The long goodbye: ‘Star Trek Strange New Worlds’ gone after fifth season

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This is definitely not going to be one of those posts about how TV was better in the old days or how TV was better when a season of a show consisted of 22 episodes or even more, although I think there’s something to be said about a season that has enough episodes to give the characters and the world they inhabit a little breathing room.

This is a post about how much I enjoy “Star Trek Strange New Worlds” and how much I’ll miss it when it’s gone after its fifth season. Paramount+ announced this week that the series, a prequel of sorts to the original “Star Trek,” would end after its fifth season.

If you’re not scoring at home, the third season of the series will begin streaming on July 17. The fourth season will follow, probably in about a year, and the fifth season after that.

This is a post in part about how Paramount+ said the fifth and final season would consist of only six episodes, fewer than the 10-episode seasons we’ve seen so far.

I’ve got lots of thoughts about the series, which has focused on the Enterprise under the command of Captain Christopher Pike. Those who remember the original “Star Trek” know that Pike was presented as a man who was left shattered after rescuing a group of cadets from a horrific accident. Pike was left disfigured and paralyzed and in a motorized chair for the rest of his life.

“Strange New Worlds” has already addressed this, with Pike having received the gift of seeing his future in an episode of “Star Trek Discovery,” the series from which “Strange New Worlds” was spun off.

Key to Pike’s journey is that he’s accepted his fate and made peace with his future, so even though “Strange New Worlds” has already played with the timeline as established by the original series, it would feel like a cheat to have Pike escape that fate in the final season of this show. Even though we like Pike, as played by Anson Mount, and might want him to go on adventuring forever.

The fact that the final season is projected to include only six episodes would indicate 1.) the showrunners have a very set plan for the final season and needed only six episodes to tell it or 2.) Paramount+ only gave them enough budget for six episodes, which would be a pretty ignominious way for the series to go out – on the cheap – but really, we don’t expect much of Paramount anymore.

There’s another “Trek” series in the works, one based on Starfleet Academy, and there could be others announced in the next two years.

But I’m wondering if “Strange New Worlds” might not morph into a new version of the original series, with most of the players – Kirk, Spock, Uhura and others – already in place on the current series.

So what do you think will happen? Will we see a revamping of the timeline and Pike’s fate? Will we see some new adventure? Will we see a reboot of the original series?

Jumping into the discourse about Bluesky

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If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve seen people argue that the social media platform Bluesky is a failure. It has “only” 36 million-plus users, compared to more than 600 million twitter users. (The latter is a number I think is highly suspect, but that’s a topic for another day.)

I joined Bluesky more than a year ago, I think, but I didn’t spend a lot of time on the social media site until last fall, when some odious thing the owner of twitter had done drove other people there. All of a sudden, Bluesky seemed populated – much more so than in the first few months after I had joined – and much livelier.

So-called “Starter Packs” on Bluesky – curated lists of writers, engineers, performers, artists, whatever – gave my follower count a boost early on, but the growth in the number of followers there has been pretty consistent. I have about 2,800 followers there now, compared to more than 4,000 at my peak on twitter. That Bluesky following was built in a matter of months, by the way, compared to all the years since 2009 I’ve been on twitter.

(I still have a twitter account, to keep in touch with friends who are still more active there than on Bluesky, but I spend much, much more time on Bluesky.) I’m also active on Facebook, where I started an author page this year despite my misgivings over the attitudes and behavior of the suck-up American oligarch who owns it, and I post regularly there and on Instagram (same owner, same dislike for the owner). The reason I’m still on all those platforms is, besides keeping up with friends who are on them, is to publicize my book, THAT OCTOBER.

But I spend most of my time on Bluesky, regardless of follower numbers and engagement, because it just feels like the least awful place on socials. I’m not choosing the lesser of evils here, I promise. I feel like using any social media is like building a new house (ie active thread that’s hopefully engaging) on somebody else’s property.

In other words, all of social media is someone else’s real estate. When they want to take it away from us, they can.

That’s also why Bluesky is the least reprehensible social platform. The owners of twitter and Facebook and other Meta platforms have shown themselves to be dishonest in how they treat the people who actively bring eyeballs to those platforms. They take the value of our work and bluster and censure us.

BlueSky seems the least likely social media platform to do this.

This might change if the semi-collective, not-especially-concentrated ownership of Bluesky changes, perhaps through a sale at some point in the future. Money talks and bullshit walks and aside from political ideology, there’s been no more certain death knell for various socials than how much their owners can make by selling them or just selling out.

