njointerview

Featuring:
• Shelly Shapiro, Editorial Director, Del Rey Books
• Sue Rostoni, Managing Editor, Lucasfilm
• Lucy Wilson, Director of Publishing, Lucasfilm
• James Luceno, Author

DR: Welcome all! Let me start with Sue Rostoni and Lucy Wilson, from Lucasfilm. Can you give our readers an overview of your jobs and your involvement with Star Wars publishing?

LW: Sure. I started my career at Lucasfilm way back in 1974. Believe it or not, one of my first jobs at the company was to type the original Star Wars script from George Lucas’s handwritten pages! Although I had majored in English literature at UCSD, prior to joining Lucasfilm I had worked as a bookkeeper in the machine shop at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, so I had no professional publishing experience. At Lucasfilm, after years of working my way up through various departments in finance, I started working with the then director of publishing on the book program for the movie Willow in 1988. In 1989, I negotiated the first deal with Bantam Books to relaunch the Star Wars adult fiction publishing line with three hardcover novels to be written by Timothy Zahn. By 1990, I had transferred out of finance to head up a new publishing department full time.

SR: Compared to Lucy, I’m a newcomer. I’ve been employed at Lucas Licensing since the fall of 1990, when Heir to the Empire was first released. I began as an assistant to Lucy, who was then director of finance and publishing, and worked my way through various job titles until I was promoted in late 2001 to managing editor, which is my position today.

I was involved with the Bantam Star Wars books with Tom Dupree and Pat LoBrutto, the editors at Bantam. I’ve also edited the Berkley line of Young Jedi Knights novels and Bantam Doubleday Dell’s Galaxy of Fear series, as well as numerous nonfiction titles, including the Star Wars Encyclopedia. For the first few years, it was just Lucy and me handling the entire publishing program.

Now, as managing editor, I am available as a resource and sounding board to the other two Lucas Licensing editors, Michelle Vuckovich and Jonathan Rinzler. I am also responsible for the editorial on Del Rey’s line of Star Wars fiction and, recently, the Dark Horse Comics line (except for Tales). I review, comment, and approve every element that goes into the novels, from outlines to cover and sales copy, cover art, manuscripts, all the way to the finished product.

DR: Let me bring in author Jim Luceno. Jim, what’s your history with Star Wars, and how did you get involved with the New Jedi Order?

JL: I was in my late twenties when Star Wars: A New Hope premiered. I went to a matinee screening in New Jersey with my then best friend, the late Brian Daley, who had just sold his first science-fiction novel and would go on to write a trilogy of Han Solo novels and radio dramatizations of the classic movies. The film had a great impact on both of us and became something of a leitmotif in our enduring friendship and various collaborations. Before the Star Wars license went to Bantam, there was a period when it looked liked Brian and I were going get a shot at contributing new material to the somewhat stalled franchise. Brian was asked to outline a novel, and I was working on a “nonfiction” book titled The Way of the Force. Those projects disappeared when Ballantine Books surrendered the licensing agreement it had with Lucasfilm. Regardless, I read and enjoyed many of the early Bantam titles by Tim Zahn, Kevin Andersen, Kathy Tyers, and others. When the license ultimately returned to Ballantine, and Shelly Shapiro asked if I’d be interested in working on the NJO, I made it a point to read the entire Bantam line, in addition to all the comics and sourcebooks.

DR: That’s Shelly Shapiro, the editor at Del Rey in charge of the NJO project. Shelly, what role did you play in this project, and how did Del Rey and Lucasfilm work together?

SS: I was involved in planning the NJO from the start. When I first came on board—when Ballantine first got the Star Wars license and we had to figure out what our publishing plan would be—I spoke with Lucy about the idea of one big ongoing multibook saga. That turned into a meeting with Lucasfilm’s licensing folks out at Skywalker Ranch—a huge meeting that included some authors (Star Wars veteran Mike Stackpole and then newcomer Jim Luceno among them), as well as some of the guys from Dark Horse Comics. From that point on, I became the liaison between the authors and Lucasfilm— everything they did was filtered through me, and I tried to help them get their work in as good a shape as possible before passing it on to Sue for approval. Throughout the series, I continued to brainstorm and debate ideas with Lucy and Sue as we and the authors moved the growing story forward. Sue and I became a real team, supporting each other, backing each other up (and arguing occasionally over creative issues!), and just working to make these books happen.

DR: Who was responsible for what?

SS: In general, I’d say I’m responsible for the books working primarily as novels—making sure they tell a good story, are well paced, and well written and edited—while Sue is responsible for the books working as integral parts of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, both in terms of continuity and making sure they “feel” like Star Wars. But in truth, we overlap a lot, working closely together to make sure the books work as well as possible on all levels.

SR: Right. My input is generally around continuity issues, characters, story elements, what will work and what won’t work.

DR:So the idea of big multibook saga was there from the start?

LW:Even earlier. I got the idea of doing a sequential series of related Star Wars books toward the end of the Bantam run of original Star Wars novels. The Bantam books were very much determined by what each writer wanted to create and were either one-off titles or trilogy series. Very early on we had agreed that it was important to maintain Star Wars continuity if people were to believe the Star Wars universe and its history were real. That meant that all events and characters created by any author (comics, novels, RPG material, et cetera) immediately became historical and could not then be contradicted in any subsequent book, story, or comic. But as the universe got more complicated, it was clear we had to take more control over where the stories were going in order to maintain this continuity. We also knew our readers wanted more sequential stories—rather than stories that jumped around in Star Wars time. So when the agreements for books related to the prequel trilogy films were negotiated and licensed to Ballantine Books in 1997, we included the rights to create a new spin-off fiction program that would be one big sequential story. Originally we planned to include thirty titles in this program, but concerns about whether we could sustain one story for that many titles, combined with a desire to create new stories set in the original trilogy period of history, resulted in an adjustment that reduced what had become the NJO series to nineteen books.

