Tag Archives: Keith Roysdon

‘Star Trek,’ ‘Doctor Who,’ ‘Star Wars’ – the future’s not what it once was

Leave a reply

This is ancient history – actually, that would be a good name for this site – but there was a time in the 1970s when “Star Trek” looked deader than one of Dr. Leonard McCoy’s patients. The original series had ended nearly a decade before, the show’s creative minds were waffling between making a new TV series and a big-screen movie – I don’t have to tell you how the success of “Star Wars” in 1977 made up their minds to produce a theatrical film – and it was not at all certain the franchise – which isn’t a word that was commonly applied to creative properties back then – would continue.

So Paramount’s decision to hire director Robert Wise to make “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” was a pivotal moment in the … well, franchise.

I can’t describe to you today what it was like to be watching a syndicated rerun of the original “Star Trek” series one Sunday morning on an Indianapolis TV station in 1979 and see a commercial for “The Motion Picture.” My friends and I in our local “Star Trek” club had been keeping up on the making of the film, of course, so it wasn’t a surprise. But it damn sure was a thrill. (Say what you will about the first movie, but we anticipated it like crazy.)

Fast forward to spring 2026 – it is spring, isn’t it? – and “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” has been canceled after its first season on the Paramount Plus streaming service. A second season has already been filmed and will air, I guess, on the streamer, as well the fourth and fifth seasons of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” which have already been made and which has already been canceled.

I’m not inclined to support Paramount because of its repugnant politics, but I gotta say I’ve stuck around with the service in part because of the chance to see new “Trek” episodes. These cancelations aren’t giving me many reasons to stick around longer.

I know plenty of people who are so sick of working in restaurants and stores and even patronizing restaurants and stores and hearing music from a half-century ago playing on the Muzak. When will Boomers die and take their music and their franchises with them? I’m at the tail-end of the Boomer generation and I wonder that sometimes too.

But we’ve reached a point here in which we might see an end to, or at least a hiatus of, some long-running franchises.

“Doctor Who” is at a crossroads with the latest season of the show, which began in the 1960s, ending (except for a purported Christmas special still to come this year) and Disney opting out of future involvement.

The “Star Wars” franchise – HOW MANY TIMES WILL HE USE THAT WORD? – had substantial success with the recent “Andor” series and some uncertain promise with the “Mandolorian” movie – or has interest in that story and the lil Yoda kin dude already faded? When will we get “Star Wars” stories that aren’t immediately adjacent to the Skywalker family saga? And will we accept them if and when we do?

I suppose it’s logical enough to ask how much longer Marvel movies and TV series will continue to be made, but while the Marvel Comics world has been around for more than 60 years the MCU hasn’t been around for 20 yet. And a big hit movie will clinch the MCU as an ongoing thing.

As a matter of fact, a big hit lifts all boats. And studios are loathe to give up on any intellectual property, which is why we’re going to see more “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter” shows and movies. We’ll someday see more Indiana Jones, I’m sure, and we’re already seeing more Godzilla. And I did a whole piece for CrimeReads about the Universal Studios monsters and their undead – undying – popularity.

As for “Star Trek,” it’s a shame that things – a new series? a new movie? – are so up in the air this year, the 60th year of the intellectual property.

But I’m sure the franchise will be back with some hit and life beyond the grave at some point.

And we can go on saying “franchise” and “intellectual property.”

Can you vote for the Anthony Awards? If you can, consider voting for my book THAT OCTOBER

Leave a reply

“But … awards are all a popularity contest!”

Damn right they are. But they do more than gauge or reflect popularity. They raise visibility and awareness.

If you’re eligible to vote for the annual Anthony Awards in crime fiction, I’ll note that my 2025 novel THAT OCTOBER is eligible for the Anthony for Best First Novel.

The list attached here is in no way an exhaustive list of novels that could win the award when it’s presented at Bouchercon in Calgary this fall. But I’ll note it here anyway.

My love-hate – mostly hate – relationship with alerts and notifications (disclaimer: not my phone pictured here)

Leave a reply

If I’m ever swept away by a tornado, you can blame the authorities in Tennessee.

I appreciate that I can get notifications on my phone. They’re often helpful. I just wish I could choose when I want them to be helpful.

Notifications – letting us know we’ve got a text message or a new email or if bad weather is on the way or a public figure has kicked the bucket – are a way of life for many of us now, and I’m not going to disable all my notifications – which are called “push alerts” by many newspapers, or just a “push” – because they can be useful.

These thoughts are occasioned by a couple of obnoxious instances of push alerts or notifications in the past couple of days, some of these of the health app variety. Yes, thank you, phone, for letting me know my trend in walking has changed lately. Did you happen to notice how rainy it was? And yes, thank you, other health app, for waking me up in the middle of the night to let me know of something that might otherwise have let me croak deep in peaceful slumber.