So I’m spending time on Bluesky – too much time, probably – and little time anywhere else, although I have a presence everywhere. This site is a pretty reliable place to find my latest thoughts but it is not a two-way street, unlike even the worst social.

So I don’t think Bluesky is dying. I do think it is, right at this moment, a less reprehensible (there’s that phrase again) place than the alternatives.

We’ll see if that continues to be the case.

To nom-de-plume or not to nom-de-plume? Too late for me!

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Every once in a while, I’m taken aback when a writer who I kinda thought I knew isn’t actually who I thought they were. I’m not talking about any kind of betrayal here, dire or otherwise. I knew them only as a pen name and didn’t realize that fact.

There are a lot of worse identity crises out there, such as what happens when you deadname someone. But I still get surprised when Facebook suggests I send a friend request to someone and I don’t recognize the name but I know the face.

I realize, stupidly, belatedly, that they publish under a pen name.

I am, unfortunately, 50-some years past the time I could have used a pen name. That’s because in a very small circle of people, I’ve been known since I was in high school. That’s when my first article, under my byline, was published in the newspaper. I haven’t been out of print since 1977.

And when you have an unusual last name like mine, you’re pretty easy to find. Remember the days we were all listed in phone books, no less city directories? (The latter, if you don’t remember them at all, were phone book-style directories that let you look someone up not only by name but by address and, in reverse-directory style, by phone number. And when you looked them up, it told what they did for a living. I’m not sure city directories were any worse than the many ways you can find out about someone now, but they were handy tools for newspaper reporters and probably nightmarish for everyone else.)

(I literally remember using the city directory to find people who, according to court records, might have been victimized by a corrupt judge, some willingly. It made for some awkward conversations when someone came to the door, let me tell you.)

So I’ve never been able to take refuge in anonymity. I know this was frustrating for me and for my family, particularly when someone would call on our home phone – remember those? – to give me grief about something I’d written.

My relative high profile, as compared to people who didn’t work for a newspaper, led to some pretty awkward moments. Sometime I’ll recount one for you over a beer or coffee. You might throw your drink in my face when you hear it, though.

Anyway, it’s too late now for me to adopt an anonymous personna like the superhero the Question, pictured above. Moving to another state has given me some relief from running into people I wrote about, though.

If I get that kind of “hey, it’s that guy” notoriety again, maybe I’ll start wearing a full-face mask and fedora.

Falling back into short stories

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A while back I wrote here about how I’d taken a break from writing and submitting short stories to concentrate on selling my novel THAT OCTOBER and begin work on a new novel.

Since that time, I’ve found myself back in the short story business.

In 2024, I submitted a sword-and-sorcery story to a call for submissions. It got turned down. I subbed it to another and a curious chain of events followed. This second call for subs resulted in an initial rejection, along with a request to leave my story parked in their hands in case they were able to use it. Then early this year, a definitive “no, we aren’t able to use it.”

Then, about a week ago, a reversal of fortune: They’ll use the story after all, later this year.

I’ll tell you about the story when and if this works out.

And just about the same time, I was contacted by a well-known and respected writer who asked me if I had a short story that might work for an anthology he’s putting together. I didn’t have a story, but I had an idea for a story.

A couple of weeks later, I turned the story in, 7,500 words of it, and it looks like a go. I’m really looking forward to this. I like the story and the anthology should be excellent.

I’m delighted with both of these circumstances.

So next time I decide to shy away from a particular type of writing, I’ll know that it might not be the end. It might not even be a hiatus.

I love the ’80s, especially for exploring fiction

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Anybody who knows me knows that I really enjoy writing stories set in the 1980s.

My new book THAT OCTOBER is set – for the most part – in October 1984, although there’s some exposition in the book that leads readers back 20-plus years before that.

There’s a “Stranger Things” vibe that a couple of writer friends who kindly blurbed the book noted, although there are no monsters – except for the human kind – in “That October.”

Sara McKinley, my friend who created the wonderful cover for THAT OCTOBER, said she was thinking about “Paper Girls” and other “kids on bikes” stories as she was working on the art. (My kids in the novel are slightly older, although not by much, and more mobile.)

But besides THAT OCTOBER, I wrote another story, “Steel Victory,” which was published in the 2024 Slaughterhouse Press anthology “Maximum Firepower: An ’80s Action Anthology.” The premise behind the Brian G. Berry-created “Maximum Firepower” is that the tales we wrote were inspired by 1980s action movie tropes.

In my story “Steel Victory,” a Captain America-style super soldier escapes from a top-secret lab in 1986 Washington, D.C. This super soldier is no Steve Rogers, however, and when he goes missing he goes on a murder spree.

