I get asked this a lot. With more than a dozen Trek books to my credit, I know I must appear to be an expert, but I've never sold anybody's books but my own, about which I can be extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable. I really don't need any ideas or collaborators. As I often tell people, writing is the easy part of being a writer -- the business, the contracts, the agents, the research, and the approvals are a bear.

Last I heard, you need an agent to submit to Pocket Books' Star Trek program, unless you are already a published writer. And it's about as hard to find a good agent as it is to find a good spouse. You need to woo them, court them, and go places where they hang out, such as New York, SF conventions, and writers conferences. But agents are usually looking for dedicated writers who will write many books and make them a pile of money over many years. Pocket Books is also looking for writers who will be dependable, professional, and write them a lot of books. Nobody is looking for one-book authors.

I got into Pocket Books because I had already written a non-fiction computer book for Simon & Schuster, their parent company. Before I wrote my first Trek novel, Masks, I had been a full-time, freelance writer for years.

There are numerous books and articles devoted to writing as a business, but I know one thing -- you had better take your writing career as seriously as you would if you were starting a new business, because that's what you are doing.