Latest / Star Wars Alliance / Star Wars Mace Windu Glass Abyss Interview with Steven Barnes Episode CCXIII

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Star Wars Mace Windu Glass Abyss Interview with Steven Barnes Episode CCXIII · Star Wars Alliance

0:00
Speaker 1: The Force will be with you always.
0:18
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Star Wars Alliance.
0:24
Speaker 2: And of course I'm your host, Clay, and with me
0:27
Speaker 2: today is Katie. She will not be speaking too much.
0:33
Speaker 2: If you're here on YouTube, you do see her. She
0:35
Speaker 2: is currently muted. I'm sure she's about to say HI
0:38
Speaker 2: right now.
0:38
Speaker 3: She Hi, guys.
0:41
Speaker 2: But Katie is recovering from a family illness. I had
0:47
Speaker 2: this happen to me when my daughter went to daycare.
0:50
Speaker 2: And now finally Katie has joined the club of parenthood
0:56
Speaker 2: and she gets to get sick with the rest of us.
0:58
Speaker 3: So I did, anyways, So like, why would you wish
1:02
Speaker 3: this curse upon me?
1:04
Speaker 2: I am so sorry. There's there's a joke that goes
1:08
Speaker 2: around with a lot of parents. It's just like, hey,
1:12
Speaker 2: you know what, we will trick you into thinking, Oh,
1:14
Speaker 2: family in parenthood is so fun. Join us, join us,
1:18
Speaker 2: and then when it finally happens, you start to get sick.
1:21
Speaker 2: The chaos happens, the terrible twos happens, and then you're like, ahha,
1:25
Speaker 2: you fell into our trap. It's it's chaos and you
1:28
Speaker 2: are now in the chaos with us.
1:31
Speaker 3: But yes, and I've got an angry baby in the background. Guys,
1:35
Speaker 3: that's why I was muted. I'm gonna try and keep
1:38
Speaker 3: muted if I hear her in the background. That way
1:40
Speaker 3: it doesn't come through.
1:41
Speaker 2: But just in case now. Of course, for all of
1:46
Speaker 2: you who are joining in the YouTube chat as well
1:49
Speaker 2: as those clicking on that podcast episode, you can clearly
1:54
Speaker 2: see by this title that we are going to be
1:58
Speaker 2: talking to Steven Barnes and he is actually here with
2:02
Speaker 2: us today. Stephen, how are you doing, sir.
2:05
Speaker 4: I'm doing fun. Thank you. Life is good.
2:10
Speaker 2: Now, Stephen. Uh from Legends to Canon. I know that
2:17
Speaker 2: you have written before the cessest uh deception deception Uh.
2:25
Speaker 2: I will be completely honest. Katie and I had multiciple
2:30
Speaker 2: conversations about, Hey, this needs to be on our list
2:33
Speaker 2: of reviews. It is on our Google drive of planning,
2:39
Speaker 2: and it has been immidst chaos in our households. I
2:44
Speaker 2: have it. I have it on my Libby, and I
2:46
Speaker 2: was unable to read past the first three pages because
2:50
Speaker 2: things have gotten a little chaotic. It is something that
2:53
Speaker 2: I'm still eager to read.
2:56
Speaker 3: We need an audio book, but we're both big audio.
2:59
Speaker 2: A very big.
3:00
Speaker 4: I think an audio book exists. I'm not absolutely certain.
3:04
Speaker 3: So it's an abridged audiobook, it's not an unabridged.
3:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it only will have like I think currently
3:14
Speaker 2: on Audible, the abridged versions are anywhere from I think
3:20
Speaker 2: as short as like fifteen minutes I've seen one or
3:23
Speaker 2: like only an hour and it doesn't cover the entire book.
3:28
Speaker 2: Very sorry.
3:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, like the x Wing the x Wing books because
3:32
Speaker 3: I fell into this trap with a lot of my
3:35
Speaker 3: audio books and was getting the x Wing books before
3:37
Speaker 3: they announced the Essential Legends collection, and they were like
3:41
Speaker 3: three to four hours long, and now the audiobooks that
3:45
Speaker 3: are coming out they're like twelve to fifteen hours long.
3:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's it is like I said, it's in
3:53
Speaker 2: my Libby library app, and I am very eager to
3:59
Speaker 2: read it because I will say this and and I
4:02
Speaker 2: also want to say, we were all shocked by uh
4:09
Speaker 2: receiving your very wonderful words when you found us with
4:15
Speaker 2: our review of class of this.
4:18
Speaker 3: Uh.
4:20
Speaker 2: The person who runs our podcast network was the one
4:23
Speaker 2: that shared the screenshot of your kind words, and we
4:27
Speaker 2: were just like, oh my gosh, that's that's And of
4:30
Speaker 2: course people in our network didn't necessarily know who that was.
4:33
Speaker 2: I was like this is the author.
4:34
Speaker 4: Of the book.
4:35
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, this is amazing, this is great, which is
4:41
Speaker 2: reach out and today. So first question, because I know
4:49
Speaker 2: a lot of people are very much into uh a
4:54
Speaker 2: little background with me. I started this journey with this
4:58
Speaker 2: podcast through the High Republic phase that Star Wars has
5:03
Speaker 2: been doing, and then Katie has introduced me into the
5:09
Speaker 2: cult of Star Wars, and so I am gradually reading
5:16
Speaker 2: more and more of these books, whether it be legends,
5:19
Speaker 2: whether it be canon, and all of this other stuff.
