Author of the short story collections Something Special and The Woman in Red. Author of the Big Finish Short Trips Landbound and Battle Scars.
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A woman walks into a bar and inquires of the Fenris Ranger therein how she herself might join the rangers.
This is how David Mack’s Star Trek Picard: Firewall opens. The novel bears some comparison to Una McCormack’s Star Trek Picard: Second Self, which I wrote about previously. Like Second Self, the audio version of Firewall is narrated by January LaVoy, the extraordinary narrator of a thousand voices. Her Kathryn Janeway is so authentic you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d brought in Kate Mulgrew to speak the part. Not only can she pull off many voices, but LaVoy is an amazing actor who delivers a full gamut of emotions.
Star Trek Picard: Firewall
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not generally a fan of spin-off novels. But, like Second Self, Firewall very pleasantly surprised me. It’s reads like it’s written for adults with some very mature themes, including genocide and food as a weapon. Both remain depressingly apropos to the times in which we live.
Whereas Second Self is concerned with Raffi (Raffaela Musiker), Firewall explores the history of the other side of the coin, Seven of Nine, and takes us from Voyager’s return up to the events of Star Trek Picard. Seven of Nine’s growth is a joy to behold. Early on, we see her at her lowest: rejected from Star Fleet Academy because of her history with the Borg; lost; working at menial jobs; seeking human contact in whatever form she can. Things change when she becomes involved with a Fenris Ranger operation. She begins to grow personally, as a tactician, and as a leader. She comes to believe in her own competency.
I appreciate the fact that, for the vast majority of the book, there are few prerequisites. It is helpful to know something about Seven of Nine from her time on Voyager, and her relationship with Captain Janeway. Still, there’s a reveal in the book and I could tell it was meant to be a big deal. Sadly, it went right over my head. My reaction was, Huh? I’m a fan, you see, but not a “super” fan. Not of Star Trek or any other fandom, to be honest. Thankfully, we have the Memory Alpha wiki and that set that to rights.
The bottom line is that I highly recommend Star Trek Picard: Firewall. The prose is a pleasure to read, and the story is very exciting and very touching. And it’s Star Trek. What more could you ask for?
As of June, 2025 I’ve turned seventy. This means, depending on whether you’re a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of person, that I’m either entering the prime of life or am just plain old. If I am getting old, I don’t really mind. After all, there is only one alternative, and it’s not very attractive. But it’s a hard thing to get your head around. My generation, the dreaded Boomers, defined themselves by their collective youth. I was still quite young in the 1960’s, but aware of the sense of optimism that, once our generation came to power, everything would be better. Sadly, that hasn’t quite happened. In fact, you could make a reasonable case that we’ve collectively screwed things up worse than just about any other generation. Does it help if I say we meant well?
Selim Ulug, June, 2025
It’s an interesting age, seventy. You can do most of the things you’ve always been able to, though you might find you’ve less energy than you did earlier. At the same time, you can clearly see eighty looming on the horizon. Assuming that I continue to avoid cancer and heart disease, I can be reasonably confident of hitting eighty. After that, based on what I’ve seen around me, all bets are off. I might make it to ninety. Most men don’t. And, in their eighties, pesky medical problems seem to have a way of piling up and quality of life can take a big dip. The long and short of it is that this is the last decade where I can reasonably count on being healthy enough to do what I want.
The problem therein is two-fold. First, what is it that I really want to do? Because that seems to change as time goes by. More on that in a minute. The second problem is that, at this point, a decade flashes past in the blink of an eye. It seems ridiculous to think that ten years has passed since my sixtieth. The next ten years will be likely pass even more quickly.
