The second half of the day brought more in the way of Expanded Universe fun with panels and readings by noted authors Timothy Zahn and Aaron Allston.

Don’t forget to see what happened earlier this morning here. To the jump!

After looking for the first day-and-a-half, I finally found the exclusive Origins anthology book featuring short stories by familiar names such as Janine Spendlove, Bryan Young, Aaron Allston, Timothy Zahn, and Mike Stackpole.

I can’t wait to dive into this thing.

***

To kick off the second half of the day, we started by sitting in on a panel called Steal an Hour of Timothy Zahn’s Life. That’s an awful name. I feel guilty about stealing an hour of that man’s life. What did he ever do to deserve such theft? Okay, I’m done with the bad snark. Highlights:

• Tim got his start by watching a TV show and saying to himself “I can write better than that.” Sold his first novel in 1982, but feared that by 1989 he was going to be out of publishing due to an issue with his publisher.
• Got an interesting call from his agent. Turns out Bantam and Lucasfilm were interested in restarting the Star Wars adult novel line. They liked Zahn’s writing and offered him the gig. He admitted that it was terrifying, because screwing up Star Wars could kill his career. It was imperetive to get the feel right, but the trick was not recycling stuff that the films had already done.
• The first printing of Heir to the Empire of 70,000 sold out in a few weeks. This was followed up with a pair of 30,000 book runs and an insane three hardcover reprints after the paperback came out, something that was absolutely unheard of in the publishing industry.
• We can thank Phantom Menace getting pushed back by a year for Hand of Thrawn being a duology. Bantam needed extra material and Zahn said he could turn the story into a two-book tale.
• The post Return of the Jedi era was getting full, so when Del Rey asked him to write a new book, he said he wanted to try a novel between A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. The result was Allegiance.
• Sales of EU novels were on a declining trend. Zahn pitched “Scoundrels” as a book that would appeal to both old fans and new fans unfamiliar with the Expanded Universe.
• Scoundrels originally had an April 2013 release date. Shelly Shapiro of Del Rey asked if Zahn could deliver the manuscript sooner to hit a December 2012 release date.
• For costume fans, Zahn mentioned that in this book, Winter would be wearing something similar to what Padme was depicted in the Essential Guide to Characters.
• This is currently the last book scheduled for Timothy Zahn. There aren’t any slots available and Shelly Shapiro wasn’t quite sure if they could make Scoundrels a sequel. Buying incredible amounts of this book could get Shelly to change her mind.
• Zahn’s agent wants to pitch an 8-12 year-old age range book.
• Idea for Mara Jade: She was originally a character intended to link the rescue of Han from the RotJ plotline to the Rebellion. Because there were no where near enough strong females in Star Wars, Mara had to be a woman. She also needed to be a counter to Vader, not a character that fell to the Dark Side, but a character who honestly believed she was doing good while in the service of the Emperor. In addition, she needed to be a foil to the farmboy nature of Luke Skywalker.
• Why Thrawn was an alien: The villain in Heir to the Empire had to be a contrast to Vader and Palpatine. This means they couldn’t be Sith or sensitive in the Force and they couldn’t be menacing because they were all-powerful. Thrawn was the counter, a villain that was a tactical genius and could inspire fear through his sheer brilliance. Finally, Thrawn had to be an alien because Palpatine was a xenophone. If Palpatine put Thrawn into his inner circle, Thrawn must really be good.
• Lucasfilm’s feedback on Scoundrels: They -really- liked the idea. Sue Rostoni loved it. Her replacement, Jen Heddle, also really digs it. Apparently during the creation process at Dragon*Con last year, they hit up Wookieepedia hard to research just what window and story elements would work well for the book. Zahn’s son was heavily involved with the continuity research.
• Scoundrels references, of all things, a Marvel comic.
• For those worried about how this book fits into the A.C. Crispin books and Lando’s “You’ve got some nerve” line in Empire Strikes Back, don’t. Zahn has it pieced together. Remember, Lando and Han have a very, very long history.
• Zahn: Somebody likes every little thing in Star Wars. You can’t get rid of the big green bunny, someone likes it. You can ignore it, however …
• Zahn: Canon is what Lucasfilm says is canon. We write and we hope it survives whatever Lucasfilm does next.
• Zahn would be down with an animated Heir to the Empire trilogy. Much of the adaptation that needs to be done has already been accomplished by the comic adaptation.
• While his books tend to be better reviewed critically, his sales figures are lower than books in things like the Fate of the Jedi megaseries. This is where I facepalm.