5:21
Speaker 2: There's a tunnel out there, there is there is so
5:25
Speaker 2: so much and so our first question for you is
5:29
Speaker 2: what was it like to return to star to the
5:31
Speaker 2: Star Wars franchise twenty years later?
5:34
Speaker 4: Well, it was a lot of fun. I mean, I'm
5:36
Speaker 4: a different person, I'm a better writer, and i'd just
5:41
Speaker 4: gotten finished working in the television show on the Writer's
5:45
Speaker 4: Room for Friday the thirteenth, the Crystal Lake show that
5:49
Speaker 4: Brian Fuller was doing last year, when my agents called
5:52
Speaker 4: me and asked me if I'd be willing to do it,
5:55
Speaker 4: I'd be interested in writing a Star Wars novel. Talked
6:00
Speaker 4: with the editor and you know, so it was like
6:03
Speaker 4: a Mace Window novel. Okay. So I had a couple
6:06
Speaker 4: of very specific questions that I needed to ask Lucasfilm
6:12
Speaker 4: before I could make a decision of whether or not
6:14
Speaker 4: I wanted to do it, and they had the right
6:16
Speaker 4: answers to those questions. I won't say specifically what those were,
6:20
Speaker 4: although if you'd like to, you know, I might be
6:23
Speaker 4: able to answer those questions later and up there. And
6:29
Speaker 4: so it was a matter of I mean, I think
6:32
Speaker 4: that the first one I did assessed the deception was
6:35
Speaker 4: a career decision. Betsy Mitchell, who was editing the books
6:42
Speaker 4: at the time, wanted me to write two novels that
6:45
Speaker 4: were set in prehistoric Africa, and I decided that I
6:50
Speaker 4: could not write those books unless I had at least
6:53
Speaker 4: a year for research and actually had a chance to
6:56
Speaker 4: go to Tanzania and do research on the ground. And
7:00
Speaker 4: so I got a two book contract for those from her,
7:04
Speaker 4: plus a Star Wars novel. In other words, it was
7:06
Speaker 4: writing a Star Wars novel partially to fund another project,
7:10
Speaker 4: so I had the time to do this time. I
7:15
Speaker 4: had a more personal intent. I wanted to create Mace
7:20
Speaker 4: Windu as an actual human being, and so I had
7:27
Speaker 4: a personal investment it wasn't just a career move, and
7:32
Speaker 4: I think that that made a difference.
7:34
Speaker 2: Very very nice, And you actually touched up a little
7:38
Speaker 2: bit on one question that I had very early on
7:44
Speaker 2: in my childhood going into my teen years. I love
7:49
Speaker 2: the process of writing. I've always wanted to be a writer.
7:52
Speaker 2: I do it occasionally just for fun. And I was
7:55
Speaker 2: always eager to ask these questions to others just because
8:00
Speaker 2: I always wanted to know the process. And you kind
8:02
Speaker 2: of touched up a little bit on it. So if
8:04
Speaker 2: you can elaborate on this a little more, you can.
8:08
Speaker 2: If you can't, that's totally fine. But one of the
8:10
Speaker 2: questions that I had that I had written here was
8:14
Speaker 2: who exactly approached you with the Mace windw story? Where
8:18
Speaker 2: you approach for Mace Window specifically.
8:20
Speaker 4: Or no, I was approaching. I was approached for Mace
8:23
Speaker 4: windu uh And Elizabeth Schaeffer was the name of the
8:30
Speaker 4: of the editor who approached me. She is the editor
8:33
Speaker 4: for the Star Wars novels. You if you're talking about writing,
8:37
Speaker 4: I can tell you a six step process that we
8:40
Speaker 4: teach our students. H And you're gonna want to, you know,
8:43
Speaker 4: write this down or we watch it the first step
8:47
Speaker 4: is write at least one sentence every day. Two write
8:50
Speaker 4: one to four short stories every month. That's short stories,
8:56
Speaker 4: not novels. Short stories, okay. Three Finish and submit at
9:01
Speaker 4: least one per month. Four. Once you have polished and
9:06
Speaker 4: submitted it, do not rewrite that story unless an editor
9:10
Speaker 4: reaches out to you and says, we'd like to see
9:12
Speaker 4: this again if you'll change X or Y. Five, read
9:19
Speaker 4: ten times as much as you write, and six repeat
9:23
Speaker 4: this process one hundred times. So what you're planning to
9:29
Speaker 4: do is to write one hundred stories before and submit
9:33
Speaker 4: them before you even ask the question of whether or
9:36
Speaker 4: not this is a path for you, whether or not
9:38
Speaker 4: you have the ability to do it. The doubts that
9:42
Speaker 4: you have, the questions that you have, will always be
9:44
Speaker 4: there in the back of your mind. So you have
9:46
Speaker 4: to have a path in front of you. Like Your
9:49
Speaker 4: job is not to argue with the voice in your mind.
9:52
Speaker 4: Your job is to say, to shut up, I've got
9:54
Speaker 4: another story to write. Okay, that's so important. Path. That
9:59
Speaker 4: path has not failed a single student who has walked it.
10:03
Speaker 4: Not a single student who has walked that path has
10:06
Speaker 4: gotten past story twenty five without selling. Not one.
10:10
Speaker 2: That's amazing, that's great.