1955 Hits, Source: Apple Music
So, what do I want to do? That is the question of the hour. Or rather, the question of the decade. As an example of the problem, let’s consider books. I long imagined that, when I retired, I’d spend time re-reading old favourites. Along the way I’ve accumulated many books. So many that, at the time of writing, they’re in piles on my basement floor in addition to filling up multiple book cases. A number of my paperbacks date back to the 1960’s. Back then, I was terrified of breaking the book’s spine, and read them at odd angles while opening the book a crack. Perhaps not surprisingly, those books are in great shape. They include many of the Doc Savage series, a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, Michael Moorcock, and Robert E. Howard. There was Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and, a favourite when I was young, E.E. “Doc” Smith. I was also a bit of a science nerd, so I have a couple of books about cosmology that are so old that they were written before the Big Bang was universally accepted, and they also cover a competing theory called Continuous Creation. I don’t spend a lot of time re-reading these books. To be honest, many haven’t aged particularly well, or perhaps were never meant for adult eyes. But they were a bright light in my childhood and I plan to keep them around a while yet. I do re-read my beloved Charles Dickens novels, but not a lot else. I don’t tend to re-read most of the books I’ve acquired since, preferring to read new books over old. So, I’m reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I don’t need to keep most of my books. That being said, you’ll have to pry my favourite, The Little Prince, from my cold, dead hands.
Highest Grossing Movies of 1955, Source: IMDB
The world has changed a lot in seventy years. Among Doctor Who fans, it’s popular to ask, who was on the cover of Doctor Who Magazine the month they were born? In my case, not only was there no DWM, there was no Doctor Who! For me, 1963 was the year of Fireball XL5. I lived, breathed, and slept that show. People were sick of me going on about it, and I remain fond of it to this day. I also remember, in 1963, watching the funeral of President Kennedy on our black & white, vacuum tube TV. I remember pressing my nose against store windows when colour TVs started to become available. When we got ours, I particularly loved Batman, Star Trek, and whatever the Bugs Bunny / Road Runner show was called back then. My family was in England when Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon. It was the middle of the night, so, sadly, we didn’t watch it live. I was at a conference in the early 1990’s when a speaker asked the audience if we’d heard of a program called Mosaic. None of us had. This was our first introduction to the World Wide Web. Computer networks had been around for ages, but not a network of networks. Not the Internet. This, of course, changed everything.
As an aside, have you seen the movie Last Night in Soho? It concerns a modern-day fashion designer who finds herself transported to the Soho of the 1960’s. As I was watching, I found myself thinking, wouldn’t that be a thing—walking the streets of Soho in the 1960’s. Then I had to laugh out loud. Because I’ve done it. My mother’s family lived in the north-east of England. When we went to visit, we’d stay a night or two in London to get over the jet lag before traveling up north. We stayed at the Bonnington Hotel (now a Double Tree Hilton) and walked through Soho to a Turkish restaurant that was a favourite of my father’s. My recollection of Soho is a bit different to what I saw in the movie. It seemed rather seedy to my young eyes, but, most notably, we passed several establishments whose exteriors were decorated with black & white photos of topless women. And while my young eyes gaped, my father growled that I should watch where I was going. For what it’s worth, the restaurant was pretty good. I don’t remember its name, but no doubt it’s long gone. As for the hotel, the rooms were tiny and on each floor there was a TV room. There were no TVs in the actual guest rooms. I recall the TV room on our floor packed to overflowing with people. I walked into the lobby of the hotel in 2019 when I was last in the UK. Clearly, they had done the place up a bit. I didn’t like it.
With age comes a sort of wisdom. For instance, I can impart to you the Secret of Happiness at no extra charge. It boils down to the same 80-20 rule that applies to so many things. No matter where you are in your life, the business of life is drudgery. Groceries. Cooking. Cleaning. Working! All the busy work that needs doing. That can account for 80% of your time, and that might lead you to think you’re doing something wrong. You’re not. What you need to focus on is, not the drudgery, but that golden 20% — time spent with friends and family, quality alone time, whatever makes you happy. Simply put, the secret of happiness is to not expect happiness every moment of every day, but to appreciate that 20% of the time when you’re in your happy place. And anyway, if not for the 80%, the 20% wouldn’t seem nearly so lustrous.
Montreal Riots after “Rocket” Richard Suspended in 1955
Put another way, the old adage is true: happiness comes from within rather than without. It’s being thankful for what you have, rather than longing for what you haven’t.
