off the bridge as soon as possible. I don't like writing talking head scenes where they're just sitting around in conference rooms. And you have to do it occasionally. I want to, yeah, it's okay.

[00:32:05] Get Picard off the damn bridge and get him into a swamp full of crocodiles as fast as human possible. You know. I feel like with the holodeck with Picard and Janeway and even Sisko, like getting them off the bridge might not, I don't know. It feels like, like, you can get them in the holodeck easily enough and then you can do, like, anything. I recently wrote a Dixon Hill story. Oh, okay. Oh, wow. On the holodeck for Star Trek Explorer magazine. I didn't read that one yet.

[00:32:36] Not yet. It's in one of the collections. Okay. But, yeah. And I actually brought in Deanna Troi playing Durango, her character from the Western holodeck. Oh, yeah. Durango. Yeah. The Dixon Hill-Durango crossover. Nice. That's cool. Wow. Brian's like, ooh, I'm looking forward to that one. We've established that Brian has a crush on Deanna Troi. Oh, okay. You'll have to read my Durango story. I used to have a crush. I'm happily married now.

[00:33:06] Uh-huh. You used to have a crush. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Outside of Star Trek, which would be, you know, your favorite franchise that you've written in. Oh, God. It's hard to say. Again, you know, they're all my babies and how do you think I'm treating my children? I will say, okay, I really, two of them, I really enjoyed writing the Underworld books. Do you remember the Underworld franchise, which was the Vampires vs. Likens?

[00:33:33] It was a horror movie series with Kate Beckinsale in Black Lives Matter. Oh, yes, yes. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there was Underworld, Underworld Evolution, Underworld Rise of the Likens, etc. But besides being a science fiction fan, I am a hardcore horror fan. I think I alluded briefly that my very first book was actually a nonfiction guide to vampire literature. So writing books about vampires vs. werewolves was, you know, fun.

[00:34:01] So I had a ball writing, I ended up writing four Underworld books. Underworld was a big part of my life for a while, and that was a lot of fun, and the Underworld people were great to work with. And they actually invited me to the red carpet premiere at, you know, the Chinese Theater in Hollywood for the first movie, which is not normal. You use it. Nice. I'm not sure they realized they didn't have to do that. Okay. They were just, they were being nice, and that's great. I still Facebook friends of one of the actors on the show in those movies.

[00:34:30] So I had a lot of fun writing the Underworld books, because the horror fan in me, the vampires and werewolves and castles, it was a lot of fun. And recently doing the Librarians books, I did three books based on that TV series. And those are actually the exact opposite of Underworld, because Underworld is all dark and horrible and gory and violence, and already did horror movies. The Librarians is kind of lighthearted and whimsical, and I had a lot of fun just coming

[00:34:57] up with, you know, I did an entire 300-page book about Mother Goose, you know, a fantasy novel about Mother Goose. That's a funny story. That was a case of where, in fact, I was pitching ideas to the Librarians people, and they rejected the original idea. I submitted his own, and then kind of in desperation, I said, well, how about Mother Goose? And they said, fine. Oh, great. And I swear to God, all I had for a plot at that point was two words.

[00:35:27] Mother Goose. And I remember one week downstairs and telling my girlfriend, I think I just agreed to write a 300-page fantasy novel about Mother Goose. Okay, I'm going to the library now. And read and learn about Mother Goose. But no, that was fun. So like I said, those were fun books to write just because they were kind of wild and wacky, you know. That sounds just like a fun day or week to just have something like that vague and then just be free to go to the library and just start exploring.

[00:35:57] I went down and I found the annotated Mother Goose and the history of Mother Goose that I found. I found out that, in fact, just that the first printed copy of Mother Goose no longer exists. There are now no known copies of it. Wow. Records of it. It's lost. I thought, bang, now I have MacGuffin for my book. Finding the long-lost first printing of Mother Goose. And bang, there's my book. Yeah. That's cool. Nice. Yeah. So. Where do your ideas?

[00:36:27] I did not know that when I pitched it. I was just, it got down my first idea, which had to do with Norse mythology. I was going to do something with Thor and Loki and all that stuff. And that got shot down. So, okay, Mother Goose is my backup plan. It seems like you've got, like, because you can switch gears on all these different types of stories and characters and things like that. Do you lie awake at night doing this? Or where does it all come from?