10:13
Speaker 4: So composter syndrome, Yes, the imposter syndrome is always there.
10:20
Speaker 4: It's there, and the voices of the most popular successful
10:22
Speaker 4: writers you can think of. You just learn to deal
10:25
Speaker 4: with it. You There's never been a story that I've
10:29
Speaker 4: written where there wasn't a point where I was saying,
10:32
Speaker 4: this is crap, this isn't going to work. That's just
10:35
Speaker 4: a voice that's in your head. It doesn't happen. It
10:38
Speaker 4: has nothing to do with what is true any more
10:41
Speaker 4: than a voice that says this is the greatest story
10:43
Speaker 4: ever written is automatically true. It's not for you to say.
10:47
Speaker 4: It's for the market to decide. So you have to
10:49
Speaker 4: write them, finish them, and send them out. And you know,
10:52
Speaker 4: in that sense, the sincerest compliment is a check that
10:54
Speaker 4: clears the bank, you know, a check from a stranger.
10:57
Speaker 4: You know. What your local writing group says are, what
10:59
Speaker 4: you parents say, what your spouse is is all very nice.
11:03
Speaker 4: But what you want is to feel that there's someone
11:07
Speaker 4: on the other end who has had an emotional change,
11:12
Speaker 4: gift expression that makes your work worth their money. I'm
11:16
Speaker 4: willing to trade my time and energy for yours because
11:20
Speaker 4: you're a professional storyteller, and you have encapsulated something that
11:23
Speaker 4: is meaningful to me if you can do that, and
11:27
Speaker 4: that's kind of you to me. That's the point you're
11:29
Speaker 4: looking for. Art being self expression. Successful art being self
11:33
Speaker 4: expression with communication. You know, professional success is self expression
11:39
Speaker 4: with communication that somebody's willing to change money for.
11:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, very very sound advice. It is very very looking
11:50
Speaker 2: forward to going back to this episode and listening to
11:52
Speaker 2: that over.
11:53
Speaker 4: You know, you got to ask me whatever you want
11:55
Speaker 4: during the during the hour. I'm here with you. This
11:58
Speaker 4: is your change. You can ask me anything that you want.
12:00
Speaker 2: I am. I currently work with a comic book distributor,
12:06
Speaker 2: and so I see these stories, you know, go through
12:09
Speaker 2: our warehouse time and time and time again. And with
12:12
Speaker 2: us being in a network full of things that talk
12:15
Speaker 2: about DC and Marvel and Star Wars, we are all
12:19
Speaker 2: really big fans of the writing genre that goes along
12:23
Speaker 2: with these projects. So really looking like honestly looking forward
12:29
Speaker 2: to going back to this and listening to it. One
12:34
Speaker 2: thing that I always like to ask people who are
12:38
Speaker 2: involved with Star Wars projects. I know that just through
12:45
Speaker 2: the help of Katie and of course Wikipedia and Wikipedia,
12:49
Speaker 2: I know that you have a background in sci fi.
12:53
Speaker 2: So what was your first Star Wars experience?
12:59
Speaker 4: That was the first Star Wars movie. You know, I
13:01
Speaker 4: was in college or I was just out of college
13:03
Speaker 4: when it came out. Uh, and I didn't see it
13:06
Speaker 4: the first day. I've seen all the other movies the
13:08
Speaker 4: first day they opened. That one took me about a
13:10
Speaker 4: week to get to. I hadn't been impressed by the trailer.
13:13
Speaker 4: The trailer was, you know, it was it looked like
13:18
Speaker 4: it was old. Maybe it had been shown a lot
13:21
Speaker 4: of times. It was a little bit faded out, and
13:22
Speaker 4: I just thought, eh, But when I went to the movie,
13:26
Speaker 4: you know, the first time that starter store went across
13:28
Speaker 4: this train, I said, oh, okay, I get it, you know,
13:31
Speaker 4: and I loved it. So that's you know, that was
13:33
Speaker 4: my first experience.
13:36
Speaker 2: Very fun. Going back on your on your sci fi
13:41
Speaker 2: background as a sci fi novelist, what are some sci
13:46
Speaker 2: fi tropes you would like to see more within Star
13:50
Speaker 2: Wars as a franchise, whether it be movies, TV, comic books.
13:56
Speaker 4: You know, and let's let's try science fiction just for this.
14:02
Speaker 4: Harlan Ellison hated the term sci fi, but then again,
14:04
Speaker 4: he worked for the Sci Fi Channel, so it was
14:06
Speaker 4: a little at a little ironic. There aren't really any
14:13
Speaker 4: I mean, so Star Wars is not science fiction Star
14:15
Speaker 4: Wars or science fantasy, you know, it's it's wizards and dragons,
14:19
Speaker 4: you know, with science fiction image systems. And I understand that.
14:22
Speaker 4: So I don't expect them to suddenly start talking about
14:26
Speaker 4: the engineering aspect, you know, of things. It's just that
14:30
Speaker 4: if I write a Star Wars novel, they're hiring me,
14:35
Speaker 4: and so my assumption is that they're smart enough to
14:37
Speaker 4: know what they're hiring. So my task was I saw
14:42
Speaker 4: it as imagine a Venn diagram with three overlapping symbols.