Happiness can also be had by thinking back to key moments that you collect throughout a lifetime. When I started university, I wanted to be a scientist. It took a while, but getting accepted to grad school was definitely a key moment. Another was when my first scientific paper was published. Still another, of course, was when my Doctor Who stories “Landbound” and “Battle Scars” were published by Big Finish. That was a beautiful, mad time and I treasure the memory of it. And still another key moment was when I self-published my first collection of short stories. I suppose another will be when I self-publish my first novel. Assuming I ever finish the thing. Kidding! A Familiar Voice will be available later this year. (If you’re wondering, there have also been many key personal moments, but they’re, you know, personal.)
Does all of this mean that we have to be satisfied with our lot? With what we have today? Of course not. So here’s the actual, true secret of happiness: It’s learning to know what it is that makes you happy, and being happy with what you have while striving for the things that make you happy that you don’t have. I think it’s the striving that gives us purpose, and having a purpose is something that makes most of us happy.
Thanks for reading. May you enjoy many years of happiness.
Doctor Who: The Alternative War is a two-part fan audio series from TT Productions 23. The “alternative” universe branches off from the TV Doctor Who universe at the moment of the Eighth Doctor’s regeneration. In the alternative universe, the Doctor regenerates into a female incarnation who is still very much the Doctor, but who must find a way to bring the Time War to an end. She is the ninth Doctor of this universe.
The first part, simply called “Doctor Who: The Alternative War”, was my first stab at a full-cast script. I won’t deny that I was in a bit over my head. Partly because I took on too much. I brought the cast together but didn’t have the means for them to record it live, so each actor performed in isolation, with the exception of Alia and Abi, who recorded together. I stitched the recordings together as best I could. Fortunately, Jaspreet Singh came to my rescue and tweaked the dialog and added sound effects and music. I enjoyed the result, but came away thinking that I could have done better. I could have written a better script.
And I did do better with the sequel, “Doctor Who: The Alternative War—Reprieve.” The recording used the normal TT Productions 23 process and was much better for it. There was a table-read to iron out the kinks, and then the recording proper with all the actors present. And boy, did the actors nail it. Abi brought us a more seasoned Aliana. Jack played two roles, the 10th and 11th Doctors. He nailed each of them and switched between them like a slippery chameleon. You’d have sworn there were two different actors present. I’ve always been fond of Jaz’s performances as the Third Doctor, and he tackled the role once again with gusto and vim. Marcus gave us a War Master who delighted in getting under the Doctor’s skin. But it was the Master’s sparring with Aliana that was a highlight for me. And then there’s Chelsea and Sam who played the constantly bickering Time Lords Strange and Love. I could listen to those two go at it all day. You would never think that the two actors had never met before the recording. The striking cover art is, as usual by @johannesviii.bsky.social.
As for the script, I was very happy with the result. It was a bit of a large cast for the length of the story, with three Doctors, a companion, the Master, and Strange and Love. I wanted each character to have a purpose—to have agency. And so, the third Doctor has his own little adventure and gets to drive a fast car and reverse the polarity. Aliana, having grown since the first adventure, is often the adult in the room. The eleventh Doctor has a bad day, getting eaten by a lake serpent and then having his sonic screwdriver melted. The tenth Doctor, still recovering from his regeneration, has to keep his ragtag team focussed on the job at hand. And if you’re fond of ’50’s era sci-fi movies, there’s something here for you, too.
When I think of 2019, I think of it as The Before Times. Before the world was frozen in time while researchers scrambled for a vaccine to beat back the beast known as COVID. Some pretty good things happened that year, including my first visit to a Doctor Who convention. I had the pleasure of attending Chicago TARDIS and enjoyed an all-too-brief encounter with Katy Manning.
Katy, of course, was Jo Grant, assistant to the third Doctor, played with panache by Jon Pertwee. Katy left the show after her character married environmentalist Clifford Jones. She has since played Jo Grant and Jo Jones many times for Big Finish.
She was a delight on the show and an even bigger delight in person, doling out hugs to all the fans who lined up for autographs. As we chatted, I might have let slip that I’d written a couple of stories for Big Finish. After all, “Battle Scars”, my second Short Trip for Big Finish, was released just a few months earlier. She narrated Short Trips sometimes, she said, and suggested I write one for her.