DR: What role did you play in all this, Jim?

JL: My original role was to assist in the nut-and-bolts development of the series. I attended the initial story conference at Skywalker Ranch in March 1998, then a follow-up conference in May devoted to fine-tuning the ideas that had been discussed at the first. Shelly had already written a rudimentary outline of the project, and for the next several weeks I worked closely with her and Del Rey editor Kathleen O’Shea to fashion a five-year story arc, along with individual story arcs for the principal characters, all of which would ultimately be incorporated into a writers’ bible. That meant keeping careful track of plot points and continuity, creating names for new characters, and designing a social structure for the Yuuzhan Vong.

My outlines and suggestions went directly to Shelly, who would rework them as necessary and forward them to Sue and Lucy, whose comments would frequently send Shelly and me back to the drawing board. Eventually, though, we’d all find ourselves on the same page.

I was also commissioned to contribute one paperback novel to the series, though at the last minute my one book became two when changes in the publishing schedule required that Mike Stackpole’s trilogy be compressed into two novels. As the project evolved, I worked with Dan Wallace and artist Christopher Barbieri to map the Star Wars galaxy and the Yuuzhan Vong invasion corridor, and I continued to read and comment on book outlines and manuscripts. After many discussions with Shelly, Sue, Lucy, Greg Keyes, Greg Bear, Sean Williams, and Shane Dix, I began work on the final NJO volume, The Unifying Force, in May 2002.

DR: Shelly, you mentioned Dark Horse Comics had people at the original meeting. What was their involvement?

SS: They had a character that we thought Bob Salvatore could use for the bad guy in Vector Prime.

SR: Right, Nom Anor. The original concept for Nom Anor came from the Crimson Empire II comics by Dark Horse.

LW: What we did at that meeting was plot out the major story points for a five-year book program that would be published from 1999 through 2003, with the big events unfolding in five hardcover novels; the material that would go into the paperbacks was to be developed later. That was where, for the first time, we all agreed that a well-loved Star Wars character would die—after all, the general story idea was a big alien invasion and galaxy war, and we wanted people to feel that there are consequences to war. Once we had agreed on the general plot, Dark Horse noted that they had invented a new character in their Crimson Empire comics who might serve as one of the invading species, so we started with the character of Nom Anor as an early concept for what was to become the Yuuzhan Vong.

DR: How was internal consistency maintained—not only within NJO but back through the entire history of Star Wars fiction? Who was responsible for that?

SR: In a sense, we are all responsible for continuity. Leland Chee works here at Lucasfilm maintaining our “Holocron,” an archival database containing a huge number of entries. As outlines and manuscripts are submitted, Leland enters new data into the Holocron, which is then available for use by the authors and editors via CD-ROM. Initially we wrote an NJO bible for use by the authors, to give them a sense of what was going to happen in each of the hardcovers; we also included summaries of previous NJO books, et cetera. However, after the first year or so, the bible became too unwieldy to keep up, and the Holocron has been the main source of reference ever since. Leland has been indispensable as well, as he has created government flow charts, timelines of events, and various lists of characters, vehicles, locations, and so on. Leland is the “go to” guy whenever esoteric questions come up.

LW: When we first started doing original Star Wars publishing, the editorial group consisted of me, Sue Rostoni, and later Allan Kausch, who was originally hired as a continuity consultant. Howard Roffman, president of Lucas Licensing, was also creatively involved, and we would get input from George Lucas through a series of Q&A memos in which we asked for guidance on big plot points and ideas. In order to track continuity, both the editors at Lucasfilm and the editors at our licensed publishing houses would combine their efforts—primarily based on who had the best memory. Our RPG licensees were integral to this early on, as they tended to publish the most detailed material of anyone. The early system of tracking continuity was for a question to be called out (by phone or by yelling down the room or corridor) in the hope that someone would remember and have an answer—very high tech, as you can see. As the Star Wars universe got more and more complicated, I recognized the need for a full-time person to track the material in a database, and Leland was brought on board to do that in February 2000.

SS: Before Leland and the Holocron, I relied (and I still do!) on Jim, who originally came on board to help with the NJO bible and quickly became an authority on continuity.

JL: I’d like to take all the credit, but I relied in turn on Stephen J. Sansweet’s recently published Star Wars Encyclopedia, Dan Wallace’s, Bill Smith’s, and Bill Slavicsek’s guidebooks, and a slew of fan glossaries and compendiums. And, of course, once it was available, the Holocron!

Early on, though, the NJO wasn’t intended to incorporate a great deal of Bantam continuity. We didn’t want to alienate (so to speak) a new generation of Expanded Universe readers. This certainly was the case in Bob Salvatore’s Vector Prime, and to some extent in Mike Stackpole’s duology. But by the time I was writing Agents of Chaos, Del Rey was receiving emails and letters from fans imploring us not to abandon the Bantam continuity. The hard-core readership wanted one story—and we’ve done our best to give it to them. Given the wealth of background material, writing a Star Wars novel at this point is almost like writing a work of historical fiction!

DR: I’ve heard that the name Yuuzhan Vong came from a restaurant menu during an early editorial powwow. Any truth to that?

LW:You bet. Yuuzhan Vong, as well as many other brilliant ideas over the course of history, came from food.

SS: Lucy and some of us Del Rey people were eating lunch at a wonderful French-Thai restaurant called Vong here in New York City. I suggested using Vong for the alien invaders. But we wanted something more, and perusing the menu, I came across their list of teas, which included a mention of the “Yunan region.” We tossed around ideas and came up with Yunan Vong. We added an extra n, making it Yunnan Vong. But a week or so later, we decided that we wanted it to sound more alien and less Asian, so we changed it first to Yuzzan Vong, then to Yuzhan Vong, and finally settled on Yuuzhan Vong.

DR: How much of a role did George Lucas play in shaping the series?

LW: George Lucas has been involved in all of the spin-off Star Wars publishing, but only on big concepts or plot points. The initial five-year NJO plot outline and early thoughts on who might die were sent to him in the form of a Q&A memo and subsequently discussed by phone.

SS: I would characterize his role as limited but important. He’s the one who said the alien invaders could not be dark side Force-users, that we couldn’t kill Luke, that we had to kill Anakin instead of Jacen (we had originally planned it the other way around). Other than that, he occasionally answered some basic questions for us, but that was rare. Mostly he leaves the books to his licensing people, trusting them to get it right.

JL: Several times at Skywalker Ranch, George was sitting almost within arm’s reach, but I never got to speak with him. But he played a major role in giving shape to the NJO by commenting extensively on the early version of the five-year story arc, as Lucy and Shelly have said. His objection to Anakin Solo being the main series protagonist was, I think, possible confusion with Anakin Skywalker in the prequel trilogy of movies. There would be too many Anakins out there! And I distinctly recall George’s taking particular exception to our careless description of Onimi as “dwarfish.”

When we received his feedback, suddenly we were faced with having to create a new enemy . . . and yet somehow differentiate that enemy from the dozens already developed by various authors of the Bantam books. Worse, we were stripped of the one character from the Bantam line who was ideally set up to inherit the Jedi mantle from Luke. Even so, Shelly and I emerged with a lot to work with, and over espressos in Sausalito and pizza at Point Lobos, we sketched many of the characters who later became prominent in the series.

DR: Like the original film trilogy, the NJO, both as a whole and in its individual books, follows Joseph Campbell’s concept of the myth of the hero’s journey. Is that Lucas’s influence at work?

SS: Not in the sense of him directing us to use it. I don’t even think he knows we did it! But we wanted to use the hero’s journey as a template because it is so basic to Star Wars and to what George has done with his mythos.

JL: We had many discussions about archetypes and mythic themes, mostly at the behest of Lucy, who would frequently have a chalkboard brought to the conference rooms and make detailed outlines of the character arcs.

LW: In order to tell the best stories, we pull ideas from a variety of sources to come up with themes that can then be woven through the various works of new Star Wars fiction. In our big creative meetings, we work with publishers, editors, and our writers to develop strong stories with multiple levels, including: the pacing of basic plot points (beginning, climax, resolution); themes (both mythological and biblical themes have been presented, among others); and individual character development arcs (with specific levels of development and attributes depending on whether Jedi, Sith, alien, good, bad, or other). It’s the combination of these elements that makes the stories fit into the structure people associate with Star Wars. It’s not George Lucas’s decision that requires us to do this—rather, we have learned by observing his techniques and have then applied the same development process in our dealings with our print editors and authors.

SR: One of the advantages of using Campbell’s template is that it’s very familiar to us all, on both the minute and the grand scale, on an instinctive level. We are each challenged in ways that bring out either the hero or the villain. We each have choices and are accountable for those choices and their consequences. We are sometimes thrown into situations we thought we could never handle, and how it comes out is not the point—the point is the journey itself.

We discussed the hero’s journey at length in the first creative meetings. After feedback from George, we decided on Jacen as our “hero” and the character who would undergo the most dramatic changes—in many ways, the NJO is really his series. At those meetings, we charted the character threads for each of the main characters and how these threads would interact with Jacen to show him as an indecisive young man who grows into a strong and confident Jedi. We talked about Vergere and the role she could play. We also charted other characters’ journeys: how Han would react to Chewie’s death, his blaming Anakin, and how something like that affects a family. We discussed how Anakin was the stronger of the siblings, and how his death would affect things, since he was the obvious choice as Luke’s successor.

SS: A template such as Campbell’s can be a very interesting reference for an author, a reminder of ways to keep a story exciting and keep it growing and developing. But I don’t advise writers to use it as a rigid framework for a story—in other words, following it slavishly would probably result in a stiff, unlifelike story. Stories need to grow, to at least some degree, organically, with elements developing out of what has gone before. If meeting the mentor really wants to happen before the call to adventure, for example, it should happen that way, instead of having the story forced into a mold it doesn’t want to fit. Fortunately, the hero’s journey model allows for a lot of flexibility, and is terrific as a reminder that stories move up and down, forward and backward, have climaxes and crises all along the way. Although frankly, this aspect of the series didn’t end up as well developed as I would have liked—probably due to the complication of using multiple authors. Individual books had it, like Matt Stover’s, but I would have liked to see the mythic dimension, the hero’s journey, evoked a little more, I don’t know, cohesively, in the series as a whole. On the grand scale.

JL: I’ve never before been involved in a project where the template was afforded so much conscious attention. I’m aware of the template when I write fiction, but I usually rely on my subconscious to provide archetypes, and most of the time I don’t recognize the mythic elements, the “heroic” elements, until I’ve reached the end of a book and can look at it objectively.

Star Wars is a unique blend of romance and pulp, but what works well on screen doesn’t always work on the printed page—especially when you’re dealing with a series of twenty or so books, and you feel duty-bound to have not only each book incorporate elements of the template, but also the series as a whole. Lord of the Rings succeeds in doing that, as does Harry Potter, though to a lesser extent. But in the NJO we lacked clear-cut archetypes, and those characters who were clear-cut—Luke, Han, Lando, Leia—had, in a very real way, already completed their journeys. That said, authors Elaine Cunningham, Matt Stover, Aaron Allston, and Walter Jon Williams made terrific use of mythic elements, regardless.

DR: Probably the single most controversial aspect of the NJO was the death—some fans would say the murder— of Chewbacca. How was this decision reached?

LW: In the Star Wars novels published by Bantam, no preexisting Star Wars character ever died. It was our policy that no author could kill anyone who originated first in a script written by George. However, we knew that for anyone to really take a new intergalactic war seriously, and to realize that the New Jedi Order was not just Star Wars fiction as usual, someone who mattered would have to die. This was a unanimous agreement. Who would die was the subject of much debate, however. Our first thought was that the death of Luke Skywalker would have the biggest impact on the readers. However, this was not okay with George Lucas! I think it was Randy Stradley from Dark Horse who said, “Kill the family dog—Chewbacca.” In our own emotional response to this suggestion (it made us unhappy just to come up with the idea), we knew Chewie’s death would generate the biggest reaction from the readers.

SR: As time went by, I had more than second thoughts about this decision! I came to think that Chewie’s death was a really, really bad thing. I remember going home and thinking about it and grieving even before Bob Salvatore submitted his outline. I couldn’t believe we were going to kill Chewie. He was so great. So much like the family dog that everybody loves, as Lucy points out. And here we were going to kill the dog! I remember my partner’s son telling me that the worst thing we ever did was to get him the book Old Yeller. How could we do that, have him fall in love with this dog, only to see him killed? And here we were doing much the same thing with Chewie. So I had misgivings about it at first.

SS: We didn’t get George’s permission to kill Chewie in particular: Chewie was simply not one of the characters George said we could not kill. But I think we made the best choice. Not because he wasn’t a beloved character, and only partly because he seemed a difficult character to utilize in the books. Mostly it was because his death would strongly affect every other major character in the series, so it would serve as a unique emotional catalyst. And it did.

JL: Right. We wanted to throw the major characters into immediate turmoil—to shanghai them into new spiritual journeys, replete with abysses, demons, dark nights of the soul, rebirths, what have you.

DR: Were you taken aback by the fan reaction to Chewie’s death? I mean, there were even death threats against the author of Vector Prime, Bob Salvatore!

SR: I talked with Bob often during this time. His brother had just died, with Bob at his bedside. Getting threats from fans was very upsetting for Bob, and for everyone here. It didn’t make me wish we hadn’t done it—Bob created the scene and wrote it with care and great insight. It was such a shock, though, that the readers had such emotion! But if you think about it, it shows the strength of Star Wars and of the publishing program that our readership is this invested in the characters.

LW: When Chewie died, people sat up and took notice that the NJO was going to be different from what had come before, and that the Star Wars galaxy was not necessarily a safe place anymore. I always felt very badly that Bob got the brunt of the criticism, however.

SS: I knew people would be sad and shocked, but I didn’t expect the anger. Bob was very upset at the anger directed at him, and I felt really bad about that. He shouldn’t have had to face such mean-spiritedness and nastiness. I didn’t worry that we’d made a mistake, though. I thought Chewie’s death was heroic and incredibly moving—exactly what the New Jedi Order needed as an emotional catalyst.

JL: I had gone through something similar when adapting Robotech, so I expected a flak storm. Bob, who was brought in late to launch the series, also expected as much. Regardless, he was terribly wounded by the fan criticism, and it’s something we still discuss to this day. Some readers wrongly assumed that Bob had taken it upon himself to kill Chewbacca, when in fact he had been instructed to kill Chewbacca. There was a kind of contract out on Chewie! So, by all rights, the criticisms and threats should have been hurled at Del Rey Books, or the NJO creative team itself. Um, maybe I shouldn’t have said that . . .

DR: Moving right along, how do you respond to fans who complain that they look to Star Wars for an escape, for entertainment, rather than for reality of this sort?

JL: I think it’s a valid criticism, as far as it goes. But the fact is that the Bantam books had taken these same characters through so many betrayals, kidnappings, and David-versus-Goliath strikes against superweapons that we had nowhere else to go. For that reason, we felt compelled to shake things up by undermining Luke’s ability to use the Force, testing the younger characters at every turn, having Chewbacca and Anakin die, sending Han and Leia into brief estrangement and grief, and even giving Threepio and Artoo something to worry about.

You know, what did surprise me was how much flak we took for having Han withdraw into himself after Chewbacca’s death. From the start, the NJO was conceived as darker, more “adult.” But perhaps this sometimes led to our being too realistic in our thinking—going beyond the sensibilities inherent in the films.

SR: Well, we wanted the NJO series to have more of the feel of reality, with conflict and emotion. By shaking up the universe, we felt we were adding an emotional depth to the stories that wasn’t there before, and we were confident that our readers were up to the challenge.

LW:Again, we go back to the original stories that George Lucas was telling in the films. Good things happen and bad things happen in the Star Wars universe—as in our own world. Since we wanted to model the books on some of the same themes and story elements George was drawing on in the films, we did not want to always play it safe and simply provide an entertaining escape in the fiction. Had we done that, I don’t think the novels would have had the same emotional response with our readers. We are always pushing the boundaries of Star Wars storytelling so as to not repeat ourselves or fall into a formula.

SS: Sales for the Bantam Star Wars books were significantly down, the books weren’t hitting the bestseller lists the way they once had: clearly, readers were losing interest. One complaint that arose consistently was that it was nothing more than the same-old, same-old: someone gets kidnapped or a situation is saved by the superweapon of the month. Nothing is ever unpredictable.

There were complaints that all Leia did was be a diplomat; that Han had become nothing more than a house-husband, and Chewie, a nursemaid; that Luke was so all-powerful, authors had to find some ways to weaken him to make any fight fair enough to be even interesting. Right or wrong, we were attempting to address these concerns. The death of a character close to all the other major players was a perfect way to give those other characters a natural and believable reason to reevaluate their lives and their roles—to change and (we hoped) to revert more to the characters we all knew and loved from the movies. It also gave us the chance to grow the characters of the Solo children, who seemed to be disliked by a lot of the adult fans.

I do understand the complaints about wanting an escape, not reality. But I don’t think that one major death—okay, two—is a sledgehammer of reality to an otherwise entertaining universe. Having your emotions challenged is, to my mind, part of a good entertainment. When George ended a movie with Han encased in carbonite, who knew what would happen to that character? We all waited with bated breath, truly worried. And we loved it.

I do regret the relentlessness of the war against the Yuuzhan Vong—and some of the grimmer aspects of their culture. I would have preferred to make them dark side Force-users: that would have kept their darkness in the arena of magic and mystery, which, oddly enough, would have made them seem less “dark,” I think. As for the war . . . Well, we had no idea when we started this series that September 11 would happen, or that we would go to war in Iraq. If we’d known that real life was going to take such a dark turn, perhaps we would have planned our story arc differently. I can’t say.

DR: On to the death of Anakin. Why Anakin and not one of the other Solo children? What was the reaction of the author, Troy Denning, to the angry fan response?

JL: Anakin was our first choice as the saga’s hero, not Jacen. When George nixed that idea, we were forced to rethink everything very quickly, as the first book of the series was already being outlined. For the same reasons we chose to devise dark moments for many of the characters, we wanted to have a personal tragedy accompany the fall of Coruscant. This was not something malicious on the part of the creative team, or especially manipulative, but yet another example of wanting to convey the sense that war has terrible consequences, and that no one is immune to those.

The book that became Star by Star was designed to be the nadir of the story arc. Like Bob Salvatore, Troy knew going in that he was taking a great risk and said as much at a story conference at Skywalker Ranch. And like Bob, Troy was bombarded by fans: all the more, perhaps, because Anakin had played such a prominent role in the Greg Keyes duology that precedes Star by Star. By then, though, a certain percentage of the readership had grown to expect tragic surprises, and those readers grasped that Troy shouldn’t be held personally accountable for Anakin’s death. My sense of it is that the fans were more forgiving with Troy than they were with Bob.

SS: The surprising thing was that Anakin had previously seemed to be a fairly unpopular character, at least judging by what a lot of fans were saying and writing. We did our best to grow him into a hero—I guess we succeeded!

DR: Which death was the most upsetting for fans?

LW: Chewie’s death had the biggest impact everywhere. A lot of people, even some internally at Lucasfilm who were not involved in the creative decision, would come up to me afterward and say, “How could you!” But to counter some of the criticism, we have encouraged more Chewie backstories in comics and other publishing since his death; in a way, it’s made him even more important than he would have been if he hadn’t suffered a fictional demise.

SS: There’s no question in my mind that Chewbacca’s death was more upsetting to fans. After all, he was one of the core characters—part of the basic mythos. But there were no confrontations at conventions or anywhere else. In person, the fans were great. A huge number of people were very supportive, saying they found the death very sad and moving, and they understood why it happened and could see that it was going to benefit the series.

SR: The fans at Celebration II were quite understanding of the process. I sat on two panels with Bob Salvatore, and the fans seemed to me to be polite and accepting of the decisions that were made, even if they didn’t agree with them.

JL: Even as irrelevant as he became in the Bantam novels, Chewbacca was a classic character and, more important, Han Solo’s sidekick. Anakin was relatively new to the Expanded Universe, but throughout the first eight books of the NJO, he was portrayed as the “strongest” of the Solo teenagers. Either way, when a reader invests that much time and emotion in a character, only to have the character yanked away—seemingly at the whim of the creative team . . . Well, anger and disappointment are bound to surface.

DR: You’ve talked a little about how the NJO series was plotted. Can you give us more details?

