Paths Not Taken: A Fan Fiction Star Trek Short

Ten years ago, I wrote a Star Trek short story in the hopes of being published in Pocket Books' Strange New Worlds, an anthology series featuring the best of submitted fan fiction. The story was never selected. (Maybe because I was already a published author with stories in Playboy and Marvel Comics, but I'll never really know for sure ;-)) Nevertheless, I'm really proud of the piece and have dusted it off and revised it, and am offering it as a Christmas (or Hanukkah) gift to my fans.The story takes place shortly after the third Next Gen movie, Insurrection. (For a downloadable Pdf version, click link at end of story.)

Star Date 51500.0

Jean-Luc Picard glared at the glass plaque on his ready room desk as though it carried a deadly disease. The gold inscription read: For service, above and beyond the call of duty in upholding the Prime Directive. The irony was not lost on him; Jean-Luc had earned it for an act of mutiny, defending the Ba'ku race from the schemes of an overzealous Starfleet Admiral named Dougherty. He had hoped his insurrection would trigger a dialogue over slack Federation ethics, but the discourse never materialized, and the matter had been neatly swept under the rug. Dougherty had friends in high places, it would seem, and perhaps a few silent collaborators as well. Why else would the fleet's flagship be on a "cooling off" mission cataloguing gas densities in the Mutara Nebula. Picard wanted to hurl the glass block and its polished marble base right into space.

The Lost Prince Brings Home The Dessert

 “This blend of urban and cross-world fantasy combines the excitement of the Harry Potter series with the dark grittiness of the Dresden Files books and should appeal to mature young adults as well as to adult lovers of the genre.”--Library Journal (The Lost Prince)

  

The Lost Prince (book 2 of the Guardians of Aandor series) made its debut on August 20th, and the reviews so far have been overwhelmingly positive. I want to point out one important change I've made regarding the ending of this book compared with its predecessor; although Awakenings also received much praise, many reviewers (and readers) were put out by the cliffhanger ending, and didn't realize they were starting a series. I'd actually read reviews where readers admitted I'd lost a star on their rating for this very reason. With book 2, I decided to go with a more definitive ending. What does this mean exactly? It's the difference between the ending of a Harry Potter book, where that book's story is relatively wrapped up, and that in A Game of Thrones book, when the story stops just as a protagonist dies, his family is scattered to the winds, and the bad guys are victorious. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

In truth, the ending I had always envisioned for The Lost Prince already lent itself to this more definitive conclusion. (Unlike the writers of the TV show, Lost, I actually do have an idea of where my story is going.) And boy, what an ending it is! The fact is, books one and two roll together like an epic self-contained 900-page story. If you didn't want to continue reading this universe, you could stop at the end of The Lost Prince, completely satisfied. If I had to create a metaphor for comparison I'd go with this: Awakenings was a delicious home-cooked three-course meal with a modest, though tasty dessert. (Think a scoop of gelato.) The Lost Prince is a scrumptious, seven-course gourmet dinner with a three-tiered dessert tray bearing tiramisu, Black Forest chocolate cake, flan, crème brûlée, pie, and of course, gelato. (For my non-culinary readers--think deep-fried Oreos, deep-fried Snickers, and deep-fried Twinkies.) Yes, folks, it's that good!

 

I'm really proud of this second novel. Some will live, some will die, and Daniel... (heh, heh).  The Lost Prince Hardcover from Tor Books is out in stores now. 

The Lost Prince (Amazon)

The Lost Prince (B&N)

The Lost Prince (Walmart) 

The Lost Prince (ebooks.com) 

The Lost Prince (Kobo books)

Awakenings (Amazon)

Awakenings (B&N)

Awakenings (Walmart)

Awakenings (ebooks.com)

Awakenings (Kobo books)

How Harry Dresden Saved Me $45

Harry Dresden saved me $45 today. I was reading White Night and was toward the end of the story (around 95% on my Kindle) when I needed to mail some things at the post office. Thing is, here in Jersey City, we have copious amounts of street cleaning (i.e. nuisance and added tax on the citizenry), and just when a street seems safe, bang, they come out of the wood works to ticket you.   

