Wilkerson Part 2: Houdini & Lovecraft, The Ghost Writer.

This week, Mike and Max are joined once again by Star Trek writer Ron Wilkerson to discuss his new novel, Houdini & Lovecraft, The Ghost Writer. In the book, the great illusionist Harry Houdini teams with the struggling writer H.P. Lovecraft to investigate a supposedly haunted house.

In this episode, Ron talks about the origins of the novel, creating a fictional dynamic between two real-life characters, the struggle of building interest in the book among Star Trek fans, working in the sci-fi horror genre, the inspiration of Lovecraft’s work on his own, his fascination with Houdini, the differences between writing for screenplays and novels, the new book he’s working on called Crossover, and the new television show he’s working on called Dreamland.

Wilkerson Part 1: Trek.

This week, Max and Mike are joined by Star Trek writer Ron Wilkerson in the first of two very special episodes.

Ron has written seven hours of Star Trek, including “Imaginary Friend,” “Schisms,” “Lessons,” and “Lower Decks” for The Next Generation, and “Learning Curve,” “Fair Trade,” and “Ashes to Ashes” for Voyager. He has also written a new novel entitled Houdini & Lovecraft, The Ghost Writer, which is available on Amazon.com.

In this episode, Ron tells us about his work on Star Trek, including the origins of “Lessons,” building stories around pre-existing characters and elements, collaborating with other writers, having his scripts re-written by others and re-writing other people’s scripts himself, tackling the issue of Maquis integration, what his relationship was with Star Trek growing up, and what he thinks about the current incarnation of the franchise. We also discuss how it is perfectly reasonable to get the cheese to sickbay.