[00:36:56] Because it's just, it's such a diverse. A lot of it, like I said, is because I dived myself into the topic. And also, I like the variety. One of the perks of being an Italian writer, honestly, is it forces me out of my comfort zone. I mean, I love Star Trek. I've been writing Star Trek for 30 plus years now. But, and I intend to keep writing Star Trek novels for as long as they let me. But I think I would go nuts if I only wrote Star Trek. I love, thanks to the tie-in things, I've done spy novels.

[00:37:24] I've done police procedurals. I've done whimsical, comical fantasies. I've done gruesome, bloody, R-rated horror movies. I even did at least one historical romance, writing a novelization for a movie that nobody on God's green earth has seen. Okay, but, so yeah, I like the diversity of, hey, I'm going to write sword and sorcery. I'm going to write, I wrote a great grisly zombie story for a horror magazine the other day. It was fun, you know.

[00:37:53] I like sort of being a jack of all genres. It keeps things fresh. Do you like writing short or long? Or is it the same? At this point, I'm used to long. Short is, I've been spoiled by being a novelist for many years. I tend to think in those terms. Indeed, as Edina can testify, the stories for Star Trek Explorer are only 2,500 words long. Oh, I was told 2,000 for mine.

[00:38:20] The challenge of those are trying to tell a whole Star Trek story in like 2,500 words. When I'm used to 100,000 words. That was interesting because that was a whole different kind of brain thing. And I was fascinated actually to read the magazine. For those who don't know, the late lamented Star Trek Explorer magazine ran Star Trek short stories. And they were only about 2,500 words long, which is nothing. And it was fascinating to see what other writers like Edina and others, how they handled it.

[00:38:50] How do you tell them? You know, I had my solution, which was to discover that, okay, I can't do a whole big giant epic tale. I'm going to do big nets. They led us to maybe character-oriented big nets kind of thing. Where I thought some people would do big stories with like space battles. I mostly, my rule of thumb was, okay, three scenes, about four characters, and that's about it. Okay. Yeah. You know, maybe a tag scene at the end.

[00:39:16] But, you know, I would sort of look for stories that couldn't be told and actually wouldn't support novel link. You're not going to get an entire novel out of what really happened between Captain Kirk and Helen Noel at the famous Star Trek, you know, Christmas party. But that's a funny, you know, what happened the night before you read this, before Sulu took over command of the Excelsior and the passing of the torch between him and Southwick, you know.

[00:39:46] Right. Although you implied in that story kind of, I feel like there's an implication of a bigger potential story there. Which I, maybe I will do someday, you know. Again, I don't want to, I don't want to spoil. I don't want to spoil. I don't want to read this one yet. You should read it. It's really, it's really nice. And I think the, the kind of the ending was really, the ending was really sweet. I really, you know, I really liked the, the ending. I don't want to, I want to say it, but obviously.

[00:40:16] What's the name of the story? So I want to see if I can find this. Because I find that. Housewarming. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to look that up. It's, it's, it was in the one from a couple of months ago. About Savic bringing a housewarming gift to Sulu as he's about to set up. Now, one interesting thing about that story I'll mention is about time of our research. I went back to watch to see what kind of relationships Sulu and Savic had in the movies and discovered they don't have one. Yeah. They don't really interact.

[00:40:43] And I actually ended up, I mentioned that in the story, but I went in to see whether, Oh, you watch the movie. They, I think they exchange like two lines of dialogue. Wow. And she's quite rough, not rough. They don't really know each other. Because actually, you watch the movies, most of the time she's on the away team and he's up on the ship. Literally, if you try to go watch, find scenes of Sulu interacting with Savic in the movies, you are not going to find them. So to a third degree, it was like, I was disappointed at first because I had nothing to build on. And then I realized, Oh, well, no, this is virgin territory.

[00:41:12] You know, there, there isn't a relationship established. I get to sort of lean into that, which is great. The other thing I could actually tell you about that story, this is how the ideas come. The magazine, there is kind of a, that story is kind of a vague thematic prequel to my most recent Star Trek novel, which also involves Savic. Oh, okay. And the editors of the magazine specifically asked me for a story to tie into the magazine

[00:41:41] because this, the issue came, was coming out at the same time. In fact, if you look at the cover of that magazine, which you were showing, it says the prequel story to Lost to Eternity. I don't think I, I don't think I noticed that. I missed that detail. It actually says the prequel story to Lost Eternity. It's not really a prequel, though there's, there's teasers there. And I actually wrote the novel first, but when they asked me for a story that was tied in to the novel, which was coming out that month, it was like, okay, Savic is a big part of the novel.