Part of my hate for pushes is that I’m obsessive enough to not only swipe them off my screen but actually go to my email inbox to delete the email that generated the push or, gasp, read it and even possibly respond.

(Don’t think we don’t understand that the Push Alert Industrial Complex is conspiring with our phone manufacturers to ensure we spend more time on our devices. It’s true. I read about it on the internet.)

Anyway, I’ve gradually over time changed my phone settings to end most push alerts from the authorities, who seem to abuse the tool.

The final push alert that broke the camel’s back was one recently that alerted me of a fatal shooting in Memphis, which is five hours and 47 minutes from me. Needless to say, this 2 or 3 a.m. push alert was not from a news outlet. It was from a state-run agency. I won’t comment on why this push was sent out but not why other fatal shootings are not sent out. You can guess.

So here I am, because the state insists on alerting me to things happening six hours away, perhaps expecting me to run down to the street at 3 a.m. and scan passing vehicles for the suspect, without any means of being woken in case of forest fire or flood or tornado or hurricane.

If I die, it’s on you, state officials.

Blurbs about my novel SEVEN ANGELS: Claire Booth

Leave a reply
Screenshot

I’m posting some blurbs I’ve received from authors who read my new crime novel SEVEN ANGELS and were kind enough to give me a blurb to use in promoting the book.

We at Constellate Publishing will publish SEVEN ANGELS on June 1. It’s available for pre-order through all the usual outlets now.

I asked a few authors I know if they’d read the book and, providing they didn’t hate it, give me a blurb.

Claire’s blurb, as seen above, suggests the background she and I have in common: journalism. I was a newspaper reporter and editor in Indiana before I started writing fiction. Claire’s reporting experience was all over the United States.

I met Claire at Bouchercon in Nashville in 2024. She was the moderator of a panel I served on about true crime writing. It was a great group and I was really pleased to get to check in with Claire again at Bcon in New Orleans in 2025.

Sometime after that point, I asked if she’d read SEVEN ANGELS and she did and gave me that wonderful blurb. I was somewhat surprised she had time because she’s incredibly busy and prolific and her book history demonstrates that.

Here’s how to know more about Claire:

https://clairebooth.com/

SEVEN ANGELS print proof in hand and it looks great

Leave a reply

Yesterday the mail brought my print proof of my book SEVEN ANGELS.

And it looks so good.

I posted some video on Instagram and other social media to mark the occasion, so cruise over there if you want to see it in motion. But the photos here give you a pretty good idea.

The book comes out around June 1 from our imprint, Constellate Publishing.

I’m spending a couple of days reading through the book, looking for any issues, but Jill Blocker and I have pretty thoroughly gone over the book in the past few months. So no unpleasant surprises so far.

Link to Constellate:

Constellate Publishing

Blurbs about my crime novel SEVEN ANGELS: Ken Jaworowski

Leave a reply

Here’s another in a series about the authors who so kindly read my new novel SEVEN ANGELS – out from Constellate Publishing in June.

Ken Jaworowski and I haven’t met but I feel like I know him, not only from his writing but also from interviewing him a couple of times for articles for the Daily Yonder. I was delighted to be able to read and review his novels SMALL TOWN SINS and WHAT ABOUT THE BODIES for those articles and had some illuminating interviews with Ken.

He was kind enough to read SEVEN ANGELS and, as a writer who writes masterfully about small towns and crime, give me the blurb above.

Ken’s work is thrilling and fascinating for how he writes about everyday people who are having the worst day of their life.

To know more about Ken:

Home

What is a Ghost Show? Well, it’s a novel by me and other things

Leave a reply

I’ve mentioned GHOST SHOW, my unpublished novel set in 1948, a few times on social media. I wrote the book between writing SEVEN ANGELS and THAT OCTOBER and I never expected it to be published. Why? Well, for one thing, it’s set in 1948, in the Midwestern town of Middletown, where THAT OCTOBER takes place (in 1984) and it’s about a family from Seven Angels, Tennessee, and their experiences in the big city.

It’s got a serial killer, a real ghost who’s haunting a theater, a sprawling family story with infidelity, abuse and coming of age as well as President Harry Truman and a traveling ghost show, or spook show, a live-action magic and mystery production that involves several members of the family.

It’s also more than 108,000 words long.

As it turns out, we might publish GHOST SHOW later this year through Constellate Publishing.

So I’m editing GHOST SHOW, a book I haven’t looked at in three or four years, and I’m thinking two things:

I like this story, which is very loosely based on the youthful adventures of my parents and my mom’s family before she was my mom. (Very loosely!)