A story idea came to me almost immediately. I let it percolate until late last year when I decided to go ahead and write it as fan fiction. As I do these days when I get the urge to write Doctor Who. If there was any chance that Katy would narrate the story, I would have centred it around Jo Jones and Kate Stewart. However, since the story was going to be fan fiction, I decided that it would feature Jo Grant and the Brigadier, and as the story progressed they would bond with each other and gain a measure of mutual respect. The result is a short story called “Panic in the Cave.” It’s hosted by the Doctor Who Project.
Something is stirring in the cave system beneath Yorkshire. Locals are near deafened by eruptions of bone-rattling sound, and tremors have been reported, sufficient to split the earth and swallow vehicles. Before he can be notified, the Doctor takes his TARDIS for its first test flight since the Omega affair. Jo Grant, eager to prove her worth to the Brigadier, insists upon her involvement in the investigation. But, without the Doctor’s support, will she be able to face her fears and confront the unknown?
The Doctor Who Project hosts edited fan fiction stories which are set in alternative timeline. They also host “Brief Encounters” which are short stories set in the “classic” Doctor Who timeline. The editors had some good suggestions for improving my story. Do check the site out.
And please have a look at “Panic in the Cave” and let me know what you think of it.
I knew a guy who, before purchasing a book, read the last couple of pages. Why would you do that? I asked him. Wouldn’t that spoil the whole thing? Because, he said, why would I read a book if I don’t like the ending?
Fast forward to the present, where I’ve been listening to January LaVoy’s narration of Una McCormack’s Star Trek Picard: Second Self. I started at the beginning, but even before reaching the end, I knew that I could recommend this book without hesitation. Doubly true now that I’ve listened to the whole thing.
To be honest, I don’t often enjoy spin-off novels. There are exceptions, most notably Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy. And there are others I’ve enjoyed, including some Star Trek and Doctor Who novels, but Second Self is something special. Why is that?
Well, for one thing, it’s clearly a book for adults, or at least for the older YA crowd, with its mature themes of war-time atrocities and drug addiction. This book has other things going for it. Motivations are clear. There is a lot of inner dialog which expands our appreciation of Raffi’s (Raffaela Musikerz) character. Backstory, of which Star Trek has untold volumes, is provided as required without overwhelming the current story.
Second Self concerns Raffi, who, at the behest of Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, undertakes an off-books mission to bring a war criminal to justice. The problem is, intelligence reports have the criminal last seen on Ordeve, a planet with which Raffi has unhappy associations. The focus of the book later shifts to Raffi’s earlier time on Ordeve, and then to events that occurred before that. It’s a good story-telling technique, motivating us to understand what went before.
Aside from the very effective prose, there’s January LaVoy’s exquisite narration, with so many voices that you’d almost swear that this was a full-cast audio. I’ll be looking for more audio books narrated by this voice actor.
To be honest, I picked up this audio book because it was on sale. Now that I’ve listened to it, I would happily pay full price. Pick up a copy or listen to the audio version. If you enjoy Star Trek, you’ll be glad you read Second Self.
This post contains SPOILERS for Star Wars: The Acolyte
If you’ve listened to “Landbound“, the Doctor Who Short Trip I wrote for Big Finish, you’ll know that it begins with the Third Doctor driving off in a temper from Unit HQ until he finds himself at the seaside in Whitby. In my first draft, the Doctor was simply having a bad day and was fed up with the Brigadier and his rules and regulations. Ian Atkins, my editor, suggested making the reason for the Doctor’s anger clearer by setting the opening right after the TV episode, “The Silurians.”
The Silurians, an intelligent, lizard-like race, ruled the world before humans came along. They’ve since been in hibernation. In the episode, they awake and wish to resume their place on the Earth’s surface. The Doctor tries to achieve a peaceful solution only to have his efforts undermined by the Brigadier, who seals them underground and likely kills them all in the process. The Doctor, of course, is furious.
With that change, the reason for the Doctor’s anger in “Landbound” begins becomes much clearer. And clear motivation, I’ve learned, is key to good storytelling.
Which brings us to Star Wars: The Acolyte, the latest Star Wars series from Disney, in which very few character motivations are clear. For instance, the Jedi are shocked — shocked! — that the Witches of Brendok are raising two children. I wonder where they thought big witches came from if not little witches. Are the witches inherently evil? Or just different. Or does different equate to evil? Do witches roam the galaxy, turning people into newts? Why is it so very important to the Jedi to remove these children from the witches? Particularly since these not-so-old children are apparently too old to train.
