Actor Andy Robinson sat down for a convention interview on 'Deep Space Nine,' the craft of directing, and more.
You wrote a novel about Garak, about your character. Why? And what was it like to be a writer?
AR: I started writing about Garak because, coming to the Star Trek franchise and being cast as an alien, a Cardassian, I had no idea what that was. I barely know about human beings. But then suddenly to be cast as an alien... it was a challenge. So I decided to write about the character and create the world for the character. I did this in the form of a diary that Garak kept — every day he would write about his experiences and so forth. And then I started going to conventions, like this one, and I started reading from the diary, and the fans loved it! So I started writing more, and I started crafting it more. Like a lot of people, I’ve always wanted to write a novel! That’s when I started working [my diaries] into a book. Then the people at Simon and Schuster, the publisher, agreed to let me [write it officially], and it was a bit of a big deal because I was the first actor to write a novel without what they call a ghost writer — someone else writing it for