And I’m thinking … man, 108,000 is a lot of words.

I’ll repeat this explanation before we get close to actual publication, but in answer to what is a ghost show, here’s an article I wrote for CrimeReads four years ago about what the heck ghost shows were.

The Lost History of America’s Traveling “Ghost Shows”

Blurbs about my crime novel SEVEN ANGELS: Julia Dahl

Leave a reply

I’ve got my hands on the blurbs from some of the authors who’ve read my crime novel SEVEN ANGELS – which we at Constellate Publishing will publish on or about June 1 – and I’m gonna share them here and on social media occasionally.

Julia Dahl is one of the coolest and most talented people I know. She’s a journalist and professor and editor and an amazing writer. I became a fan after I read her novel THE MISSING HOURS way back in 2021. It’s a spellbinding book about how a young woman’s life can change dramatically after one night.

At some point after that, she let me read a screenplay she wrote and I’ll tell you that it is a story and set of characters that cry out to be adapted as a streaming series.

I got to meet Julia at Bouchercon in Nashville in 2024 and she’s just as delightful in person as she is online.

Julia reading an advance copy of SEVEN ANGELS and giving me a blurb for the book means so much to me. She’s just aces.

More about Julia:

Home

It comes and it goes and it comes around again

Leave a reply

My morning began with a rejection but ended up with signing a short story contract, all threaded through writing some totally separate piece of work.

Man, every day is a little game of expectations versus reality for all of us, but that’s especially evident for writers.

The rejection email, as these things go, was from an editor and fiction outlet I haven’t tried before. It was direct and to the point but also gracious, saying a couple of nice things about the story I’d submitted and they’d rejected. Much better than a form rejection – I got one of those just a while back – and even thanked me for my support of them on social media, which will absolutely continue.

This rejection stung, man. It was for a story I wrote for an earlier anthology call for submissions and honestly, I really like this story. It’s not my typical crime-wimey story. It was, dare I say it, hearfelt.

But I’ll submit it again somewhere and I’m sure I’ll submit something else to the humane editor who rejected this particular story this particular morning,

So i got back to work. I’m close, very close, to finishing a 5,000-word short story to sub to an anthology/collection that I really want to be included in. I’ve got a few more words to write.

Then I signed a contract for the anthology you see above, DAYDREAM BELIEVER: CRIME STORIES INSPIRED BY THE MUSIC OF THE MONKEES. The anthology comes out this fall and has some wonderful writers in it and I’m happy that editors Shelley and Larry chose my story to include.

Then I got back to working on that 5,000-worder. And I wrote this.

(I’m thinking about having a snack later, if you need that much insight into my day,)

All of this could be filed under the life in a day of a writer. Or maybe managing expectations. Or dealing with rejections and successes.

To writers and other people: Push on. The only way out is through.

A cold case father died without justice for his son

Leave a reply

It’s been two years now since Calletano Cisneros died. A lot of people won’t know who he was, but he made a big impression on me. I interviewed him for our fourth true crime book, COLD CASE MUNCIE, which was published by History Press in 2023.

For those of you who don’t know, longtime writing collaborator Douglas Walker and I wrote about cold cases – unsolved murders – in the area of Muncie, Indiana for a few decades for The Star Press newspaper. This entailed going over old cases, some of them dating back decades and some of more recent vintage, and reviewing the facts, looking at old files and articles and often interviewing police investigators, prosecutors, coroners and, most importantly, surviving family members. Cold cases have an impact on all of those people but especially, of course, on surviving family members.

Sebastian Cisneros – that’s him in the upper right photo of the book cover above – was killed in April 2009 in Muncie, which is marred by dozens of unsolved murders. Sebastian Cisneros was killed outside his house on Ribble Avenue in Muncie.

We wrote about the case at the time and wrote about it as a chapter of the Cold Case Muncie book because it was a compelling story, made all the more so because I interviewed his father, 75-year-old Calletano Cisneros. When we spoke via long distance – he lived in Texas – he volunteered something that I hadn’t known when I called him: He himself had killed a man in a bar fight when he was 17 and had spent 10 years in prison before he was released by the governor. He’d lived with that past for a half-century and had, in the past several years, lived with the murder of his own son.

Calletano Cisneros told me he wanted justice for his son and wanted his son’s killer to be tried and sentenced to prison just as he had been more than 50 years earlier.

“I did my time. I’d like to see the same justice done in my son’s case.”

Calletano Cisneros didn’t live to see justice for his son. He died in January 2024.

Cold cases are cases that often don’t see justice done.

You can read about the Sebatian Cisneros case in our third true crime book: