Star Wars: Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade arrives tomorrow – review coming soon to Fantha Tracks – and over at the official site author Delilah Dawson delves into the writing of the book, looking at 5 ‘secrets’ from the writing of the book.
It was an incredible opportunity to tell the story of a brand new Inquisitor…sort of.
An unnamed, red-skinned Inquisitor first appeared in Charles Soule’s Star Wars: Darth Vader comic in 2017, and that’s all I had to go on when I started outlining. Reverse engineering a character created by someone else is actually a common occurrence for Star Wars books — no writer “own” a particular character. In the Darth Vader comics, we only see a few hours in Iskat’s life. We don’t know her name, her species, or what she was like as a Jedi. Working with my amazing editor Tom Hoeler, I was able to create Iskat from the ground up, carefully considering at every stage how to craft a path that would lead her from a place of innocence and goodwill to the dark side. The Clone Wars are the perfect crucible for destabilization, mistrust, and anger, and it was exciting to show how Iskat survived Order 66, when some 10,000 other Jedi died. The Twi’lek from Soule’s comic is also part of Iskat’s story, but his journey to the Inquisitorius is vastly different — and was equally fun to write.
Creating Iskat’s backstory was quite a challenge, but one that felt pleasantly familiar; I’d already done it in a previous Star Wars novel for a character who has a lot in common with Iskat when it comes to being a powerful, violent, murderous woman: Captain Phasma.