I found a parking spot near the post office at 2:00 p.m. that appeared to have already been cleaned; cleaning was from 1:00 to 3:00 according to the sign. I parked, but being so close to the end of a really great Jim Butcher story, I couldn't wait to finish reading the big battle scene, so I turned off the engine and just read in my car. Ten minutes later, I hear the honking of the ticket car letting people know the sweeper is coming. Had I been in the post office, I would have gotten a $45 ticket. But I was reading White Night that day. That one decision paid for five Harry Dresden novels. I love Jim Butcher's writing. It's smooth, effortless and a joy to come back to between chapters. I hope I am also writing stuff that people just can't can't put down and will one day save them money.

White Night by Jim Butcher

Awakenings and The Lost Prince by Edward Lazellari are available in stores and online now.  

Edward Lazellari is the author of the Guardians of Aandor Series from Tor Books and various short stories and plays. He resides in New Jersey.

The Lost Prince Has Coolest Fantasy Cover Of 2013

Quite literally, The Lost Prince cover by Chris McGrath is very cool; Mostly blue palette with hints of violet and other hues limited to the cool spectrum with a heavy blocking of cool blacks and just a smattering of warm colors in the explosion on the far right. Even Lelani Stormbringer's hair, a fiery blend of reds streaked with blonde, is subdued by the azure haze of Manhattan. The palette denotes a realistic eeriness to this world akin to the X-Files (which used glowing green to great effect).

I love this cover.  

Thanks to the team that brought it to light-- Irene Gallo, Paul Stevens, and Chris McGrath.

The Lost Prince hits stores (both brick and virtual) on August 20th. The last 250 pages will have your heart pounding like a giant steel roller coaster with five loops.

Cheers,
 Ed

Why It Takes So F#%&!^g Long To Write a Novel

A fan at my BEA book signing said she had been waiting a long while to get The Lost Prince, the sequel to Awakenings. She's right. And though I've written about the real-life challenges of trying to write novels while holding a day job and promoting one's book, the other part of that delay is the work (i.e. minutia) involved with writing a coherent, well-thought out story. Many literary writers (my favorite being Jonathan Franzen) go years between books, but we seem to expect a faster turnaround from genre writers. The delays go beyond plot, narrative, character arcs, and story development, although those too are time consuming. What I'm trying to bring to light are small moments that pull a writer aside from the bigger picture. A lot of you can read a paragraph in less than 30 seconds, but are not aware of how many hours it took the writer to make those four or five sentences ring as true as can be.

WANNABEES: Mana Wars--Roll-Playing Shennanigans

Sundays are for color, so what better time to post the only full-color Wannabees strip, which I did as a back cover to my collection. The theme is roll playing games; anyone who has ever played Magic The gathering or D&D will probably have had a game like this. Enjoy!

 

Ed Lazellari is a blogger and fiction writer. His novels Awakenings and The Lost Prince from Tor Books are available at Barnes & Nobles and Amazon.com.

WANNABEES: When The Stones Come To Town

One digs up all sort of things from the past when preparing to move, and some of them are pleasant surprises. When I was at Rutgers, I wrote and drew a daily strip called Wannabees for our school paper, The Daily Targum. From time to time, I will post them on this blog. 
With the Rolling Stones embarking on their 50th Anniversary Tour, what better start than with this one. Enjoy!

Ed Lazellari is a blogger and fiction writer. His novels Awakenings and The Lost Prince from Tor Books are available at Barnes & Nobles and Amazon.com.

NBCUniversal’s Cable Ratings Drop: Comcast Not Seeing The Forest For The Trees*



Syfy's promising new original series, Defiance, starts in April.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had a piece on NBCUniversal’s (NBCU) drooping cable channel ratings, particularly for long-time revenue engines like the Syfy channel (down 4% in viewership in 2012) and E! Entertainment (down 10%). There’s an irony in this since I believe NBCU’s parent, Comcast, is to blame for the drop in its own subsidiary’s ratings due to some ambitious pricing of its properties. What were once free (or almost free) basic cable channels suddenly became part of bundled cable “packages” that you had to shell out close to $20 a month for--and that’s how Syfy lost me as a viewer.