David Alan Mack
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This article is about the Star Trek and Wolverine novelist. For the comic book artist, see David W. Mack.
David Alan Mack is a writer best known for his freelance Star Trek novels. Mack also has had a Star Trek script produced, and worked on a Star Trek comic book.
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[edit] Early career
Mack attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts as an undergraduate, from 1987 to 1991. There he majored in film and television production and screenwriting.[1]
After receiving several rejections on early spec-script submissions to Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Mack teamed up with John J. Ordover, then an editor in Pocket Books' Star Trek Department. Working together, the pair combined Ordover's ability to arrange pitch meetings with the shows' producers with Mack's training in screenwriting.[2] Mack also broke into screenwriting with Ordover, with whom he scripted the fourth-season Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Starship Down". Their story pitch for a fourth-season script evolved into the seventh-season episode "It's Only a Paper Moon", for which the pair received a "story by" credit.
In 1995, the pair made their first story sale, to Star Trek: Voyager, though the project was never produced. A few weeks later they made another sale, this time to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, for the fourth-season episode "Starship Down". Another story pitched by the pair during that same meeting was bought three years later, as the basis for the seventh-season episode "It's Only a Paper Moon".[3]
During the 1990s, Mack performed freelance editorial work for Pocket Books. His duties ranged from reading slush manuscripts and writing rejection letters to drafting reference materials for established authors and series, such as Peter David's Star Trek: New Frontier books. That work led to Mack being invited to draft a 5,000-word supplement for John Vornholt's novel The Genesis Wave, Book One, which, in turn, earned Mack an invitation in 2000 to write his own first full-length book for Star Trek.[4]
Mack and Ordover wrote the four-part Deep Space Nine/Next Generation comic book miniseries Divided We Fall for WildStorm. With Keith R.A. DeCandido, Mack co-wrote the two-part Starfleet Corps of Engineers (SCE) e-book story Invincible.
[edit] Solo work
Mack's first solo project was the two-part SCE e-book novel Wildfire. His other SCE e-books are Failsafe and Small World. He next wrote the short stories "Waiting for G'Doh, or, How I Learned to Stop Moving and Hate People" for the anthology Star Trek: New Frontier: No Limits; and "Twilight's Wrath" for the anthology Star Trek: Tales of the Dominion War.
Mack's first direct-to-paperback novels were a Star Trek: The Next Generation duology: A Time To Kill and A Time To Heal. Mack also wrote Harbinger, the first volume of the Star Trek: Vanguard novel series, which he co-developed with editor Marco Palmieri.
Other work includes the Star Trek: New Frontier minipedia, the Starfleet Survival Guide, and the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine post-finale novel Warpath. His announced projects for 2006 and 2007 include the Wolverine novel Road of Bones (November 2006); the Mirror Universe short novel The Sorrows of Empire, part of Star Trek: Mirror Universe – Glass Empires (February 2007); and Reap the Whirlwind, the third book in the Star Trek Vanguard saga (June 2007). He is also the author of the trilogy Star Trek: Destiny.
His first non-Star Trek novel was the Wolverine spy-thriller Road of Bones, published in October of 2006 by Pocket Books.
Upcoming projects by Mack include the Star Trek Destiny trilogy, to be published in October, November and December of 2008. In October of 2007, Mack announced the sale of his first original novel, The Calling, which he described as "a modern-day fantasy-thriller."
Mack lives in New York City with his wife, Kara.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Print
- The Calling (2009) (trade paperback)
- Star Trek Destiny, Book Three: — Lost Souls (2008)(mass-market paperback)
- Star Trek Destiny, Book Two: — Mere Mortals (2008)(mass-market paperback)
- Star Trek Destiny, Book One: — Gods of Night (2008)(mass-market paperback)
- Star Trek: Corps of Engineers — Creative Couplings (2007), trade paperback collection, contains novella "Small World" (originally published as an eBook, 2005)
- Star Trek Vanguard — Reap the Whirlwind (2007)(mass-market paperback)
- Star Trek: Corps of Engineers — Grand Designs (2007), trade paperback collection, contains the novella "Failsafe" (originally published as an eBook, 2004)
- Star Trek: Mirror Universe — Glass Empires (2007), trade paperback anthology, contains the short novel The Sorrows of Empire
- Wolverine — Road of Bones (2006)(mass-market paperback)
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — Warpath (2006)(mass-market paperback)
- Star Trek Vanguard — Harbinger (2005)(mass-market paperback)
- Star Trek: SCE, Book Six — Wildfire (2004), mass-market paperback collection, contains the short novel Wildfire (originally published as an eBook, 2003)
- Star Trek: The Next Generation — A Time to Heal (2004)(mass-market paperback)
- Star Trek: The Next Generation — A Time to Kill (2004)(mass-market paperback)
- Star Trek: Tales of the Dominion War (2004), trade paperback anthology, contains the short story "Twilight's Wrath"
- Star Trek: New Frontier — No Limits (2003), trade paperback anthology, contains the short story "Waiting for G'Doh, or, How I Learned to Stop Moving and Hate People"
- Star Trek: SCE, Book Two — Miracle Workers (2002), mass-market paperback collection, contains the novella "Invincible," written with Keith R.A. DeCandido (originally published as an eBook, 2001)
- Star Trek — The Starfleet Survival Guide (2002)(trade paperback)
- Star Trek — Divided We Fall (2001), four-issue comic-book miniseries, written with John Ordover
[edit] Television
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — "It's Only a Paper Moon" (1999), with John Ordover and Ronald D. Moore
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — "Starship Down" (1995), with John Ordover
- Star Trek: Voyager — "Sickbay" (1995), (aka "Untitled Kes," with John Ordover) [unproduced]
[edit] Interactive Media
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — Dominion Wars (2001), CD-ROM game (voiceover scripts)
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — The Fallen (2000), CD-ROM game (interactive dialogue scripts, dialogue polishing)
- Star Trek — Starship Creator (1998), CD-ROM Simulator (character development)
[edit] References
- ^ David Mack website, accessed March 31, 2009.
- ^ TrekNation interview with David Mack by Jacqueline Bundy, July 12, 2004, accessed March 31, 2009.
- ^ TrekNation interview with David Mack by Jacqueline Bundy, July 12, 2004, accessed March 31, 2009.
- ^ TrekNation interview with David Mack by Jacqueline Bundy, July 12, 2004, accessed March 31, 2009.