14:46
Speaker 4: I wanted to write a good Star Wars story. It
14:48
Speaker 4: was also a good science fiction story. There was also
14:51
Speaker 4: good Steve Barnes story with the understanding, and then you know,
14:54
Speaker 4: hopefully I could hit that sweet spot where I could
14:56
Speaker 4: do that. But all I can do is be who
15:00
Speaker 4: I am. That's I don't have any other choice a
15:02
Speaker 4: little late in my life to try to be somebody else.
15:05
Speaker 4: If they wanted something else, they needed to hire someone else.
15:09
Speaker 4: You hire me, I'm gonna do me, you know, And
15:12
Speaker 4: that's that's all I can do, is the best job
15:14
Speaker 4: that I can do. So I bring to it my tools,
15:18
Speaker 4: but I don't expect I don't expect the franchise to change.
15:22
Speaker 4: A multi billion dollar franchise is doing something right. They're
15:26
Speaker 4: doing a lot of things right. My issues with Star
15:32
Speaker 4: Wars would not be in the in the sense of
15:36
Speaker 4: they need to have more what if you know, uh,
15:40
Speaker 4: that's you know, they need to explain how a death
15:43
Speaker 4: star extracts energy from a star, and no they don't.
15:47
Speaker 4: You know, they need to tell good stories about the
15:49
Speaker 4: human heart, you know, against this particular background, and I
15:55
Speaker 4: think that they've had a fantastic run doing that. They
15:58
Speaker 4: just just tell really good stories.
16:01
Speaker 2: And I know that you already heard us kind of
16:05
Speaker 2: just gush over how we loved your design for the
16:11
Speaker 2: planet and the multi level system and all of these
16:15
Speaker 2: other things that you created within the story. It was
16:20
Speaker 2: for me it once you read it, you feel like, oh,
16:23
Speaker 2: that's such a like simple, you know, just thing for
16:27
Speaker 2: Star Wars, alien like and whatnot. But being in the
16:33
Speaker 2: story and and.
16:34
Speaker 4: Just look, man, I don't know, the design of it was.
16:39
Speaker 2: Just very fun for me, it felt.
16:42
Speaker 4: I've been amused at some of the reactions I had
16:45
Speaker 4: some you know, a couple of people who weren't in
16:47
Speaker 4: love with the book, said, well, I must have been
16:49
Speaker 4: working on this design for years and I put it
16:51
Speaker 4: into this Oh I didn't. I made it up as
16:53
Speaker 4: I was going, you know, And I was right, you know,
17:01
Speaker 4: I no, And my sense was this that I didn't
17:09
Speaker 4: have one hundred million dollars of industrial light and magic
17:12
Speaker 4: CGI to make the world real in order to have
17:16
Speaker 4: if I wanted to have realistic emotions, if I wanted
17:18
Speaker 4: people to actually have emotions, they had to believe in
17:22
Speaker 4: the world. So what I felt I could do was try.
17:26
Speaker 4: And I don't know if I succeeded. And like I said,
17:28
Speaker 4: it's not for me to say, it's for the for
17:31
Speaker 4: the fans to say. I decided to go with creating
17:35
Speaker 4: as realistic a world as I possibly could, and to
17:39
Speaker 4: have my language and my description of the world substitute
17:43
Speaker 4: for that hundred million dollars worth of ILM special effects.
17:46
Speaker 4: It was a strategy. Was it a successful strategy? That's
17:50
Speaker 4: for you guys to tell me. I can promise that
17:53
Speaker 4: I honestly did the best job I could. I could
17:56
Speaker 4: promise that I really cared and that my every single
18:01
Speaker 4: day was to do the best job I could, and
18:06
Speaker 4: that enough of the fans would be happy with it
18:09
Speaker 4: that it would be successful, for the publishing company, the
18:13
Speaker 4: editor who trusted me, you know, and Lucasfilm, you know,
18:15
Speaker 4: who said yes to some things. Were there some issues
18:20
Speaker 4: along the way? Why why? Yes, there were, you know.
18:25
Speaker 4: But all in all, and I'm very happy. And perhaps
18:28
Speaker 4: a year from now I'll say some additional things, but
18:31
Speaker 4: right now I'm just I'm just happy that it worked
18:35
Speaker 4: out as well as it did. I honestly am, and
18:39
Speaker 4: I'm very grateful for the for having had the opportunity.
18:41
Speaker 4: It was a great time I had. So.
18:45
Speaker 3: I have a friend who listens to the podcast. She's
18:47
Speaker 3: not a Star Wars person. She listens purely to support me.
18:51
Speaker 3: And when I said he described Matago's better than Tolkien
18:57
Speaker 3: described his land and Lord of the Rings, she instantly
19:00
Speaker 3: was like, texting me, was like, how could you do this?
19:02
Speaker 3: I was like, I am not a Lord of the
19:04
Speaker 3: Rings person, so like, this is what I imagine, like
19:08
Speaker 3: if I liked Lord of the Rings, this would be
19:10
Speaker 3: what it felt like the pros.
19:13
Speaker 4: I'm so glad, I truly am. I did kind of
19:16
Speaker 4: have the sense that I wanted to do the Dune
19:18
Speaker 4: of Star Wars I did not.
19:21
Speaker 2: That's kind of what it felt like.
19:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, I did not feel an obligation to I felt
19:26
Speaker 4: an obligation to the fans. I felt an obligation to
19:29
Speaker 4: the studio. I felt an obligation to my editor. I
19:32
Speaker 4: felt no obligation at all to the other writers who've
19:35
Speaker 4: written in Star Wars. Star Wars none, not a zippo.
