Profile

"I sat down again in my chair, and waited. But no vision came to me: no call from the past, no summons to the future. I picked up my pen nonetheless. What else was to be done?"

I read a lot, watch a fair bit of telly, and can sometimes even be found writing. I used to be a sociologist, but I'm all right now. I collect "Great Sociologists of Literature": at my last count, there were four.

As Una McCormack, I'm the author of three Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novels, published by Pocket: Cardassia: The Lotus Flower, Hollow Men, and The Never-Ending Sacrifice. My short fiction has appeared in the DS9 anthology Prophecy and Change, the Big Finish Doctor Who anthology The Quality of Leadership, and in various other publications, including Gardner Dozois'Year's Best Science Fiction Vol. 25.

My Doctor Who novel, with the Eleventh Doctor, Doctor Who: The Way through the Woods is out now! Woo hoo! And my other one, Doctor Who: The King's Dragon is still available!

Often I write fanfiction, usually under my pseud "Altariel", mostly based on the works of JRR Tolkien, and sometimes based on other things:

deadship: Blake's 7 fiction by altariel: "Cally and bombs and dry, dry wit."
obsidiangothic: A collection of enigma tales (ST: DS9)
best_loved_sons: Tolkien-based fiction by Altariel, Dwimordene, Isabeau and Soledad
tolkien_podfic: Tolkien-based fiction in audio format
My page at fanfiction.net



"The youngest of six children, which familial position has bred within her a blend of determination, fatalism and misanthropy that should warm the heart of any child."
Lucy Mangan

"Why is Punch crookit? Why wil he all ways kil the babby if he can? Parbly I wont never know its jus on me to think on it."
Russell Hoban

"You sing the tune until you can't. Then you sing a harmony."
Lal Waterson

"The monolithic lie frays out into a thousand incompatible truths, and that's what I wanted. But I am caught in the insanity, the stupidity, the meaningless brutality of the event."
Ursula Le Guin

"I thought all my albums were happy."
Richard Thompson

"This old world is mean and cruel
But still I love it like a fool."
Malvina Reynolds