[00:42:11] Let's do a Savic story. And then I kind of like, and yeah, there's some thematic connections. And you can read the, you can read the story independently. You can read the novel independently, but there are some connections. And that was a case where indeed, because it's, Italians are a very collaborative process. What happened there was not, didn't just spring out of my brain. That was the editors, John Freeman at the magazine asked me, hey, Greg, you've got a book coming out in July.

[00:42:39] Can you do, write us a story in the interest of synergy and all that to the ties in with your new novel. And well, how about I do something with Savic? And yeah. Oh, excellent. That's, that's pretty neat to like, to know exactly like kind of how a story like that came about. I like that. I enjoy that. You should, one thing I should mention, stop me if I'm rambling, is that the whole thing about being a tie-in, it's a very collaborative process. You know, it's where do you get your ideas?

[00:43:06] Well, honestly, you're working with, there are lots of moving parts involved. You're talking, you know, your editors, you're dealing with the people at CBS or whatever, the other licensor. You're dealing with the people at the, nice people at Electric Entertainment who publish Leverage and Librarians. You're dealing with nice people at Sony who do Underworld. And there's a lot of give and take back and forth. And that's another thing where being on both sides of the desk, you know, ties together again

[00:43:33] is writing tie-ins to a certain degree, you have to check your ego out the door. And no, I have my vision of how the book is going to be. And this is my, well, no, because you're playing somebody else's sandbox. Yeah, yeah. And indeed, sometimes, you know, like I said, pocketbooks will come and say, hi, we would like a Voyager novel. And maybe that's all they have. Or maybe they say, hi, we want a story for a mirror universe book involving Picard. Okay. And I know for Star Trek magazine, they tended to do theme issues. So they'd say, hey, Greg, we want a Borg story.

[00:44:02] Write us a Borg story. Mm-hmm. The Dixon Hill story came from them saying, we're doing a Picard issue. Write me a Picard story. And I was like, what can I do with Picard? Hey, Dixon Hill, you know. I wrote a Dr. Pulaski story for them. Oh, that's cool. Because they simply asked me for a story about Dr. Pulaski from the second season of TNG. And I'll be honest, I don't think left to my own devices, I would have ever occurred to me to write a story about Dr. Pulaski. Mm-hmm. But that was an interesting challenge.

[00:44:31] Again, I went back and watched some of the Dr. Pulaski episodes from the second season of TNG, which I had not done in years, to try to get Diana Mulder's voice and remind myself of the character. And so that's how I started. It's very much sort of a collaborative process. And, you know, you talk to the editors and you pitch ideas and back and forth. And, you know. How do you keep track of continuity when you're writing in, say, like a librarian or even

[00:44:59] a track where there's so many other books and so many things that have happened on screen where it's like, okay, I don't want to contradict something, but I want to be able to do this story. Well, it's easier nowadays than it used to be because you've got the internet, you can stream episodes. I'm trying to remember what happened to that episode. I can go back. You've got Memory Alpha. Memory Alpha. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's so good. I love it. I use it all the time. Yeah, I remember the old days, in my day, when we walked through the snow to find, you

[00:45:28] know, bootleg VHS copies of TASS. But I do remember one spending an entire weekend pounding the pavement trying to find a VHS copy of the counter clock incident, which was an episode of TASS. Yeah. And TASS was not easy to see because, again, pocketbooks asked me for a Robert April story. And when it came time to write the Robert April story, I went back and I reread Diane Carey's

[00:45:54] novels about Robert April just to be consistent. Part of it is just, it helps you get into the Star Trek and you grew up on this stuff because my not so guilty secret is, like I said, I've been watching Star Trek since I was six. And, you know, I would be standing in line to see the new movies on opening night, even if this wasn't my job. And in fact, I was a big librarians fan already. And I watched Godzilla movies. I grew up on Godzilla. So you know this stuff already.

[00:46:24] But it's more about, in my case, it's more about refreshing my memory, unless it's a brand new franchise-wide leverage or CSI or something. But then, you know, thank God CSI, I wrote some CSI books back in the day. There was a period there where CSI was running on cable four times a day. Right. I don't know. I'd seen one or two CSI books. I was not an expert. But yeah, trust me, it's not hard to just, okay, you know, okay, TNT is showing that three

[00:46:54] times a day to bring myself. And there are episode guides online you can go to and look up and I read them all. I went back and read some of the previous CSI novels by Max Allen Collins. So it's all about doing your homework, you know, to a certain degree. And doing your homework not only helps you not get things wrong, it also gives you ideas. Like I said, I didn't know that the first printing of Mother Goose is a lost book until I went and started doing research, you know. Okay, I, you know.