19:40
Speaker 4: Nice people, I'm sure, wonderful people. Maybe some of them
19:43
Speaker 4: are better writers than me, But I had no obligation
19:46
Speaker 4: to them. They saw things the way they did. I
19:48
Speaker 4: assumed that they brought themselves to the book. I had
19:52
Speaker 4: to bring myself, and if I felt like I did
19:57
Speaker 4: want to respect what had been done in the films
20:02
Speaker 4: that my take on Mace Windhu in the Star Wars
20:06
Speaker 4: universe is based on trying to be consistent with what
20:09
Speaker 4: we saw in the films. But I knew something about
20:11
Speaker 4: the films that informed me this scene does not exist
20:15
Speaker 4: in the book. But I knew that no one who
20:18
Speaker 4: had ever written about Mace Window could imagine him in
20:21
Speaker 4: his underwear dancing around the kitchen making pancakes. I knew that.
20:25
Speaker 4: But you see, I've known powerful people, I've known spiritual people.
20:29
Speaker 4: I've known Warriors. I spent my entire life, you know,
20:32
Speaker 4: studying these things, and trust me, they're human beings. There
20:39
Speaker 4: are people who the only thing they know about Mace
20:42
Speaker 4: Windhu or want to know is that he kills people
20:44
Speaker 4: in Bark's orders. And I literally have seen some reviews
20:48
Speaker 4: where people are kind of up in arms because I
20:51
Speaker 4: dared to suggest that there was more to him than that.
20:57
Speaker 4: I had some attitudes about people who would say that,
21:00
Speaker 4: and let's just say, I felt no obligation to make
21:03
Speaker 4: them happy.
21:05
Speaker 2: It was one of the things that we love the
21:08
Speaker 2: most about the book. You know, Katie has done joke
21:16
Speaker 2: that was That was my big thing, the first instance
21:20
Speaker 2: of this book that really got me to say I
21:24
Speaker 2: love this book. There's one scene where uh through throughout
21:32
Speaker 2: the book, and of course, what we always say when
21:35
Speaker 2: it comes to talking about these books, we will have
21:39
Speaker 2: small spoilers, but in order for you to really get
21:43
Speaker 2: what we are saying and get a part of this conversation,
21:45
Speaker 2: we encourage everyone to go and read these books so
21:51
Speaker 2: that way you can fully understand our appreciation and fully
21:55
Speaker 2: understand the conversation.
21:57
Speaker 4: For your friends, yes, it's it's a business. What can
22:03
Speaker 4: I say is.
22:05
Speaker 3: Support your local library too.
22:07
Speaker 4: If you can't, well I have no I love as well.
22:09
Speaker 4: I have no problem. You can't afford to buy it,
22:12
Speaker 4: go to the library, ask them to get it for you,
22:15
Speaker 4: or just read it off the shelf. That's fine by me.
22:18
Speaker 4: Love libraries.
22:18
Speaker 5: All Right, y'all, we're going to hit our first ad
22:21
Speaker 5: break and we will be right back in three two one.
22:25
Speaker 2: Katie has been trying her hardest on how to exactly
22:30
Speaker 2: word this question in particular, so we apologize if it
22:34
Speaker 2: doesn't really sound that amazing. I've been trying to this,
22:40
Speaker 2: but I also want to add to it because of
22:42
Speaker 2: the joking aspect as well the moment that it's fine.
22:48
Speaker 2: The moment that I loved was when Mace asked, oh,
22:53
Speaker 2: what number is this one? Talking about? Of course the
22:56
Speaker 2: characters in particular, Yeah, very veryarticular. And Mace's response with
23:04
Speaker 2: response was oh, she needs to get a hobby. Yes,
23:09
Speaker 2: one of the little hilarious adult like jokes you could
23:13
Speaker 2: possibly put in a boot a book.
23:15
Speaker 6: But also for the fact that, like a maniac, when
23:24
Speaker 6: I wrote some of these things, it was so fun,
23:27
Speaker 6: It was so fun.
23:28
Speaker 2: But the question in particular Mace is often described as
23:33
Speaker 2: the ideal Jedi, very hardened, very to the rules, very
23:41
Speaker 2: strict to the council and all of these other things.
23:44
Speaker 2: But to integrate a love connection for him with Kinshawn Nightbird,
23:50
Speaker 2: what does that open up for Mace as a character?
23:53
Speaker 2: To you personally?
23:54
Speaker 4: Doesn't this open up Mace? It opens up the Jedi?
23:57
Speaker 4: You know. It's an Anakin said that that Jedi aren't
23:59
Speaker 4: forbidden to love, they're prefering to form attachments. So the
24:03
Speaker 4: question you have to ask is, if they're human beings
24:05
Speaker 4: and they also eat and go to the bathroom, if
24:08
Speaker 4: you have a problem understanding that, or if you have
24:10
Speaker 4: a problem with the concept of adult love, then you're
24:14
Speaker 4: going to have a problem with my book. I don't
24:16
Speaker 4: have a problem with these things. This is just what
24:18
Speaker 4: it is to be a human being. But you do
24:22
Speaker 4: have to ask, if you're going to go down that road,
24:25
Speaker 4: what does it mean to be a Jedi and love
24:29
Speaker 4: without attachments? What would that look like? Under what circumstances
24:33
Speaker 4: would that be? And I would look at it like, well,
24:35
Speaker 4: first of all, it's taking total responsibility, it's caring. It's
24:40
Speaker 4: understanding that you have an exalted position and you don't
24:44
Speaker 4: want to abuse the fact that power in and of
24:48
Speaker 4: itself is an attraction. Okay, if you don't understand that,
24:53
Speaker 4: you can mistake people's reactions to you. Specifically, a man
24:57
Speaker 4: who has a powerful position will be very attractive to women.
