Issue 202 of Star Wars Insider lands soon and among the many articles and interviews in there (including my chat with Lee Towersey and Hassan Taj, the performer behind R2-D2 in The Rise of Skywalker) is this Brandon Wainerdi chat with Thrawn Ascendancy: Greater Good author Timothy Zahn, who discusses 30 years of the blue-skinned tactician.
Star Wars Insider: Heir to the Empire was the first new Star Wars story for some years. How did you first get involved with the project?
It came via a completely out-of-the-blue phone call. I had no idea that new Star Wars was in the works. My agent called me one Tuesday afternoon in early November 1989, and simply said, “We’ve got an interesting offer here.” Then he went on to tell me that Bantam and Lucasfilm had made a deal to publish a trilogy of Star Wars books, picking up after Return of the Jedi and, well, I was being offered to write them. So, we talked about it for an hour and I said that I would give them my answer the next day. Then I went off and panicked!
It was a chance to jumpstart my career in a way that I’d never thought possible, but it was also a chance for me to fall flat on my face in front of millions of Star Wars fans (laughs). On top of that, I had never written a trilogy before: a single story told in three volumes, in 300,000 words. But by the next morning, I had enough of a germ of an idea that I thought it could be possible. The big question was whether I could capture the atmosphere of Star Wars, but I knew I needed to at least try. I went ahead and said yes, and it seems to be working out so far.
Exploring the galaxy since 1978, Mark wrote his first fan fiction in '81 and been a presence online since his first webpage Fanta War in 1996. He currently contributes to ILM.com and SkywalkerSound.com, having previously written for Star Wars Insider, StarWars.com, Star Wars Encyclopedia, Build The Millennium Falcon, Starburst Magazine, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia and Model and Collectors Mart.
He is a four-time Star Wars Celebration Stage host (the only podcaster to have appeared on every Celebration podcast stage since it began in 2015), the Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and the co-host of Making Tracks, Canon Fodder and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
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Issue 202 of Star Wars Insider lands soon and among the many articles and interviews in there (including my chat with Lee Towersey and Hassan Taj, the performer behind R2-D2 in The Rise of Skywalker) is this Brandon Wainerdi chat with Thrawn Ascendancy: Greater Good author Timothy Zahn, who discusses 30 years of the blue-skinned tactician.
Star Wars Insider: Heir to the Empire was the first new Star Wars story for some years. How did you first get involved with the project?
It came via a completely out-of-the-blue phone call. I had no idea that new Star Wars was in the works. My agent called me one Tuesday afternoon in early November 1989, and simply said, “We’ve got an interesting offer here.” Then he went on to tell me that Bantam and Lucasfilm had made a deal to publish a trilogy of Star Wars books, picking up after Return of the Jedi and, well, I was being offered to write them. So, we talked about it for an hour and I said that I would give them my answer the next day. Then I went off and panicked!
It was a chance to jumpstart my career in a way that I’d never thought possible, but it was also a chance for me to fall flat on my face in front of millions of Star Wars fans (laughs). On top of that, I had never written a trilogy before: a single story told in three volumes, in 300,000 words. But by the next morning, I had enough of a germ of an idea that I thought it could be possible. The big question was whether I could capture the atmosphere of Star Wars, but I knew I needed to at least try. I went ahead and said yes, and it seems to be working out so far.
Exploring the galaxy since 1978, Mark wrote his first fan fiction in '81 and been a presence online since his first webpage Fanta War in 1996. He currently contributes to ILM.com and SkywalkerSound.com, having previously written for Star Wars Insider, StarWars.com, Star Wars Encyclopedia, Build The Millennium Falcon, Starburst Magazine, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia and Model and Collectors Mart.
He is a four-time Star Wars Celebration Stage host (the only podcaster to have appeared on every Celebration podcast stage since it began in 2015), the Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and the co-host of Making Tracks, Canon Fodder and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
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