Sandy Schofield is a pen name for Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. The five books that Sandy has published are below, along with some comments about the writing of the books.

Actually, I wrote this book on my own completely, even though it has the Sandy Schofield name on it. The picture of the book on the right is one of the only published copies of this book since it never actually hit the stands anywhere. Yet. It is a young adult novel, and in this series I wrote this book and three others, all under the name of Sandy Schofield, because I was also writing another series under my own name. This copy was a promotion copy.

This was a really fun series, and actually, this is the second book in the series. At this point, I have no idea if these books will ever come out. If they didn’t that would be a real bummer, since the company had some top writers working on the projects. Kevin J. Anderson, Michael Stackpole, Loren Coleman, Steve Perry. All of us wrote books for them. I had a blast writing them and was under contract to write three more in this series when the entire thing went down. I will shout out if I hear any news on this book and the other three in this series.

This book actually originated when Dark Horse Comics, in a deal with Bantam Books. Dark Horse Comics wanted to turn some of their licensed characters into full novels. They hired Kris and I to write the novel. We decided that it would be best written under Sandy Schofield, since we had already done an ALIEN’S novel under that name.

I ended up writing most of this one due to scheduling problems Kris had with another book.

My memory was that it was a blast to write. I didn’t think I would enjoy the character so much, to be honest and I’m happy with how the book turned out.

Kris and I were huge fans of Quantum Leap, and watched it every week without fail. We pushed on a friendly editor at Ace Books and ended up getting to write this one.

We had to go through a couple of outlines before we hit on this idea. Then, when it came to writing the first draft of the book, which is usually my job, I couldn’t do it. It seems there just wasn’t normally enough plot in these Quantum Leap stories to suit my mind. They are very character focused. So I ended up doing very little on this book in the end. Just a rough outline. Kris wrote most of this one and it’s a darned good book.

ALIENS: ROGUE was out first book for Dark Horse Comics. Dark Horse had contracted with Bantam Books to turn some of their comic mini-series titles into full novels. So the editor at Bantam hired us to do this, since Kris and I had both worked with Bantam Books on many projects before.

The comic mini-series called ROGUE was eventually also put into graphic novel format as well. I ended up writing the large part of this book since I liked the characters more and it was plot-heavy, as would be expected from a conversion from a comic book. I ended up really enjoying writing this book.

• STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE: THE BIG GAME, written with Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the pseudonym Sandy Schofield, Pocket Books, November 1993. Made USA Today Bestseller’s List. Peaked at #24. Published in French as Star Trek: Deep Space Neuf: Le Grand Jeu, Éditions AdA Inc., 1999. Japanese edition published by Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Company Ltd. 2001.

This is our first Sandy Schofield novel, and our first collaboration. And it has a long story behind it. Kris was editing The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and I was still editing Pulphouse Fiction Magazine. Both of us were also writing novels. I had just bought a story from the writer John Ordover and he had just been hired by Pocket Books to help in their growing Star Trek publishing program.

It just so happened that Kris and I lived in the country and had an old-fashioned dish for television, so we often got programs on feeds, about a week ahead of the show’s actual air date. We had managed to catch the first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine about a week ahead and we both really liked it. About two hours later, John Ordover called to ask Kris some question and they got talking about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and John asked if we would be interested in writing one of the first books set in the series.

Duh, we jumped on the idea, even though every attempt at writing collaboration between the two of us had ended in a very ugly manner before that moment. Kris didn’t tell him that, thankfully. John had given us a very tight deadline and we were scheduled to be at a science fiction convention for a long weekend right near the end of the deadline, so we planned on getting it done early.

We worked out the collaboration process, both going to our strengths. At that point I was better at plotting and she was better at characters, so I wrote the first rough plot draft and she filled in the characters and setting. We found the method very, very easy on both of us and the writing went quickly. Except near the end, we both caught the flu. So, still recovering from being sick, we hauled one of our very clunky and large computers to the convention with us and took turns writing on the book. One of us would go out to a panel or party while the other wrote and then we would switch off.

We finished the book on time, then had the conversation with John about putting six names on the cover. We decided the print would be so small to make it seem silly, so Sandy Schofield was born.