Books bits: Lust's blurb, pop-ups, and latest book updates. UPDATE: Titan news too!

Paula Block's suggested temp cover

Books news! Starting with a new blurb for Paula Block and Terry Erdmann's Quark ebook, Lust's Latinum Lost (and Found), which was added to Amazon's listing. The novella is due out September, and this is what we have to look forward to:

Business is down at Quark’s Public House, Café, Gaming Emporium, Holosuite Arcade, and Ferengi Embassy to Bajor. Way down. Lower level of hell down. The station is bustling, but residents and visitors are spending more time (and latinum) at the new Deep Space 9's park, sports fields, theater, swimming complex, and who knows what else, than they are at Quark’s establishment. All of Quark's misfortunes just could be reversed, however, when he finds out that one of the steamiest holonovels to hit the Alpha Quadrant in years is up for grabs. And he has an inroad to acquiring it before anyone else. Or does he?

Pre-order: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, Amazon.it, Amazon.co.jp, iTunes.

The image above was tweeted by Paula Block as a suggested temp cover, until the real one is revealed. The image itself is from 16bit.com's surprisingly thorough review of Playmate's Quark action figure.

Amazon have also updated their listing for another of the forthcoming ebooks. They now suggest Scott Harrison's post-The Motion Picture novella, Shadow of the Machine, will be coming in March 2015. This is the fourth change in publication date for this one, but at least this time it's been brought forward (the most recent previous change had it coming in October 2015), hopefully this time the date will stick!

Back with Block on Erdmann, also coming from them later this year is Star Trek Pop-Ups. Amazon have updated their listing for this as well, now showing the following good pictures of four of the pop-up spreads, created by paper-artist Courtney Watson McCarthy.

Pre-order: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, Amazon.it, Amazon.co.jp.

Continue after the jump for the latest snippets from recent author interviews, including details of the next Titan novel, and news of a possible new DS9 novel:

UPDATE: James Swallow appeared on the G and T Show this week, and talked about his forthcoming Titan novel, Sight Unseen. Describing it as a new phase for Titan, Swallow noted change is on the way:

Originally I was saying to her [Margaret Clark], we brought the Titan crew back from their mission, out past the Vela Pulsar and the Gum Nebula, where they were really out on the really ragged edge, doing the strange new worlds thing. And I said to here, The Fall was over now, and I'd like to send them back out there. And she said to me "You know, that doesn't work, that's not going to happen, you can't just put these characters back where they were". And I stepped back and I took a look at it, and I thought, you know what, she's absolutely right, because the status quo has changed. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, that's exactly the best theorem. So I said ok, if we're going to do this, if we're going to change things, let's really change things. Let's do some stuff that shakes things up a little bit, that altered would take existing relationships between characters you already know, and changing those.

You are going to see some new characters coming to the story, some of them that you recognise, some of them that you wont. Some characters go through changes, someone will die in the course of Sight Unseen.

Specifically Swallow revealed Riker's aid, introduced in The Fall, Lieutenant Ssura, will now be a regular Titan character:

Riker has placed his flag on-board Titan, so it is now literally his flagship, its his mobile command center. So Ssura is going to be there with him, working as his assistant, getting involved in the same kind of crazy hijinks as that rest of the Titan crew will be.

Swallow also talked a little about some oft he ideas that were bounced around for The Fall, including the possibility that Jean-Luc Picard might have become the new Federation President. Listen to the G and T Show for more.

Literary Treks recently talked to Jeffrey Lang, doing a bit of a flashback episode to discuss his wonderful Data novel, Immortal Coil, ahead of another episode to come, to talk about his recent follow-up (to that, and the Cold Equations trilogy), The Light Fantastic. That is of course worth a listen to, but towards the end he also gave a few hints about what could be his next Trek book. He has recently pitched a DS9 story, which he described as a one-off adventure, focusing on a couple of characters (as a one-off story to escape the complexities of the wider relaunch), specifically he's going for:

...my version of a 1980s buddy adventure book, featuring Miles O'Brien and Nog.

Finally, Visionary Trek's The Captains' Table recently interviewed Jeff Mariotte about his recently released TOS novel, Serpents In The Garden. Mariotte discussed how he settled on the setting of the book:

I was looking for a setting and characters that interested me and that weren’t played out by the end of the episode—something where there was more room to explore. Some of the episodes were, of course, very familiar, and some I hadn’t seen in years and years. When I watched “A Private Little War,” I kept going through the rest of the episodes, but I knew I had found what I was looking for. Most episodes ended with a resolution, but that one ended with an open question. The situation was ripe for deeper exploration, the characters were strong, and that open question, which was an important one during the Vietnam era, still resonates today.

That moment at the end of the episode was what really inspired the book. Had that been a good idea, or a colossal mistake? What would he find when he went back to Neural? How was their society changed by his decision? Those were the questions I wanted to dig into.

Mariotte also talked about this path into writing Star Trek, and work developing WildStorm's Star Trek comics line. You can read all about that on Visionary Treks.