What motivates Torbin, the Jedi who instigated the awful events on Brendok? Why is he so whiny? Why does he want so badly to return to Coruscant? Why does he wear his heart on his sleeve when the mission of the Jedi seems to be to drum emotion out of their students (more on that in my next post)? Why does he wantonly disregard his master? Is he campaigning for Worst Padawan Ever?
There’s a tracker in the show, a diminutive creature with a great sense of smell. He’s not just a dog on two legs, though. He’s quite handy with technology as it turns out, and effectively caused Sol’s ship to crash-land. What’s his story? How does he communicate with people? Why does he do what he does?
In the final episode, Osha and “the Stranger” leave but apparently they simply must leave Mae behind. Why is that? Is the ship not big enough for three? Is it that a Sith can only have one apprentice at a time? Enquiring minds want to know, and it wouldn’t have taken long to explain.
There are other questions, of course, but I won’t list them all. Except to question Jedi Master Vernestra Rwoh, and her desire to hide what’s going on in Acolyte from the Jedi Council.
There are a lot of screen writers out there and by all accounts it’s nearly impossible to get a treatment to the point of actual production. Studios, it seems, have the luxury of selecting from the best of the best. Given that, I’ll end with a final question: why would Disney accept a script in which reasonably clear motivation is so lacking?
Missy was the 12th Doctor’s antagonist, a version of the Master in female form. Played delightfully by Michelle Gomez, Missy could be alternately cold-blooded and playfully witty. She was different from her previous incarnations in that, in her own, stumbling way, she wanted to regain the Doctor’s friendship.
I wrote “Missy’s Day” during COVID lockdown and found it a very welcome diversion and I greatly enjoyed the writing of it. Follow the link to read it. I hope you enjoy it.
This Summer Will Be Different is a novel by Canadian writer Carley Fortune. More specifically, it’s a romance novel.
As you might know, romance isn’t my go-to genre. I explored romance a bit when I was trying to find myself as a writer. You see, my most popular fan fiction stories were the “mature” ones, the ones where amorous things happened. Was I a budding romance writer? After sampling a few novels in the genre, I decided that no, I wasn’t.
So, with that in mind, why did I choose to read this novel? And why did I enjoy it so much?
It started with an article on the CBC’s website about the author. Specifically, it was about Fortune’s use of setting to put the reader there, so that you see, smell, and feel the emotional reaction of the protagonist to the setting.
This interested me greatly. Even though my current project is a thriller, surely the thrill would only improve to the extent that the reader feels part of the action. If they are there.
The setting for This Summer Will Be Different is alternately Toronto and Prince Edward Island over the course of several years. When we meet PEI for the first time, it is described thusly:
Water glittering like sapphires beneath rust-coloured cliffs. Seaweed lying in knotty nests on a strip of sandy shoreline. A wood-sided restaurant. Stacks of lobster traps. A man in hip waders.
Sea brine filled my nose and the putt-putt of a fishing boat my ears. A salt-kissed breeze sent the skirt of my dress flapping against my calves, and I smiled.
This was protagonist Lucy Ashby’s first impression of PEI, and I think we’ve got pretty much all the senses accounted for. More importantly, you can imagine yourself right there with her. In the story, PEI is more than a place. It’s almost another character, one with the power to calm and heal.
In Toronto, Lucy, the owner of a flower shop, is always working, always micromanaging, always worrying. This contrasts to her time in PEI, where she can stop to breathe in the smells of the ocean and the local flowers and walk barefoot in the red-tinged sand. The contrast between the two settings is very effective.
As for the actual characters in Summer, I found them believable, fleshed-out, and three-dimensional. My only quibble is with Lucy’s love-to-be, who’s maybe too perfect, with his long, wavy hair, blue eyes, muscular, cleft in chin, facial stubble, and did he have washboard abs? Probably.
With Felix and Lucy, it was definitely a case of lust at first sight. But what about later? Their relationship has ups and downs and it feels believable. They both grow and change, but Lucy has the most growing up to do. In particular, she needs to work out how to let go, how to trust, and how to understand what she really wants from life.
