In a matter of months, my book What Are Private Eyes Made Of? will be published. It’ll be my last commercial publishing venture. But as I may have said before, I can’t not write. Therefore, I’ll scratch that itch by continuing to pen short stories that I’ll send for free to my mailing list — or as I like to call them, my Preferred Readers. See below for how to become one.

Back to my book: one of the final scenes takes place at the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour. If you’re a Trekkie, you owe it to yourself to visit Ticonderoga, New York and take the tour.

My wife and I took it. Don’t tell her, but before I knew it would be part of my new book, I told her that it was necessary research to convince her to take that side trip with me. Anyway, the set pieces nearly brought me to tears. It was like living a childhood dream.

You enter through the gift shop, where you can buy memorabilia such as hats, T-shirts, phasers (nonworking) and Tribbles, among other things. At a designated time, the doors from the gift shop open onto a corridor of the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701.

A tour guide leads you through the corridors to the familiar areas of the ship. What impressed me most was that the tour guide appeared to be in her 20s, yet exhibited an enthusiasm and knowledge that put me to shame. She seemed to have a story for every prop on the ship.

The group hit up the transporter room first. It’s also the focus of the scene in my book. There were about 20 of us, and I was surprised to find that all ages were represented. There was a woman of about 30 who was obviously over the Moon upon seeing the equipment. My kind of nerd.

Next came sick bay.

See that thingamajig in the right rear corner of McCoy’s medical lab? It appeared in several episodes and stood in as a few different devices, depending on the need of the plot.

And if Captain Kirk was your role model for how to woo women, you’ll look upon this picture of the bed in his quarters with suitable reverence.

Remember Scotty? Here’s where he worked and often pronounced that “the engines can’t take much more of this!”

The tour ends with the bridge.

 

You can have your picture taken in Kirk’s chair if you want. I wanted, so…

Small confession: I was in jeans and a purple polo shirt. This is a tech trick to put me in their star fleet uniform.

So want to know how the tour fits into What Are Private Eyes Made Of? I’m aiming for a late-summer release.

 

The End

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Stay tuned for my next and last book, where Brett Kovac Meets Cord Devlin.