SR: Almost from the first, we knew two things: where we were beginning, and where we were ending. We knew our heroes would succeed at the end of the series, but we really didn’t know how they would overcome the Yuuzhan Vong. The hardcovers were plotted first, with major events slated for each hardcover. The mass-market paperbacks were initially designed to cover more minor events, but it soon became apparent that the paperbacks had as big a role in the series as the hardcovers. Del Rey and Lucasfilm worked hand in hand in all of this, and both sides meshed very well. There were a few areas of debate, however. The one that springs to mind is the character of Vergere. It was first decided that Vergere would give her life for her cause. Then, later, Lucy and I thought it would be better if she lived through the series. Shelly pointed out some very good reasons why her death was necessary to Jacen’s growth and Luke’s authority, so we agreed (after much angst). Sparks never flew—not that I can recall. We work very, very well together and have a deep mutual respect and trust.

LW:We had several creative sessions over the course of the NJO series development. The first one, which I mentioned earlier, took place in 1998 and (I believe) lasted two days. In this initial meeting, the major points of the entire story were plotted out. Subsequent creative meetings were set up in later years, each time with new authors, where more details for the individual stories were plotted out. The beauty of these meetings was that good ideas were voiced by a variety of people—discussed, enhanced, developed into even bigger ideas, and then fleshed out by each individual contributing author with his or her own voice. Not only were they fun, you could almost watch the ideas spill out and become great, which was a very energizing thing. So many authors ply a lonely trade of writing alone by themselves in a room. Having a forum to build on the ideas of a group of creative participants was, I think, very exciting for all concerned.

SS: We all meshed smoothly from the start—it’s a great group to brainstorm with. Over the course of the series, we averaged one creative meeting a year, where we’d get together with a couple of the next-in-line authors and plan the next year’s worth of books, continuing to develop the loose story line we’d begun with, tweaking it and adding to it—and sometimes completely changing it—based on what had actually ended up happening in the series. There was only one time I recall a serious disagreement, and I’d rather not say what that was. Suffice it to say that Lucasfilm won <g>.

JL: The story arc was little more than a blueprint. It summarized the principal action and underscored key plot points. For a time, I felt that because the NJO was shaping up to be such a collaborative effort, it would be best to plot each book and have one person serve as story editor. That had been my experience when working in collaboration with scriptwriters on various TV series, and I thought that—in lieu of George Lucas himself— someone had to uphold the guiding vision. But most writers aren’t accustomed to teamwork, and who wants to do little more than connect the dots in any case?

Beyond that, carefully plotted outlines weren’t going to allow for enough individual creativity and were probably going to hamper organic growth—the unexpected discoveries writers make even when working from detailed outlines. Oftentimes characters refuse to do what you figured you had planned for them! The reaction you plotted suddenly doesn’t seem reasonable or consistent with the character that has emerged from the writing.

But that’s not to say that the members of the creative team were always of one mind about the changes that crept into the story arc, and as we approached the end of the series, we probably had too many voices weighing in with comments and criticisms, and perhaps too many authors, as well. Some outlines went through as many as nine drafts before they were approved. Some books were canceled before they were written, and others were canceled after they had been completed. Had there been time enough, a lot of inconsistencies and continuity errors would have been eliminated, and perhaps some plot points would have been jettisoned entirely. But all this seems part and parcel of ambitious sagas. Even when there is a “guiding vision,” it’s difficult to sustain the initial vision through five years of changes.

DR: How were the authors for each book selected? How much freedom did the writers have in terms of plot, character, setting, and invention of things like technologies, names, cultures, and aspects of the Force?

SS: Some authors I knew and recommended to Lucasfilm; some came to me, and I had to read their work before recommending them to Lucasfilm. Of course, it’s well known that, for a variety of reasons I won’t go into here, we only use established, previously published, professional writers.

Once an author is recommended to Lucasfilm, Sue reads a sample of his or her work and makes the final decision to approve using that author or not. The writers had a lot of freedom, provided they didn’t contradict existing continuity and that they hit the major plot points we required to keep the overall story arc moving along.

SR: For instance, we told Troy Denning that Anakin’s demise was a part of his book, Star by Star, but he created the setting and action. The same was true with Bob and the circumstances of Chewie’s death.

JL: At times it was like: “Start at A, go to B, then C, and make certain to wind up at D—but we don’t care how you get there.” Lucy, Sue, and Howard did request that we stick with existing worlds and make use of established Star Wars species, critters, and items whenever possible. Still, several characters had to be invented from whole cloth: obviously, with the exception of Nom Anor, all the Yuuzhan Vong. Because the invasion route had been determined early on, settings were often dictated by the needs of the story arc, but typically writers had a lot of freedom in that area. Given that we were dealing with Episode 1’s new revelations about the Force, as well as with an extragalactic species against whom the Force couldn’t be used, there were many, many discussions about the Force, right up to the end of the series.

DR: How did your ideas about the Force change over the course of the series? How much was preplanned and imposed from the outset, and how much evolved as the series was written, shaped by the demands of plot and character? I’m thinking specifically of Vergere here.

JL: Vergere was created at the onset to serve as Anakin’s, then Jacen’s, mentor. At a story conference at Skywalker Ranch in March 1999, we saw a way to insert Vergere into Greg Bear’s novel, Rogue Planet, and thus tie the prequel era to the New Jedi Order. Subsequently, Greg’s novel assumed even greater importance to the NJO and became the focus of Sean Williams’s and Shane Dix’s Force Heretic trilogy. Vergere was also designed from the start to be an unorthodox teacher. Our intention was for her to serve as a voice for the Republic-era Jedi and in that capacity answer some of the questions Luke had been pondering for most of his adult life. We also wanted Vergere to demystify the Force, or at least convey a sense that the ability to use the Force was not simply an accident of birth. In Traitor, Matt Stover not only ran with these ideas, but took them beyond our wildest imaginings.