25:02
Speaker 4: It's just and if you abuse that, you're a dog
25:08
Speaker 4: as far as I'm concerned. So what would a Jedi
25:10
Speaker 4: be like? Well, clearly the implication there is the woman
25:13
Speaker 4: would have to be very powerful, that there would have
25:16
Speaker 4: to be no deception, there would have to be real
25:19
Speaker 4: clarity on that we have chosen this to share this
25:23
Speaker 4: moment together. And then it would be you have your life,
25:28
Speaker 4: I have mine. You know that those things. So it
25:31
Speaker 4: was and I talked with you, Elizabeth Shaft at my editor.
25:36
Speaker 4: We talked about this about about what would it mean?
25:40
Speaker 4: What would you know? If you can do little golden
25:44
Speaker 4: books of Star Wars, you can certainly have an adult
25:47
Speaker 4: novel set in the same universe. And if you have
25:51
Speaker 4: a problem if someone who has a problem with that, okay,
25:55
Speaker 4: that's okay. Not everyone, you know, to be honest, not
25:59
Speaker 4: everyone mature at the same pace. If there are other
26:04
Speaker 4: issues that are involved that once again, I may or
26:08
Speaker 4: may not be willing to talk about on a public recording,
26:12
Speaker 4: but you could get me to talk about offline. It's
26:17
Speaker 4: a little delicate and you can probably guess at some
26:20
Speaker 4: of the potential issues here. But once again it's I
26:27
Speaker 4: have obligations to the fans and to Lucasfilm, and with
26:32
Speaker 4: feeling genuine gratitude for the opportunity, you know, I'm not
26:36
Speaker 4: here to There are certain things that are not appropriate
26:41
Speaker 4: to bring into the discussion, but my com I definitely
26:46
Speaker 4: wanted to ask the question what would a romance be
26:50
Speaker 4: like for a Jedi? I think that I did exactly
26:54
Speaker 4: what I had in mind. It would be up to
26:57
Speaker 4: people to to make a judgment about whether or not
27:02
Speaker 4: I did that correctly, And I can respect a variance
27:05
Speaker 4: of opinions there. But uh, if you if you think
27:12
Speaker 4: that Jedi aren't human, that's interesting. If you think that
27:16
Speaker 4: that the more perfect that Jedi is, the pure he is, okay,
27:22
Speaker 4: But if you think he wouldn't have a sense of humor,
27:25
Speaker 4: I mean is does it need to sleep, does it
27:28
Speaker 4: need to eat? Does it have a hunger for touch?
27:32
Speaker 4: That's interesting. I disagree.
27:36
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
27:37
Speaker 3: That's such a good point that, like even with the
27:40
Speaker 3: higher public that we have right now, like seeing the
27:43
Speaker 3: different takes on the Jedi there, but like bringing it
27:47
Speaker 3: into the more staunch rule following one that those same
27:50
Speaker 3: characteristics consult play well.
27:52
Speaker 4: I you know, I did did Mace break any Jedi rules?
27:55
Speaker 2: M No, And that's he That's why I think it's
27:59
Speaker 2: so fun is because people can, like you say, have
28:05
Speaker 2: these very large and loud opinions about oh, this character
28:10
Speaker 2: is this way and you can't break those rules and
28:12
Speaker 2: dah da da dah. But like you said, you can
28:16
Speaker 2: do certain things without breaking rules. I think that there
28:20
Speaker 2: are a lot of fans who.
28:26
Speaker 4: Haven't resolved some issues that they have, like I said,
28:30
Speaker 4: as everybody mature is at a different pace, and so
28:33
Speaker 4: they would like to imagine that the perfect Warrior priest
28:39
Speaker 4: would have the same aversions that they have, you know it,
28:45
Speaker 4: And I I believe that a lot of Star Wars
28:51
Speaker 4: fans fantasy is more about the heart, science fiction is
28:56
Speaker 4: more about the head. But I think that a lot
28:59
Speaker 4: of Star Wars fans would like to be Jedi or
29:01
Speaker 4: as close as they could be absent Midichlorians. So I
29:06
Speaker 4: built into that book the things that I know about
29:12
Speaker 4: the path of being a sacred warrior and having spent
29:16
Speaker 4: many decades studying these things and knowing a lot of people.
29:20
Speaker 4: I'm not saying I'm right, but I'm not a guy
29:22
Speaker 4: in a diner about these things. I didn't make this
29:25
Speaker 4: stuff up. I think a lot of people who wrote
29:28
Speaker 4: about a lot of writers who wrote about Jedi were
29:31
Speaker 4: making it up. They don't know people who are walking
29:34
Speaker 4: the path similar to that. They've never tried to walk
29:37
Speaker 4: a path similar to that themselves, so they say what
29:41
Speaker 4: is in their minds, and it goes on the page
29:44
Speaker 4: and it becomes canon for people who agree with that perspective.
