At long last, an article that I wrote during the recent Creation Entertainment Star Trek convention is out as this week’s Green Felt Journal in Vegas Seven:

The first thing you see walking into McFadden’s at the Rio is William Shatner in his full late-1960s Technicolor glory on one of the wide-screens that’s usually devoted to SportsCenter. Even with the sound off, you can tell in a second that this is the climax of “Balance of Terror,” when his Romulan nemesis tells him he has one last duty, and that in a different reality they might have been friends.

You know that everyone else here knows it, too. You’re in the right place.

via Nightlife on the Starship Enterprise | Vegas Seven.

This was a fun one to write, because I’m a Star Trek fan (this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who follows me on Twitter). The convention itself was a real experience, one that I hope to write more about.

As far as this piece goes, it was not an easy one to write. I had spent about an hour at McFadden’s trying to think of how I was going to tie this all together. Luckily, I’d been watching “Balance of Terror” on Netflicks the week before, which just happened to be playing on the TVs when I came in.

But I didn’t know how I was going to pull it all together until I saw the woman–who at first looked like a respectable middle-aged HR manager or schoolteacher, showing off her tattoo. So that became the emotional center of the story. From there it became a matter of building up to it.

I’d already written one draft when I was sitting in the vendors’ room doing a rewrite. Now my problem was finishing the piece. I wanted to tie it back to what’s happening in Vegas now, and why it’s important to cater to groups like Trekkies. But I was coming off as too preachy.

Then I saw a guy wearing a green wraparound captain’s tunic, and couldn’t help but noticing his Galaxy-class paunch stretching the fabric to the limit. Which got me thinking about William Shatner, and his SNL skit back in the 1980s when he told fans to “get a life.”

Boom. Something clicked in my brain, and it all fell into place.

So that’s how the piece came together. I hope you like it.