The Doctor, I just finished reading your - can I call it? - "Reader's Digest Condensced Version" of your novel adaptation of NoDS and it was brilliant! And, yes, you did reference what happened to the characters from HoDS making it a direct sequel! Wonderful! It was superior to anything "Marilyn Ross" would've prosed.
Gerard, THANK YOU FOR THE HIGH PRAISE! You know, I wanted it to be a novel length work, but it kept working out to NOT be that. I really did not want this to be too subjective on my part. I wanted to try to adapt the script by injecting as little creativity as possible. This may seem like a paradox; it is a creative work, how can you not be creative? What i mean here is, I tried to only put in what's in the script. There were a few places where it screamed for more detail, but I didn't want to get too much into the character's heads. This is meant to be a direct adaptation of the script. Now in terms of the length, this is how I finally decided not to artificially inflate it into a "novel." James Blish and other writers used to adapt TV show scripts into books. A Blish Trek book had about 6 (5-8 I think with 6 being the most common) scripts into one book. NODS at 129 min would have been about 2 and a half Trek episodes. My work is just about right for that.
I'd love for someone else to get more creative and do their own adaptation with more internal dialog and psychogical analysis. As I said earlier, I might expand this work with prequel stories someday. This could be an individual or a group project.