***

Between Zahn’s informal chat and an impromptu Q&A session with Aaron Allston, I decided to take a refresher course on Mike Stackpole’s 21 Days to a Novel writing method. I’ve been talking up these writing seminars that Stackpole and Allston offer, but if there’s one you ever take, make sure it’s this one. 21 Days is a tool that will go a long way to ensure your novel idea doesn’t die ten chapters in.

***

Day two was capped by an impromptu Q&A by Aaron Allston. Highlights!

• Allston developed a love of games by the way of the first edition Dungeons and Dragons in the 70s. This led to a series of bizarre coincidences that introduced him to Tie-in writing to game franchises. While looking for work at one point, he signed on with Steve Jackson games, a great chance to do some editing work for the company’s in-house magazine. It was during this stretch that he met and worked with a couple guys by the name of Tim Zahn and Mike Stackpole. As they say, the rest is history.
• Mike and Aaron (then working for different companies) caravaned to the 1982 Origins Game Fair where their professional relationship was further fostered.
• In 1988, Aaron was approached by Warren Spector (Yes, that Warren Spector) to write a story for TSR, Web of Danger. Unfortunately, TSR forgot to tell their publisher Random House of changes. Not pleased, Random House cuts the print run from 50,000 to 5,000. Whoops. Silver lining, Allston says that this really was paid, on-the-job training on how to write a novel. On the down side, he realized that he had signed on with the portion of TSR that no one cared about and had no new novel slots to give him.
• After that adventure, he worked on an original novel that he began to pitch to publishers. To his surprise, Bain took him up on it and published his first book. This happened at a very fortunate development because he was burning out on game writing.
• “I am a master of writing time travel stories in which there is no time travel.”
• Allston is the master of stories. I swear, the man has more connections to people than Kevin Bacon. I’m proposing a new game for Celebration VI, Six Degrees of Aaron Allston.
• Most interesting costume Allston has ever seen: a full size Piggy the Gammorean from the Wraith novels.
• Why Syal and Myri in the Legacy novels: Han, Luke, and Leia are great, but the younger characters need to start carrying the narratives. Let the Big Three become mentors. These new characters don’t need to be the frontrunners, but they need to carry the load as well. Syal and Myri also provided a familiar lineage tie.
• Speaking of Myri, it sounds like she’s going to be a prominent character in Mercy Kill.
• “The universe is not 100% Jedi and it can’t be.” If everyone is a superhero, the superheros lose their appeal.
• Both Aaron and Mike felt it was important for normal people in the Star Wars universe to be heroes and get the job done. Aaron says his characters are heroes because they do what they need to do.
• When Karen Traviss left Star Wars Books, the editors at Del Rey asked Allston if he would be willing to finish the Imperial Commando series. This wasn’t his first choice, but he was up to the task and willing to take on the job. Del Rey later came back and asked him if he’d like to, instead, do a new X-Wing book in that slot. It goes without saying he jumped at the opportunity.
• Allston would like to point out that it’s really not his fault that Imperial Commando is dead, that was a choice from well above his pay grade.
• “No one really knows that he was writing novels based on the X-Wing computer games, because being Mike Stackpole, he kind of ignored that.”
• The X-Wing novels were so wildly successful that Bantam asked for four more books. Unfortunately, Stackpole was so busy with I, Jedi, he said he couldn’t do it. He recommended Aaron Allston on a shortlist for three of the next four books. From there came the Wraith books.
• Isard’s Revenge was, initially, the end of the series. During the end of the Bantam contract, a book that was in the work had its approval yanked and a slot opened up. The staff at Bantam offered Allston a contract to do one more novel with the single most bizarre question ever uttered by a licensed IP owner: What do you want to write about? From that, Starfighters of Adumar was born.
• Starfighters was pitched as Wedge Antilles’ Vietnam Adventure. He did pitch another novel, a Han and Leia book set early in their marriage that would reconcile how Han Solo came to terms by being married to a woman that was so far above his social status. Ultimately, he decided that the important thing was to finish the X-Wing series and tie up where Wedge was by Union. It was the one true Wedge novel that described how he finally embraced a relationship with Iella.

Day two? Smashing success.

Be sure to head on over to Galactic Drift to check out Racheal’s take on day two.