For the look of the missing super soldier, I pictured Martin Kove, the actor who played the bad guy in “The Karate Kid” and other 80s action pictures and recently returned in the “Cobra Kai” series.

It’s up to three women – the doctor who conceived the project, the “lab rat” who knows more about the project than anyone and the project’s head of security – to track him down in the darkness of D.C.

“Steel Victory” and THAT OCTOBER appealed to me because the time period was very defined and familiar to many of us, even those who were too young to experience it. Everybody knows the trappings of the decade, from “Terminator” movies to “Star Wars” on home video to the music of MTV.

As much as I find my cell phone and the Internet indispensable now, there’s something very freeing about writing about a time when the protagonist couldn’t just pull a phone out of their pocket and call or text some crucial information to someone.

I love research, and one of the things I discovered as I wrote “Steel Victory” was that I couldn’t round up a bunch of those government-issue black SUVs for the search party. SUVs, other than Jeep Cherokees, were not in wide use at the time. So my protagonists had to improvise.

It’s an intoxicating thing, to write about a period that’s so close yet so far away. I hope I get to do it again.

Here’s where you can get “Maximum Firepower” and my story “Steel Victory.”

Am I telling you to self-publish your novel? Well …

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Okay, this post comes with SO MANY caveats.

It’s very, very early in this process.

A few random sales can prompt big movement among the lower reaches of Amazon’s sales chart. Believe me, I’ve seen this with our four true crime books, which were published by History Press.

And ultimately this won’t put a lot of money in my pocket or, if you follow this path, yours. We didn’t become writers to make money, did we?

But today I checked the sites selling my novel THAT OCTOBER – Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s Books and Amazon among them – and was surprised to see that on Amazon, the book was marked with a “#1 New Release in Teen & Young Adult Law & Crime stories” label.

On the mobile Amazon, this:

A red banner. As opposed to a Bruce Banner.

So I don’t know any more today than I did yesterday about how my book is doing or will do, before or after its June 1 publication date. (That’s five days away as I write this.)

But it looks like it hasn’t hurt to self-publish the book, in paperback, through Ingram Spark.

I can’t tell you what to do. Your scenario is not like mine. I’m a guy who doesn’t have years to take the traditional publishing route. I hadn’t really thought about self-publishing until last fall, when my friend and editor Jill Blocker, who had self-published one language edition of her great book WHAT WAS BEAUTIFUL AND GOOD, suggested I might want to consider it. Jill did all the heavy lifting and my friend and artist Sara McKinley created an incredible cover that has sold at least as many copies of the book as the promise of what’s between the covers.

So should you self-publish? Maybe. There’s no doubt there’s much more prestige in being published by an indie or small press, not to mention a big publishing house, compared to self-publishing. Some people will always look on self-published books as “vanity” books. That doesn’t bother me at all.

I hope you like THAT OCTOBER. I don’t expect to make much, if any, money off it. I encourage you to buy it (the ebook version is coming) or borrow it from your local library. Libraries do a lot of society’s heavy lifting, and I would be thrilled if you read it or any of my books through a library,

But I will say I’m not, not encouraging you to self-publish. This is working so far for me.

If there’s any questions I can answer, look me up on BlueSky or on my Facebook page, which is called, in a blindingly brilliant move, Keith Roysdon author.

The pleasure of finding your book for sale – especially unexpected places

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I’m not sure I remember the exact details, but when my first true crime book, co-authored with my longtime writing partner Douglas Walker, came out in 2016, it was pretty thrilling to see the book for sale in bookstores, drug stores, gift shops and online.

It’s one thing to have a book out there and to sell it and sign it, but realizing our publisher, History Press, had actually gotten the first book, “Wicked Muncie,” in stores and online sites, was pretty amazing. History Press kicks all kinds of ass in getting books in stores, by the way. All four of our true crime books found a good home with them.

Another highlight was finding our books offered by libraries, which are very nearly my favorite places on the planet. A while back, I realized our third true crime book, “The Westside Park Murders,” was available through the Chicago Public Library. I’m still boggled over that.

So it’s been fun, with THAT OCTOBER, my new 1984-set high school crime novel, finding the book on all kinds of bookselling sites. I wasn’t certain if I would have to take steps to ensure this because THAT OCTOBER is self-published.

But I didn’t have to. At some point recently I was asking the folks at Ingram Spark, the venue I used to publish the book, if they could tell me when it would be available for pre-order. They responded and noted that it already was available and showed me where Amazon was selling it.

