Starfleet diplomat Captain Hikaru Sulu is transported by powerful, frightening dreams to the desolate desert world of Sigma Cameron Four. It was there, as Commander of the U.S.S. "Excelsior" 20 years earlier, that he discovered traces of the ancient Shalakai -- a ruthless culture who, legend held, had once uncovered the secret to eternal life. Driven to find that secret, Sulu's brilliant science officer, Commander Flynn Konner, launched a fateful mission whose outcome would forever haunt the "Excelsior "crew. Now, 20 years later, as the distinguished archeologist Dr. Constance Allenwood moves closer to uncovering the Shalakai's secrets on Sigma Cameron Four, Sulu must race to stop her before she unleashes a disastrous chain of events.
May you live in interesting times, say the Chinese, and they mean it as a curse.
And these are interesting times for the publishing industry. And all of us involved in it, one way or the other. Storytelling is in a state of transformation as well, with devices such as the Ipad and technologies such as Flash promising wholescale integration of other media (images, recordings, etc., now - sensations? smells? to come?) alongside traditional text narratives.
This is a topic of much interest to me, and others, and you can find much about it over at the appropriate LinkedIn discussion page.
In the meantime, I am working on several projects integrating those forms. One in particular I'm excited about is NUTS. I mean that, literally, NUTS.
I'm also hard at work in the universe created by Brad Wardell over at Stardock Inc., which is right now taking shape in the form of a videogame (or two); Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, a turn-based strategy game set in a S&S (not Simon and Schuster, sword and sorcery!) universe, will be out in February of 2012, and I urge you to watch for it.
In the meantime, keep reading. I've just finished a book called Heaven's Keep, by an author I worked with many years ago at Pocket Books, William Kent Krueger, who is right about at the top of the mystery/suspense genre. That's the ninth or so book in a series he's been working on for a long time, featuring a character named Cork O'Connor. Do not start with Heaven's Keep. Read from the beginning - Iron Lake.