29:48
Speaker 4: I believe they had the right to do that, and
29:51
Speaker 4: I believe that the fans had the right to agree
29:53
Speaker 4: with it. I have the same right to have a
29:55
Speaker 4: different perspective. And Lucasfilm and the publishing company we're willing
30:01
Speaker 4: to sign off on my vision. That doesn't make it right.
30:04
Speaker 4: But you aren't talking about a history of people who
30:08
Speaker 4: actually lived, are you. You're talking about a fantasy. If
30:13
Speaker 4: somebody writes about Batman, you cannot write about Batman in
30:17
Speaker 4: a way that would create a path from being a
30:19
Speaker 4: normal human being to being Batman. That in essence, Batman
30:24
Speaker 4: is a superhero. He has superpowers, he has an unnatural
30:27
Speaker 4: amount of focus. Human beings aren't really like that. You
30:31
Speaker 4: can't get there. So people who kind of think, well,
30:34
Speaker 4: if you know his power superpowers, that he's rich, they
30:38
Speaker 4: don't know rich people. I do. They're not Batman. Okay,
30:43
Speaker 4: if you want me to believe that somebody could be
30:45
Speaker 4: Batman with money, first show me somebody who is a
30:48
Speaker 4: world class athlete at the very least, because it doesn't
30:51
Speaker 4: take a lot of money to be a world class athlete.
30:53
Speaker 4: That's a demonstration of a fantastic amount of focus and
30:58
Speaker 4: clear values about that thing. So if I felt that
31:02
Speaker 4: I needed to be limited by writers who are fine
31:05
Speaker 4: writers and good people, but have never experienced anything like
31:10
Speaker 4: the states of mind that these people are going through,
31:13
Speaker 4: and I've spent god, I want to say this without
31:17
Speaker 4: patting myself on the back, or if I preface this
31:21
Speaker 4: by saying that I'm aware that my knowledge is limited,
31:24
Speaker 4: my experience is limited. But what I can honestly say
31:27
Speaker 4: is that I've spent my entire life studying the martial
31:30
Speaker 4: arts and studying shamanic disciplines, and I've known people who
31:37
Speaker 4: were horizons different distant from me in these things and
31:41
Speaker 4: in their commitment to being of power and authority and
31:46
Speaker 4: compassion in the world and their human beings.
31:52
Speaker 2: I do really, I do enjoy also that small addition.
31:58
Speaker 2: It's very quick in the book as well, when you
32:01
Speaker 2: mentioned how Mace is practicing all of these lightsaber forms,
32:08
Speaker 2: but then immediately after just that small comment of like, oh,
32:11
Speaker 2: you know, working on this fighting style and even this
32:14
Speaker 2: one behind closed doors that he's never shared before. It's
32:17
Speaker 2: these small little things that add to the character. But also,
32:22
Speaker 2: as we've seen, or the lack thereof in other novels,
32:28
Speaker 2: we haven't seen a whole lot of hand to hand
32:31
Speaker 2: combat within the Star Wars universe. So adding those small
32:36
Speaker 2: little things also is something that I greatly appreciate.
32:39
Speaker 5: We're going to go into our second ad break and
32:42
Speaker 5: we'll be right back.
32:44
Speaker 4: Well, you know, hand to hand combat, let's say, for
32:46
Speaker 4: the Samurai jiu jitsu came out of that. It was
32:50
Speaker 4: just until you can get your hands on a sword,
32:52
Speaker 4: you lose your sword in the battlefield. You use hand
32:55
Speaker 4: to hand combat to do to do the best you can.
32:59
Speaker 4: But if you think that anybody can be certain fighting
33:03
Speaker 4: empty handed against a three foot razor blade, you are naive,
33:07
Speaker 4: my friend. But so the idea that you might have
33:11
Speaker 4: to do. That is makes all the sense in the
33:15
Speaker 4: world to me if you look at the way warriors prepared.
33:18
Speaker 4: Because you can't always have a lightsaber, what are you
33:21
Speaker 4: going to do? Or you can't always use a lightsaber,
33:24
Speaker 4: what are you going to do? There are gonna be
33:25
Speaker 4: situations that do not call for that. What are you
33:29
Speaker 4: going to do? So, having studied Filipino arts as well
33:35
Speaker 4: as other things, the movement of the Filipino arts is
33:40
Speaker 4: consistent between empty hands, single stick, double stick, staff, sword,
33:44
Speaker 4: It's all the same thing. Knife, They're the same movements
33:48
Speaker 4: extrapolated or used differently depending upon the implement of the situation.
33:53
Speaker 4: So I decided to consider that there to be a
33:57
Speaker 4: continuity of motion and thought between those different levels. Traditionally,
34:05
Speaker 4: most martial arts teach the empty hand before they teach weapon.
34:11
Speaker 4: Filipino art martial arts teach weapon before empty hand. But however,
34:16
Speaker 4: you want to look at it, that's the now, that's
34:18
Speaker 4: the complete circle, empty hand, weapon and the Marines say
34:23
Speaker 4: it clearly, the weapon is the is the man or
34:26
Speaker 4: the woman. If the weapon is the mind, everything else
34:28
Speaker 4: is just tools. So you have to be able to
34:31
Speaker 4: use dedicated tools. But you also have to be able
34:34
Speaker 4: to improvise. You know, what are you gonna do? I
34:36
Speaker 4: lose my lightsaber? Oops? Well no, I mean well then
34:39
Speaker 4: you use the force and say, well that's that's that's cool.