SS: I personally would like to see the Force return to the more mystical life force we saw in the first three movies, but in the end, the plot and the characters are more in charge than I am, and they moved in that direction naturally.

LW: But you know, we didn’t really change anything about the Force. It’s more how the Jedi understand, think about, and use the Force. That definitely evolved as the series was written.

SR: Well, it had to be that way. I mean, all the original Jedi were wiped out by Vader and Palpatine. Luke’s training by Yoda was never completed. So Luke has always had questions about the Force, as have all the Jedi trained by Luke. Vergere was a bridge back to the earlier Jedi. And she’d taken her understanding of the Force in new directions, too, because of her long experience with the Vong.

DR: I’m still not sure I understand how the Vong can be immune to the Force.

SS: Me, neither <g>. They’re not exactly “immune” to the Force, though—they just can’t be “sensed” through the Force.

SR: This is all explained in The Unifying Force, never fear!

JL: Our original idea was to give the Yuuzhan Vong dark side powers and test the Jedi in a way we imagined the Republic-era Jedi had been tested. When that proved unworkable, we began to wrestle with the idea of making the Vong immune to the Force, which of course led to countless discussions about midichlorians and the possibility that the Force was peculiar to the Star Wars galaxy.

All this was admittedly muddled, and almost every writer had a slightly different take on the notion of “immunity.” The basic idea was that the Vong could not be perceived through the Force and therefore were not susceptible to certain actions by the Jedi: very much in the same way that Toydarians, Hutts, and other species are immune to Force suggestion, and Tim Zahn’s ysalamiri are capable of repulsing the Force. At the conclusion of the NJO . . . but perhaps I should leave that discovery to readers!

DR: Who came up with the idea of a biologically based technology and a culture with a fanatical aversion to machine technology and a value system and sadomasochistic theology based on conquest, violence, sacrifice, and pain?

SS: Bob Salvatore invented the biotech concept, which we liked. We built on that to come up with the fanatical aversion to machine technology. We kind of liked the flip-flopping of the way it had been in the original movies: there, the high tech was mostly in the hands of the bad guys, while the good guys wore homespun and seemed much more low tech. So here it’s the reverse: the good guys are high tech, and the bad guys seem more low tech, although they’re really just “different tech.” The sadomasochistic theology was not planned, and while we tried to pull back on it, not stress it so much (we really wanted it only to be the extra-fanatical Domain Shai—of which Shedao Shai was a part), it took on a life of its own.

JL: the time of the first story conference, I had just returned from an extended trip in Mexico and Guatemala, and during the brainstorming sessions, Del Rey editor Steve Saffel wondered aloud if the Aztecs or Maya might serve as models for the Vong. We began to work with this by imagining a kind of organic-tech Aztec society with a pantheon of gods, rituals of automutilation, a rigid caste system, and a hatred of machines.

We weren’t out to reinvent the wheel. We were simply trying to come up with villains who had the potential to become as interesting as Palpatine and Darth Vader. Our original conception of the Yuuzhan Vong expanded in all directions after Bob Salvatore, working from scant notes, gave them an actual look and created examples of their wondrous biotech. Mike Stackpole was largely responsible for the system of ranks, and we borrowed heavily from Central American mythology in creating the pantheon of gods. Kathy Tyers and Greg Keyes contributed immensely to this process, further defining the warrior and shaper castes and in enlarging the Yuuzhan Vong menagerie of creatures. Yuuzhan Vong words and phrases accrued as the series progressed.

DR: Were you ever concerned with the possibility that you were creating a threat far greater than Palpatine and Vader—an enemy more evil and hence, in a way, minimizing the heroism of the original series after the fact?

SR: We needed something that really strained the resources of the New Republic and could have dire consequences for the galaxy. Something that caused a rift in the Jedi Order, something overpowering. But I don’t believe it minimizes the heroism of the original series at all. It expands it and shows the Jedi reacting to this enemy force in ways they never had to in the time of Palpatine.

LW:I was more worried that fans wouldn’t find our alien invasion original or interesting. I’ve been happy to find that this isn’t the case.

SS: I don’t feel that the Vong are a greater threat than the Emperor and Darth Vader. Different, yes, but not more evil—in fact, it can be argued that the Yuuzhan Vong are less evil, because they are acting from some kind of moral stance, even though it’s not a morality we agree with. The Emperor, on the other hand, was acting thoroughly without morals—out for his own ambition alone.

DR: Would you agree that the NJO series is Jacen’s story— the tale of his coming of age, and the passing of the Jedi crown, as it were, from Luke to Jacen?

SR: Absolutely. It was our intention from the beginning to make this Jacen’s story, ultimately.

LW: Jacen is the focus of the NJO, but I don’t think that makes it his story exactly. Or not only his story. Just as the films are about Anakin’s rise, fall, and redemption through his son, so, too, we wanted the books to be multigenerational, with a strong role for both the original cast from the films and the children of Han and Leia—who are, after all, the future.

SS: I would add that Jacen isn’t taking the “crown” from Luke. If anything, he is serving as a catalyst to help Luke grow into his next level of leadership.

JL: To me, the NJO is about the evolution of the Jedis’ perception of the Force and the rise of a new generation of Jedi Knights to be the vanguard in allying themselves with a more inclusive, more unifying vision of the Force.

