Books bits: New Lost Era, comic extra features, Khristmas preview, and German covers

A few bits of books news, starting with the reveal of the title of David R. George III's forthcoming Lost Era novel. The Simon and Schuster website has recently had a listing added for The Lost Era: One Constant Star, which they have listed for release in May. There are no other details yet, but George has previously suggested it will be set between 2303 and 2319, will feature a captain he has previously written, and will be exploration focused.

If that is the final format of the title, it would be the first time The Lost Era (the catch all title for books set between the end of the TOS movies, and the start of TNG) has been part of the title of a book since the original 2003 series. Subsequent lost era books, The Buried Age, and the Terok Nor trilogy, used the cover copy "A tale/saga of the lost era", while Cast No Shadow made no reference to the idea of a lost era series at all.

UPDATE: A little more novel news. Jens Deffner pointed be towards a tweet from David Mack, in which he revealed his forthcoming novel, Section 31: Disavowed, will be a direct sequel to his entry in The Fall series, A Ceremony of Losses (which has just been released).

Elsewhere in the publishing world, StarTrek.com has launched what they promise will be a new regular feature, providing a writers commentary to Star Trek comics. In their first "Writer's Log", Mike Johnson pulls apart the first issue of the Khan prequel series. If you follow the comics it's certainly worth a read, as Johnson expands on some of his decisions in characterisation, and points out some of his nods to other parts of Trek. For instance, here's what he had to say about the appearance of Samuel T. Cogley, from the TOS episode Court Martial:

Cogley’s appearance here was suggested by John Van Citters of CBS Consumer Products, and brought to life by the great David Messina, artist on both 2009’s “Countdown” and 2013’s “Countdown to Darkness.” Whenever we can, we like to insert characters and places into the new comics that are callbacks to the original timeline. Part of the fun of having an alternate timeline is seeing how familiar things have changed (or haven’t) in this reality.

For a completely different sort of illustrated Star Trek, this month sees the release of Paul Ruditis' A Very Klingon Khristmas. Amazon have now added pages from that book to their look inside feature, giving us a look at this particularly quirky release, and its lovely artwork by Patrick Faricy, including a look at the real Shakespeare! Here are the three spreads they preview:

Finally, Cross Cult have released the finalised covers for several of their forthcoming books. Continue after the jump for a look at those:

Coming in December is David A McIntee's TNG novel Indistinguishable from Magic. No new cover for this one, just the German title, Von Magie Nicht zu Unterscheiden:

Cross Cult's first novel of 2014 does have new artwork. Continuing their release of New Frontier is Portale: Kalte Kriege (aka Gateways: Cold Wars), of course by Peter David.

Also out in January is Dayton Ward's Vanguard ebook novella In Tempest's Wake. This one uses the original artwork as well, under the title Spuren des Sturms.

In February Cross Cult returns to Enterprise (after having cancelled plans to continue the series a while ago) with Kobayashi Maru, by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels. The German title for this one is also Kobayashi Maru.

February also sees Cross Cult's latest TOS release, Jerry Oltion's Twilight's End. Martin Frei has created an especially nice new cover for this one, which will be known as Das Ende der Dämmerung.

Finally in March there is David R. George III's Typhon Pact novel Plagues of Night. The cover reveals the German title, Heimsuchung, and aside from adding in the same blue dashes that featured on Cross Cult's previous Typhon Pact releases, is unaltered from the original cover.