Keith R.A. DeCandido chatted with fans about A Time To..., the Captain's Table series and future SCE books, revealing a bit about the process of writing and editing Star Trek novels.

In a forum at BookTrek, DeCandido said that he prefers writing in universes with which he is already familiar but noted that there have been exceptions, such as Andromeda which he started watching after having interest expressed in his writing a book and which led to the creation of a novel he cites as one of his favourites. Other favourites are two books yet to be released: Enemy Territory, which will be released next March, and Articles of the Federation, which will likely published in 2005.

Enemy Territory, an IKS Gorkon novel, features the Klingons - long a culture in which DeCandido has been interested - "making a rather violent first contact with the Elabrej Hegemony, and much violence ensues." Articles of the Federation centers on Federation politics, describing a year in the life of the new Federation president introduced in A Time For War, A Time For Peace, and will also tie in to events from the film Star Trek: Nemesis and the first novel about Will Riker's ship, Titan, entitled Taking Wing.

"We'll get a pretty good look at how the Federation government works, about the politics of utopia, and how the Federation deals with (among other things) the fallout from the fall of the Romulan government in the latest movie," explained the author.

Though he joked that editing the SCE series with its multiple authors is "an absolute friggin' nightmare", DeCandido admitted that sometimes it can be "a logistical mess" to try to coordinate the writers and events for the monthly eBooks, though he also said that the experience has been a good one. "Pocket wanted to have something that was unique to the [eBook] format," he explained, describing SCE as "more like a monthly comic book" than a series of books like New Frontier. "Seems to be working, since we're coming up on #50 now," he added.

Because he will be writing a story set on Ferenginar in the third volume of Worlds of Deep Space Nine, DeCandido was asked whether they were one of his favourite cultures. "I do think that there's a lot that can be done there," he replied. "The idea of a society that's so overwhelmingly capitalistic is fascinating, particularly in a Star Trek that most avoids economic issues altogether. Money is such a critical part of how our world works, yet it's one thing that generally isn't dealt with at all in Trek."

On his desk, said the writer, is a stack of Star Trek reference books, including the encyclopedia, the star charts and a Klingon dictionary. Though he writes non-Trek, including some mystery fiction, he has many Trek projects in the pipeline, and promised intriguing developments in the eBooks including "a planet in a box, a couple of DS9 crossovers, a murder mystery, and the first ever Klingon-Jewish wedding."

For more, including DeCandido's "sphincter-tightening fear" about one recent project, see the original article here.

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