[00:47:24] I did another librarian's book that involved the Arabian Nights and Shih Tzah and Laden and Sinbad. And I went in and dug deep into that. And I found, besides just trying not to get it wrong, I found cool things like, oh, the Legend of Aladdin was originally set in China? Oh, I can, I can, I can, I guess it was an Arabian story, but it was set in the exotic far off land of China, which was exotic to people in Arabia, you know.

[00:47:54] Now, Aladdin is being Arabian in the Disney movie. But when I dug deep into it, I found, oh, it's actually set in the exotic land of China. So, oh my God, so the genius lamp is not going to look like the lamp we see. It's going to look like a Chinese lantern. I actually just, to elaborate, I did a scene where it's kind of shamelessly ripping off the scene with the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Lost Crusade, where they're looking for Aladdin's lamp and they find a room full of lamps. Mm-hmm.

[00:48:22] And we did a lot of traditional, but no, it's somebody, because the librarians are brilliant and they're all librarians who need books. One of them remembered, wait, no, originally, the original story was set in China. So it's that Chinese lantern over there is Aladdin's lamp. And that was a whole plot point. And that's something I got by digging in, doing the research and doing the homework, gives you ideas. Yeah. Greg, have you watched the latest Star Trek series like Picard?

[00:48:51] Have you watched Strange New Worlds, any of those? Oh, yeah. I've seen all of them except Prodigy. Okay. So in Strange New Worlds episode, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, we get to meet a young con. Yes. What did you think of that, how it fit into your story of the eugenics war books? Well, you know, I see what they were doing there.

[00:49:19] And honestly, I like that they actually acknowledge it. They actually, the Romulan double agent in that book actually says something. This was, you know, time has been messed up. This was supposed to happen in the 90s. It was fine. You know, they didn't just pretend we can, you know, wait a minute, Space Seeds said it took place in the 90s. But no, that was cool. And I understand why they decided to, you know, rip the Band-Aid off, as it were.

[00:49:47] You know, at this point, the eugenics wars are the sucking chest wound. Yeah. And we had a lot of fun in my book of trying to make, find a way to make it work and squeeze the eugenics wars into the 1990s we all lived through. And that's one way to go at it. We had a lot of fun and people loved, and people enjoyed those books. But I understand the reasoning of, if you want to go back deep, sort of to the idea,

[00:50:14] which was there's this ghastly dystopian future in our future. You know, in 1960s, the 1990s was the near future. Right. That if you want to get the same effect and the same message these days, you kind of have to push Khan forward. And you have to kind of finally bite the bullet and do it. And so that's one way of doing it. And in fact, I can probably, it's probably now safe to reveal that I actually got a heads up on that. And they told me that was coming.

[00:50:44] Oh, did they? Oh, so that's cool. I'm not sure if I was, but I was quietly informed that was coming. Just so you didn't let your head explode when you're sitting there watching it. Well, actually, so that I could actually make some adjustments. Okay. This book is also set, a good check of this book, which is the new one, is set in 2024. Lost to Eternity. And a third of this book is actually set in 2024. And the book came out in 2024.

[00:51:09] So the whole question of the eugenics wars and how modern, I was given a heads up not to basically vague things up as to when the eugenics wars happened. You know. The cover for that, but the artwork for that Lost to Eternity is gorgeous too. That's a beautiful cover. It's gorgeous. In fact, I will tell you a cool cover. As you see, Robin Curtis is on the cover. Playing Sonic. By amazing coincidence, and I could not have arranged this if I tried.

[00:51:39] Robin Curtis was a guest at a local science fiction convention here in my hometown the week this book was published. Wow. I wouldn't say I did that on purpose, but no, it was just, you know. It's just coincidence. I had the pleasure of going to the convention, Shore Leave in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and presenting Robin Curtis with a copy of the brand new Hot Off the Press's book. Cool. Which she did not know about. And she was genuinely pleased. Oh my God, it's my Sovic.

[00:52:08] Like, there's a book about my Sovic? You know, I gave her a copy and she autographed a copy for me and I have no idea if she'll ever read it. But you know, she seemed genuinely pleased to see that there was a new novel about her Sovic fan. She's really sweet. I was there at Shore Leave last year. Yeah, I saw her there too. Yeah, she's really, she's super sweet. I have heard nothing but good things from her. And I made a point of seeing her presentation. I don't always manage to make it to the actor presentations and conventions. I'm busy running around doing my own thing.