Since that time, I’ve been excited to see that not only Amazon, a site I have qualms about, but Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Powell’s Books and Waterstones, the famous Brit seller of books, all offer it (for pre-order right now, as publication date is June 1).

So I’ve been on social media, posting links to most of those booksellers and screenshots. It was as especially exciting to see that Powell’s, a bookseller I’ve visited in Portland, Oregon, and have done business with online, offered it.

Oddest place I’ve found the book for sale so far: Saxo, where the book is available for about 259 Danish Krone.

It’s silly, I know, to be so excited about this, but I didn’t think it would ever happen.

Next I’ll be telling you how excited I am to find THAT OCTOBER for sale at Half Price Books or McKay’s.

Music and my playlist for THAT OCTOBER

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I know writers – and readers – who want absolute quiet when they’re writing or reading.

For me, maybe because I spent decades working in a newsroom, with overlapping conversations, police scanners and all manner of noise competing for attention, I can usually tune out the noise when I want to. Or maybe it’s that I like some noise while I’m writing.

However it works, I like having music playing when I’m writing, especially with novels. When I was writing my first novel, SEVEN ANGELS – not yet published; maybe someday? – in 2019, I played non-stop the music of the Highwomen, the Chicks, Bonnie Raitt and other artists. It’s music I like and the main character is a strong woman, which really fit with the music. When I was writing my second novel, GHOST SHOW, in 2020, I played artists of the 1940s because the book is set in 1948. This wasn’t as conducive to writing for me. I knew the music and artists but didn’t get into the right headspace during it.

When I was writing THAT OCTOBER 2021-2023, I played music of the early 1980s non-stop for a year and a half. The story takes place mostly in October 1984, so I kept my playlist – almost exclusively youtube posts of music videos – limited to songs that predated that month and year.

I incorporated some of that music into the book, making references in some cases by having the high-school-age characters mentioning or singing or dancing to the songs. I didn’t include lyrics in the novel because it can be expensive or nearly impossible to get the rights to print lyrics.

When I readied the book for publication this year, working with my friend and editor Jill Blocker, I decided to get on Spotify and make a THAT OCTOBER playlist. I used songs that I listened to during writing, songs that are cited specifically in the book and songs that just work well with the story.

Duran Duran, Ratt, Cyndi Lauper and more than a dozen others are on the playlist. I’ll probably tinker with it at some point and add some more.

THAT OCTOBER publishes June 1 and you can pre-order it now through most of the usual online booksellers. Hopefully it can be found and purchased from one of the booksellers that aren’t among the very worst on the planet.

In the meantime, here’s a link to the THAT OCTOBER playlist on Spotify. I hope you enjoy it, and the book.

Social media and selling books

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You think that guy looks insufferable there, wait until a few more weeks pass. You’ll be sick to death of him.

My 1984-set crime novel THAT OCTOBER publishes June 1. It’s available now for pre-order on the usual bookselling sites, although I encourage you to purchase it through the least harmful to society one.

I hope you like the book. The authors who were kind enough to read it and give me some comments that I could blurb seemed to like it, citing the 1980s nostalgia content and the twists and turns of the plot.

Although THAT OCTOBER is self-published, there’s nothing especially straightforward about marketing a book these days. Unless you’re a huge author, you have to flog your book to potential readers. That’s usually done through social media.

There are a lot of authors who innovate in how they market their books. Some include odd tidbits they came across while researching and writing their book, and I’ll probably do some of that. Some authors post recipes true to the time period or story. Others, notably Beau Johnson, make and post creative videos to publicize their work. Beau’s videos are hilarious and effectively promote his books, including LIKE MINDED INDIVIDUALS, which continues Beau’s multi-book storyline of anti-heroes who punish the worst criminals on Earth.

Since social media is important to promoting our books, it’s especially tricky to do so in a manner that doesn’t promote some of the worst humans around, including the owners of the former twitter and Facebook and related platforms.

I don’t spend a lot of time on the former twitter anymore, mostly just to check on friends who still post there as opposed to a slightly more “clean hands” site like BlueSky. For the past week, I’ve tried to observe a week-long boycott of Facebook-related platforms, breaking that only to note a rare earthquake in East Tennessee and a Mother’s Day post about my mom, who left us nearly 20 years ago.

But I’ll continue to post on my author page on Facebook to publicize my writing. It’s not a decision I’m entirely comfortable with, but Facebook is still a place where people go, and authors are expected to have a social media presence there.

Anyway, god go with you in the next few weeks (months? years?) as you see me posting here and on social media to promote THAT OCTOBER. I hope you tolerate me and I hope you like the book.