{Sunday Post}—Gateways, Museum of Wonders, and Triple Cross

The Caffeinated Book Reviewer's Kimberly hosts a weekly meme called "The Sunday Post"! 

Weekly Tidbits

• Although I haven't given up on NaNoWriMo, things don't seem to be going well for me. Note to self: "Next time, have an outline ready by November 1st with characters fleshed out, chapters planned, and an actual plan in mine." If not, like me, you'll spend your first day scrabbling for your first sentence, followed by a complete paragraph. I don't write as quickly as I could since I have a poor tendency to edit and modify as I go. I've probably removed at least 6,000 words or more and am sitting at 2,143 words. In all honesty, I don't want to write 50,000 words in a month; I just want to focus on one project for 30 days. I'm happy with one meaningful sentence.

• I discovered you could create fan fiction for the challenge after perusing the NaNoWriMo forum. Even if I don't particularly enjoy fan fiction, I could have written a Star Trek adventure. As opposed to my current Gothic romance idea, which is essentially a replica of every Gothic novella I've ever read, I've definitely been more motivated to write a Trek story. There is always next year, I suppose.

• This weather is awful! It varies from being warm one day to chilly and rainy the next. I'm glad I mulched the leaves before the wind and rain arrived, but the dust and leaves debris have been making my allergies unbearable ever since.

What Am I Currently Reading?

By the time you read this, I'm either reading Gwendy's Magic Feather or just starting Gwendy's Final Task. Then I'll read No Plan B by Lee and Andrew Child, followed by The Thief of Fate by Jude Deveraux and Tara Sheets.

Recent Reviews

Halloween Ends
★★★★★

Eden's Children
★★★✰✰

Alien: Out of the Shadows
★★★★✰

What Has The Mail Delivered?

Does anyone recall me grumbling about eBay sellers—during the fall season—who were charging a little too much for Star Trek books? Well, I guess I spoke too soon since I did find a good deal on Gateways books 1–5 (One Small Step by Susan Wright; Chainmail by Diane Carey; Doors Into Chaos by Robert Greenberger; Demons of Air and Darkness by Keith R.A. DeCandido; No Man's Land by Christie Golden). With shipping included, I spent about $4.50 for each book. I paid $4.19 from a separate seller for book 7, What Lay Beyond. What about book 6, you ask? In the summer, I paid $2 for the sixth book by Peter David, Cold Wars, at an antique shop. It was a very used book that needed some TLC, so I used Elmer's Craft Bond Quick Dry Glue and transparent packing tape to repair it.

The seven-part miniseries Gateways covers the Star Trek canon—up until 2001, the year the books were released. Each book stands alone and is only tangentially related to the others. The first book takes place during The Original Series. The second book during Challenger (more on this later). The third book takes place during The Next Generation. The fourth book during Deep Space Nine. The fifth book during Voyager. The sixth book takes place during New Frontier (the first original novel series not based on a TV series or movie). Every book has a cliffhanger ending that gets resolved in the seventh book, an anthology that sums up every narrative.

Fans were angry that they had to pay $24.00 to read the finale in book seven, a hardback, after volumes 1-6 were available for $6.99 in paperback back in 2001. Pocket Books abandoned a proposed omnibus edition. Here There Be Monsters, a novella in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers series, is an epilogue to the Gateways series, written by Keith DeCandido. Unless the SCE series gets discounted on Kindle, I am not interested in reading them.

Star Trek: Challenger—what? Star Trek: New Earth was a six-part series released by Pocket Books in 2000, with the sixth volume, "Challenger," serving as a possible setup for a brand-new book series. For whatever reason, the concept fizzled, and the only canonical "Challenger" book was Chainmail (Gateways: Book Two) and the novella Exodus (Gateways: Book 7: What Laid Beyond).

In the summer of 2000, the "New Earth" novels were released two per month for three months. Wagon Train to the Stars and Belle Terre are the two I can recall purchasing; at the time, I had grown disenchanted with the Star Trek franchise and picked up the volumes on a whim after spotting them in the bookstore. I recall reading both novels and enjoying them, but I could never track down the other four. About a year later, I sold the books at a garage sale. Do I regret it? Yep. The good news is that on Friday night, I bought each of the six books on eBay. The good news is that I purchased all six of the books on eBay on Friday night. Each book cost $3.11, including shipping, which was less than what I would have had to spend for them in 2000.

What's New on the Shelf?

I purchased Miss Peregrine's Museum of Wonders by Ransom Riggs, a Walmart "exclusive" that the Walmart in my town doesn't offer (I located it in a neighboring county), and the most recent James Patterson Alex Cross thriller, Triple Cross. 

New titles on my Kindle are The Originals: The Rise by Julie Pec, Nest by Terry Goodkind, and Star Wars: Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber.