Star Trek Mission: NY Wrap-up
I had a heck of a great weekend at Star Trek Mission: NY.
On Thursday evening, the night before the show opened, I got to show my old NYC neighborhood to my friend Kirsten Beyer. We had dinner at the same Italian restaurant where my wife and I went on our first “official” date over 14 years ago, then we grabbed drinks at the Hourglass Tavern.
On Friday, I took part in the convention’s first scheduled panel, “The History and Future of Star Trek Novels,” with Kirsten, Michael Jan Friedman, Glenn Hauman, and editors Marco Palmieri, Margaret Clark, and Ed Schlesinger.
That night I had dinner with the generous and generally awesome John Van Citters, Kevin Dilmore, Sarah Gaydos of IDW Comics, comics writer Mike Johnson, Risa Kessler of CBS, and author Robb Pearlman at Glass House Tavern in NYC. Then I met up with Kirsten, and we followed Sarah and Mike to drinks with artist Declan Shalvey and a few of his fellow illustrators.
Saturday, I took part in the “Writing for Star Trek” panel with Glenn Hauman, Michael Jan Friedman, David Gerrold, Mike Johnson (scribe extraordinaire of the Star Trek comics), 
and Al Rivera, lead developer and story architect of Star Trek Online.
After that, Mike and I sat front row at the Star Trek: Discovery panel, where Kirsten announced that Mike would be spearheading the comics tie-in for DSC, and that for Simon & Schuster I would be writing the lead-off novel based on the series.
After the Discovery panel, I got to snag a photo backstage with Kirsten and Nicholas Meyer, the writer-director behind my two all-time favorite Star Trek films (among many other fine works), and I got the opportunity to tell him how much I’ve admired and respected his work.
Wrapping up my convention weekend, I brought Kirsten out to Queens for dinner with me and Kara at SugarFreak, a New Orleans-inspired restaurant that has been one of our favorite places since it first opened.
All in all, I would say I had a total blast at Star Trek Mission: NY, and I hope to do it again someday.