Myriad Universes: The Tears of Eridanus Composition

In my last post, I talked about the pitching process for The Tears of Eridanus. The book ended up having an overly long writing process, but that also ended up being for the best.

The pitch was accepted by Marco Palmieri at Simon & Schuster in Sept. 2008; in Oct. 2008 we got the go-ahead to begin working on the manuscript for a 2 Feb. 2009 deadline. (At some point this became 16 Feb., though.) The intended publication date was Aug. 2009.

Like all of our projects, it had a clear and logical split. In this case, Michael was keen to write the Demora-centric sections set on Vulcan; I was keen to write the Hikaru-centric Kumari sections. I think he has an interest in Vulcan culture, and I had long had one in the Andorians, so there was no dispute about who would write what. We would each write a chapter and then send it to the other; the other would then provide comments and edits. We had learned from The Future Begins that we were both over-writers, but Michael much more than I, so a lot of our edits were just cutting stuff that was unnecessary.

Despite that, the first complete draft (which was assembled 24 Jan. 2009) was 63,000 words, almost 15,000 over-length. I did some harsh chopping, but I also came up with the idea of a series of interludes depicting the Hikaru/Demora relationship over the years, and so those got added in. Additionally, one of beta readers had pointed out that the idea that Hikaru was out of place on Kumari in this timeline didn't quite come through, and so I wrote a whole new scene that emphasized it more.

On 4 Dec. 2008, however, we had received word that Marco had been laid off as part of a big downsizing at S&S. Our project was one of many handed over to Margaret Clark, and in a TrekMovie interview in Jan. 2009, she mentioned that the publication date of Shattered Light (the volume to contain The Tears of Eridanus) had been bumped by nine months, I think because of workload issues. We asked if that meant we could have a little more time; she said no. We submitted it on time on 15 Feb. 2009... and promptly never heard a thing. The publication date became Sept. 2010.

In Aug. 2009, we heard that Margaret Clark had also been laid off, as S&S continued to bleed financially thanks to the Great Recession. A bunch of e-mails went back and forth between us and Scott Pearson and David George, the other contributors to Shattered Light, wondering what was happening to our project; none of us had heard a thing since submission.

Finally, in Nov. 2009, Jaime Costas e-mailed us to say she had taken over as editor of Star Trek fiction at S&S (she had been Marco's editorial assistant before, I think) to tell us the book was now slated for Dec. 2010, and she literally knew nothing about it: had there been an approved outline? had we even begun writing it?

Yes, we said, and sent along the complete manuscript. But somewhere along the way, I had an idea: in the intervening months, I had become involved in a creative workshop in my graduate program, where we would meet weekly to discuss each others' writing. They had proven themselves incisive readers, and we ended up asking Jaime if we could do another draft of The Tears of Eridanus. She said sure, there was no rush. 

So my creative writing workshop-- none of whom had ever read a Star Trek book before, though some were casual fans, and others had never even seen a minute of it-- read it in early 2010 and provided extensive notes. These were incorporated into a new draft; I also realized the scene I'd added had accidentally vanished from the manuscript by the time we sent it to Margaret, so that got added back in. We submitted the new manuscript on 5 Apr. 2010 (alongside the outline of what would become our only full-length Star Trek novel, A Choice of Catastrophes). Despite everything that had been added, this final draft was just over 55,000 words long, so within the ±10% margin of error someone once told me to use when approaching word counts.

Jaime went on maternity leave in May 2010, meaning Emilia Pisani took over as editor temporarily on both our projects; this would become permanent when Jaime elected to not return to S&S at the end of her leave, and Emilia saw the project through. (Ed Schlesinger would become the editor of A Choice of Catatrophes, however.) Four editors from beginning to end! I feel sort of lucky it wasn't five.

first draft cover by Alan Dingman
(spot which mistake made me angry!)

The copy edit was kind of fun, in that the copy editor (a freelance Marco, I think) did something I never saw on any of our other Star Trek projects; the front of it had appended a list of every proper noun in the entire story, to use for checking spelling. In Sept. 2010, we signed off on the final typeset pages and gave notes on Alan Dingman's striking cover. (Demora wasn't on it originally, for example, and Shras was, despite appearing in just a couple scenes. I suppose someone wanted an Andorian on the cover of the book, which made sense, but no canonical Andorian has a very significant role in it, unfortunately.)

And that was that! The book came out in Dec. 2010, at long last, and though the delays were frustrating at the time, I think the revisions suggested by my writing group made it a much stronger book, and so in the end, we were both grateful for the extra time.