A romance novel needs to be quite sensual, not just in terms of sex, but in the way it fills the senses. The smell of a place. The taste of the food. The sound of the surroundings. The pace is more leisurely and there’s space for a lot of description and internal monologue. As I mentioned, my current project is a thriller, a novel called A Familiar Voice. For a thriller, the pace is faster, and too much lingering, too much descriptive prose runs the risk of the reader losing interest.
It’s going to be interesting to find the right balance. I do want the novel to have a palpable sense of place, just as long as I can keep everyone interested in reading to find out what happens next.
I’m glad I read This Summer Will Be Different and encourage other writers to leave your comfort zone and treat your senses with this novel.
If you remember my short story collection, Something Special, then you might remember a story therein called “Remember Me?” It was one of my favourites.
The story concerns Will Fallon, a man muddling his way through life, and his encounter with Susan Follows, a woman who claims she can travel between worlds. Susan wants to take Will’s cat away.
Puzzled at his lack of success with relationships, Will isn’t quick to trust. “Remember Me?” is really about him learning to open up to people and to the wonders in our every day lives.
I first envisioned “Remember Me?” as a Doctor Who story from the point of view of a companion who gets left behind. But that was just the begining. I wanted to do more with the story, take it in a different direction.
The Something Special version of the story is set in Kingston, Ontario. When TT Productions 23 agreed to produce an audio version, I moved the setting to London, UK, and Will meets Susan in Kensington Park near the statue of Peter Pan, a location that I adore.
The audio version is otherwise nearly identical to the original, with the exception of an opening scene that I added to set the stage for what was to come.
Abi Louise, TT Producer and jack-of-all-trades extraordinaire, assembled a small but stellar cast, including Connor Sumner, Vanessa McAuley, and Ellaika Villegas. They nailed their lines on the first take. As is often the case, the actors breathed new life into the story, in ways that I found surprisingly touching. I mean, considering that I wrote the thing.
I hope you give the audio a listen and if you like it, please tell your friends. If you’d like to learn what happens next, there’s a sequel to “Remember Me?” in my second collection, The Woman in Red.
Some things are not meant for the faint of heart. Writing Doctor Who is one of them.
Consider why you’re writing Doctor Who in the first place. We’re in the 21st century and you’re writing Doctor Who because the show is very successful. In fact, it has sixty years of history. Sixty years. There have been TV episodes, novels, comics, not to mention audio plays and books from Big Finish and the BBC. Even through the wilderness years, after the show was cancelled, there were many stories, including the TV movie. That’s a lot of content.
How does one get one’s head around it all? Short answer: you can’t.
How much of that content is canon? What is canon, anyway? The answer to that depends on who you are writing for. In all cases, the TV episodes are canon (mostly). Depending on the TV showrunner, some Big Finish might be canon. If you’re writing for Big Finish, previous Big Finish will be canon. I’ve always preferred the TARDIS wiki’s approach. For them, the question is meaningless. There is no canon. I mean, just think about it. We’re talking, after all, about a show in which time can be rewritten and the entire universe can be rebooted.
Let’s say you’ve got your head around all of that, and you’ve written a story that’s wonderful. Perfect. It has thrills. It has chills. It has humour and pathos and tragedy all rolled into one. And it’s published. That’s where Doctor Who fandom, bless their collective hearts, come in. I will always be grateful that my Big Finish stories were greeted with mostly positive comments. But whenever you put your writing out there, you’re taking a risk. Fans might love it. They might hate it. They might say, “meh.” Some might accuse you of ruining Doctor Who, or ruining their childhood, or being “woke” (heaven forbid). You just don’t know. I don’t have an answer for how you prepare yourself, except that, if you truly believe in what you’ve written, then the rest will fall into place.
It might sound as if I’m being negative, and I don’t mean to be. But I do want to be realistic. Being asked to write Doctor Who is a huge thrill. You might even say it’s the trip of a lifetime. I humbly suggest that, if you’re given the chance, you buckle in and enjoy the ride.
But what, you might wonder, is the worst thing about writing Doctor Who? Easy: it’s addictive. Despite all of the above, you never want to stop.
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