My First Novel & Where did SOLFLEET come from?

The first novel I ever published was "SOLFLEET: The Call of Duty." The cover you see above is not the original, but rather is the one that graces the 2nd edition -- the "official" edition of the book. The first edition was rife with printing errors and omissions and when I parted ways with its publisher I corrected them and essentially started over.

So where did SOLFLEET come from? What follows is a reprint of the first part of a six-part article that I wrote years ago to answer that question. Some of you may have read it before, but for those of you who haven't I present it here, probably with a few updates. I will post the next five parts over the next five days.

PART 1 – FOREPLAY

Back in 1986 I had an idea for a story—a science fiction adventure story that would take place on multiple worlds and in the deep space between them…and in multiple periods of time. I was serving as a U.S. Army Military Police Investigator at the time and had recently been stationed at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. I was assigned, essentially, as an internal affairs investigator inside the prison. I had tried everything I could think of to get out of that assignment, but nothing had worked. I had my orders. I was stuck there. I needed the distraction…badly.

As I worked on the manuscript over the next few years—I took a sixteen week break in 1987 to attend the Army’s Criminal Investigations school, after which the Army transferred me to Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana—I had a difficult time deciding whether to write about a future Earth or about a group of fictional worlds and civilizations somewhere out there in the cosmos. If I wrote about a future Earth, I could possibly put my story into the Star Trek universe. I was a lifelong Star Trek fan, after all, so that possibility carried with it a certain appeal. However, if I wrote about some other worlds far off in the cosmos, I wouldn't have to concern myself with being accurate with the details of Earth’s “neighborhood,” i.e., what stars are where and how far away, etc. I flip-flopped back and forth many times while I wrote, which slowed my progress immensely.

I left the Army in 1990 and moved back to the suburbs of Philadelphia, where I had grown up, and kept on plugging away at that manuscript that seemed as though it was just going to keep going, on and on and on. Another year, and then another, flip-flopping back and forth—Earth’s future, another place, Earth’s future, another place. Hey, another place had worked great for George Lucas, so why couldn't it work for me?

Then, somewhere along the way, a little something called Star Trek: Deep Space Nine found its way to my television screen. I had already given thought, many times, to the fact that the original Star Trek series’ Guardian of Forever would fit into my story very well, as would some of the events that had been portrayed in Star Trek: The Next Generation, such as the introduction of Guinan, the encounters with the Borg, and many others. Finally, after working on my story for years, I made my decision. My story would begin 20+ years after the events of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the first few seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and the Guardian of Forever would provide the time travel that the story required.

I was officially writing a Star Trek novel!

I wrote like a man completely possessed. I wrote after work. I wrote after church…if I went. On Saturdays I wrote for twelve, fourteen, sometimes sixteen straight hours. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote…and I finished! I actually finished! It was late 1996, as best I can recall, and I had finally finished! I immediately printed it, packaged it, and sent it off to Pocket Books to be published, as they were, and I believe still are, the only publisher licensed to publish Star Trek novels. It had taken me ten years to write, but it had been worth it! I had created a masterpiece! The good folks at Pocket Books were going to love it! They were going to publish it! So what if no one had ever heard of me! So what if I had never sold a written work before! As far as I knew at the time, David Gerrold had never sold anything and no one had heard of him prior to “The Trouble With Tribbles,” and look what had happened for him! So why not me, too?

Nine months later, in the summer of 1997, I received…a rejection. Not only that, but also the manuscript that I had sent in, allegedly unopened and unread. I say ‘allegedly’ for reasons that I will not go into here in any detail. Suffice to say that a few of my story elements later showed up in Star Trek: Voyager. Remember the lawsuit involving Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5? Enough said. Reality had slapped me in the face. I wasn't the Star Trek novelist I'd thought I was after all.