[00:52:38] But no, I made a point to see her. I actually made a point of, on my list of things to do is to track her down, find her, and give her a copy of the new book. You know. Yeah. She was on our podcast. The year prior. Yeah. It's lovely. That's what I'm going to hear about. And like I said, she's either an amazing actress or she was genuinely pleased and charmed to discover there's a new book about Sovic action. Yeah. And I need to read this book because when I saw it was coming out, I'm like, oh, this is about Jillian Taylor.

[00:53:08] This is about Voyage Home, my favorite movie of all time. I'm so excited. Yep. So speaking of Shore Leave, that's a convention that used to be in Baltimore, has been moved up to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It occurs in July every year now. And so you'll be there again this year? Oh, yeah. Shore Leave is far and away my favorite Star Trek convention. I have been a regular for, I don't want to count how many decades, you know, there are there, but no.

[00:53:36] And now that they've literally moved into my backyard, it is like no greater. I mean, I was not averse to driving down to Hunt Valley, you know, every year, but now it's in my backyard. So, of course, I will be at Shore Leave this year. Excellent. Excellent. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing you there and we can chat some more. Are there things? We must have not connected or maybe we were. I think so. Well, because you're busy with your stuff.

[00:54:03] And when I'm at the convention, I'm also speaking on Science Tracks and I'm doing some panels and stuff too. So I'm also busy. We're all busy. We're all busy. Surely, there are people I've known for like, you know, 20, 30 years, like Keith to Canada. And it may well be that at the end of Shore Leave, we will have passed each other in the halls and on my way to a panel. On my way to a panel. I see. Hopefully, there'll be a time where we all sit around the bar in the evening, but it doesn't always happen. You know? Right, right. Yeah. Keith is cool. We also had Keith on. Yeah, he's great. Keith and I go way back.

[00:54:32] In fact, I will brag, in my capacity as tour editor, I edited Keith's very first novel. Oh, wow. That's great. It's Fall World, yes, which was a novelization of a terrible horror movie called Gargantua. It was a low-budget ripoff of Godzilla that came out at the same time Godzilla did. More than Gargantuas? No, no, no. This aired on the Fox channel. Oh, okay. I'm sorry.

[00:54:59] The night before the Matthew Broderick Godzilla opened. Oh, wow. He's got a giant lizard. Wow. I hired Keith to write the novelization on tour's behalf. He wrote the book in one month, under a pseudonym, and I like to, you know, but, you know, I think he, you know, I am not outing him. He admits to be, you know, K. Robert Andreassi. That was the name he used on that book. But I can claim credit for being, editing Keith's very first book. Wow, that's cool. Great.

[00:55:28] And by conventions, I should mention to be dutiful. I am actually the writer guest this year at ZenkeCon, which is another local Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based convention, which is in March. And I would be remiss if I did not mention that I am going to be, in fact, I got my schedule by email like two days ago. And that would be like end of March here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It's called ZiggyCon.

[00:55:55] It's emphasis is largely on anime and manga, but they do science fiction in general. And I'm going to be the writer guest this year. So great. And you're still writing. Yes. Excellent. So we will see many more things from you in the future, which is awesome. Yes. So yeah, Greg, I want to thank you so much for joining us today to talk to us about writing. It's been awesome. A few things I'm going to follow up with you on afterwards. I'm very curious about, you know, your Readsie editing stuff.

[00:56:25] Yeah. So you'll hear from me later. So thank you guys. Thanks, everybody. Because we're going to wrap up another fantastic episode of the Big Sci-Fi Podcast. A huge thank you again for Greg Cox for joining us today. And as always, thank you to our listeners too for tuning in. Of course, don't forget to check out Greg's work if you haven't already. And we'd love to hear your thoughts like always. You can find us on Facebook or drop us a line at thebigscifipodcast at gmail.com

[00:56:54] with any thoughts or questions you might have. And everyone, keep on exploring. Keep on staying curious. Live long and prosper. Be kind and respectful to each other, especially now. And we will see you next time on the Big Sci-Fi Podcast. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Big Sci-Fi Podcast. If you're having fun and enjoying the podcast,

[00:57:19] we ask that you would share the love by liking, following, subscribing, rating, and writing a review for us. That helps get our podcast in front of more potential listeners. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Once again, we're a part of the Trek Geeks Podcast Network. And you can find our podcast along with other fantastic podcasts by visiting trekgeeks.com.