David explained to Syfy Wire that when Marvel offered him the job, he was initially ambivalent, as Ben Reilly had never been his favorite incarnation of Spider-Man, and given Reilly's recent emergence as the villainous Jackal. However, David gave further consideration to the fact that a book whose main character had a skewed, villainous worldview was not something Marvel had historically done much of, and decided that the premise presented itself with opportunities that intrigued him enough to accept the job. David's career as a novelist developed concurrently with his comic-book writing career. David had been working at a publisher that went out of business, and a former coworker from that publisher became his agent, through whom he sold his first novel, "Knight Life", to Ace Books. Although the sale was made before he wrote any comic books, the novel was not published until eighteen months later, in 1987. The novel depicts the reappearance of King Arthur in modern-day New York City. Another early novel of his, "Howling Mad", is about a wolf that turns into a human being after being bitten by a werewolf. Ace Books hired David to write the "Photon" and "Psi-Man" novels, though they published them under the "house name" David Peters, over David's objections. David updated "Knight Life" years later when Penguin Putnam brought it back into print in 2003, and made it a trilogy with the sequels "One Knight Only" and "Fall of Knight", which were published in 2004 and 2007, respectively. Penguin rereleased "Howling Mad" and the "Psi-Man books" under David's actual name. David first began writing "Star Trek" novels at the request of Pocket Books editor Dave Stern, who was a fan of David's "Star Trek" comic book work. His "Star Trek" novels are among those for which he is best known, including "Q-in-Law"; "I, Q"; "Vendetta"; "Q-Squared"; and "Imzadi", one of the best-selling Star Trek novels of all time. He created the ongoing novel series, "," a spin-off from "," with John J. Ordover in 1997. "New Frontier" continued until April 2011, with the publication of "Blind Man's Bluff", the final "New Frontier" novel on David's contract at the time, after which the series' future was unclear to David. David's other science fiction tie-in novels include written five "Babylon 5" novels, three of which were originals, and two of which were adaptations of the TV movies "" and "".