DR: Looking ahead to the upcoming Clone Wars series, what are the lessons you’ve learned from NJO that will help make Clone Wars an even better experience for editors, writers, and, most of all, readers?

LW:We learned that collaboration is good. And we learned that it’s a good idea to keep doing things that are unexpected in order to keep fans interested. But that said, Clone Wars is not going to be a rerun of the NJO—we are doing something new. Where NJO was a story that appeared only in Ballantine novels, with the Clone Wars we are coordinating a variety of stories that will be published in adult and middle-grade books, comics, and short fiction. We are also looking at great war literature for ideas and themes and are telling Clone Wars stories from different points of view—some lighthearted, some introspective, some battle-oriented, et cetera. So rather than tell one sequential story line, they will be published as a broad mix of stand-alone, but sequential, stories that reflect various facets of what war is about.

SR: The Clone Wars series is awesome! Readers will get to know the characters from the films in more depth, adding to their enjoyment of Episode III. The comics will have one-shot issues focusing on Jedi Masters and their place as generals in the war, as well as a monthly series going into the war in more detail. The games, eBooks, Cartoon Network animated shorts—all will tell tales set in the Clone Wars era, adding color and dimension to the characters.

LW: Star Wars has always been a blurring of film with print publishing, video games, toys, and a variety of other platforms from which the saga has unfolded. We can all thank George Lucas for creating a world with such depth and then allowing us to play in it! I also thank the great group of talent I have been lucky enough to have worked with, who have expanded the original Star Wars stories into multiple product categories and formats in such brilliant ways.

SS: Fans who experience all aspects of these projects should get the widest experience of the Clone Wars saga, but people who only like to read books, or play video games, or surf the Web will also get satisfying experiences. You won’t be lost if you pick up a book but haven’t played the video game! It’s going to be a huge challenge, though. How do we set all these stories during/against the Clone Wars without being relentlessly about war, which I suspect people are even less interested in now that we’ve had a real one going on? On the other hand, I think people look to art and entertainment not just to escape the events of the real world, but to help them process those events in a safer setting. That’s our challenge and our responsibility—to be sensitive to the needs of our audience.

DR: Are there any plans to take up the saga again from where NJO leaves off ?

LW: Unclear the future is.

SS: We’re toying with the idea, but we haven’t come to any definite conclusions yet. There are still lots of possibilities for tales within the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

DR: What was your favorite experience in working on this project?

SR: I have so many—I absolutely adore working with Shelly Shapiro! She is a rare individual, and I treasure our working relationship. I’ve had fun with brainstorming book titles. I think overall my best feelings came from seeing the books in print and holding them in my hand, remembering conversations with authors and coworkers, et cetera. The journey is the goal, and I really enjoyed the journey!

LW: Collaboration is exciting, fun, and what it is all about. The overwhelming fan response has been the icing on the cake.

SS: I’d say getting to actually do creative brainstorming was my favorite experience. Getting to know some new authors and becoming part of the Lucasfilm team with Sue Rostoni came awfully close, though.

JL: I’m with Shelly on this one—the brainstorming sessions with editors and authors, and getting to know and work with Shelly, Sue, Lucy, Howard, Kathleen, Mike, Bob, Greg Bear, Greg Keyes, Kathy, Aaron, Troy, Matt, Walter, Elaine, Sean, and Shane. The story conferences at Skywalker Ranch, where so much creative activity was being poured into the prequel films. The challenge of helping to coordinate such a vast undertaking. Attending Celebration II . . .

DR: What was your least favorite?

SR: My least favorite experience was reading the letters we received from the fans reacting to Chewie’s death, and then talking with Bob Salvatore, trying to help him cope with the fans’ vehemence while he was in the middle of profound grief over his brother’s passing. I surely didn’t know that our readers could be so ugly and brutal about anything, let alone the heroic death of a fictional character.

LW: Absolutely. The attacks on Bob for the death of Chewie are something I wouldn’t want anyone to go through again.

SS: Dealing with nasty fan mail and watching my authors get bashed on various Internet boards because some fans didn’t agree with the direction their favorite universe was taking. Definitely not my favorite part of the job.

JL: I’m coming at this from a different angle, although I certainly agree about Bob. Committee control can present problems for a writer: what one person might applaud, another might deride. Sometimes it seemed as if there were too many cooks in the kitchen, too many viewpoints, often at odds with one another. As you grow close to a project, there’s a tendency to want to exert control. But with a series like the NJO, you can’t afford the luxury of becoming too attached to your characters, your dialogue, or story lines, because you’re essentially playing in someone else’s backyard, where a strict set of rules apply.

I wish that there had been more time for direct contact among the authors, to ensure that characterizations remained as consistent as possible. With so many writers working at the same time—often under the gun—and the need for manuscripts to be read and approved by people at Del Rey and Lucasfilm, it was difficult to keep everyone apprised of last-minute changes.

I also wish that some of the readers had exercised more patience and trust in what we were attempting to do. Every series, whether literary or televised, may seem to have weak or unfocused installments, but that’s sometimes the result of a roll of the dice when everyone is working to honor a larger design. But these are petty complaints. On the whole, the NJO was a grand adventure.

SR: You know, we had some doubts at the outset of the NJO, considering the size of the project we were taking on and everything. Would readers stick with us over nineteen books? Would the editorial team lose their minds? I’m very happy that the readers have enjoyed the books and have been so enthusiastic.

DR: What about the editorial team?

SR: No comment!