34:42
Speaker 4: But on what planet do you not strengthen your body?
34:49
Speaker 4: You know, and if you have a strong body and
34:51
Speaker 4: the same thought patterns about strategy and tactics and distance
34:56
Speaker 4: and rhythm and timing and focus and you know, all
34:58
Speaker 4: those different things psychological time distortion, all the things that
35:03
Speaker 4: factor into real martial arts. If it doesn't make any
35:07
Speaker 4: sense to me that the jed I would have on
35:09
Speaker 4: our movement, it just doesn't. It simply does not track
35:12
Speaker 4: with what human beings actually are.
35:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, very much. So, you know, kind of got a
35:20
Speaker 2: little loss there with the characterization. But no, no, no, it
35:25
Speaker 2: actually goes directly from of course, our main character being
35:28
Speaker 2: Mace Windhu. Katie had a really good question, and this
35:33
Speaker 2: villain absolutely terrifying. How did you go about designing Truelock
35:41
Speaker 2: as a character and designing his motivations throughout?
35:46
Speaker 4: Understand something? That book is chock full of references, you know,
35:51
Speaker 4: to other books, other movies, stuff like that. If you
35:55
Speaker 4: didn't recognize that the basic plot pattern is a fistful
35:59
Speaker 4: of dollars, you know, or Jimbo. You know. I said
36:03
Speaker 4: it clearly in the you know, in the afterwards. But
36:08
Speaker 4: in the nineteen sixties there was a series of books
36:13
Speaker 4: called Modesty Blaze, the best female action character I've ever seen,
36:18
Speaker 4: the sort of created to be a female James Bond,
36:21
Speaker 4: but I think in many ways much more interesting. Written
36:25
Speaker 4: by Peter O'Donnell, who became a friend. I corresponded with
36:28
Speaker 4: him for decades. He wrote like ten novels and wrote
36:34
Speaker 4: a comic strip that ran for over forty years, and
36:37
Speaker 4: he wrote all of them. And I've got the entire thing.
36:39
Speaker 4: I've read through the whole thing like five times.
36:41
Speaker 3: Wow.
36:41
Speaker 4: And in the second Modesty Blaze novel, which was called Sabretooth,
36:48
Speaker 4: there were a pair of Siamese twins who had been
36:51
Speaker 4: separated with surgery, but linked themselves together to form, you know,
37:00
Speaker 4: and fought together if they if they were not killing
37:03
Speaker 4: other people, they were constantly fighting each other. And their
37:07
Speaker 4: names were Chew and Lock. So you know, it's very
37:12
Speaker 4: clearly it's just like I just having fun, you know.
37:14
Speaker 4: I just thought, well, you know, what would be a
37:17
Speaker 4: good adversary? How about someone who could fight with two
37:20
Speaker 4: with four arms and four legs, twice as strong, with
37:25
Speaker 4: a demi psychic link that enabled them to think. Originally
37:30
Speaker 4: they were also for sensitive, but I dialed that back.
37:34
Speaker 4: And then once I tend to go from the outside
37:39
Speaker 4: to the inside or the inside to the outside. Once
37:41
Speaker 4: I imagine that, then I have to ask myself, well,
37:45
Speaker 4: why would they do that? What motivation would they do that?
37:48
Speaker 4: And so it starts suggesting motivations and cultural things and
37:52
Speaker 4: so forth. Within the Star Wars universe, this, you know,
37:55
Speaker 4: that's kind of fun. The same thing with creating medagos.
37:58
Speaker 4: You know, Star Wars thrives on monocultures and monoecologies that
38:05
Speaker 4: you go to a planet and has one dominant feel
38:07
Speaker 4: to it. So one of the first things I wanted
38:10
Speaker 4: to do was to create something that was unique I
38:13
Speaker 4: hadn't seen before in the Star Wars universe. And so
38:15
Speaker 4: I thought about a geode. Okay, And so I said, well,
38:18
Speaker 4: what would a civilization be like inside a geod? It starts,
38:21
Speaker 4: it starts suggesting questions, okay. And then as a science
38:27
Speaker 4: fiction novelist by trade by training, once I go there,
38:32
Speaker 4: I start asking, well, how do the people inside here live.
38:36
Speaker 4: How do they make a living? Where do they get
38:38
Speaker 4: their materials? How do they get their water? You know?
38:40
Speaker 4: And I asked myself questions like that with a creature,
38:46
Speaker 4: you know, I'll ask or a monster quote unquote a
38:48
Speaker 4: monster as an animal, right, you just need to turn
38:52
Speaker 4: the lights on. You ask how does it reproduce? What
38:56
Speaker 4: does it eat? What is it psychology? What it's motivation.
38:59
Speaker 4: So you go through that with Chew and Lock, these
39:01
Speaker 4: two different alien beings, and you start coming up with answers,
39:05
Speaker 4: and those answers go back and forth between what are
39:07
Speaker 4: the things I want them to be able to do?
39:09
Speaker 4: Clearly I want to create a threat, a real threat,
39:15
Speaker 4: something that would that would test Mace wind do at
39:19
Speaker 4: his very best. Okay, so that we all know we're
39:22
Speaker 4: waiting for them to eventually collide. Okay, the entire you know,
39:26
Speaker 4: we understand the the tropes of action. You know that
39:30
Speaker 4: we want to see the big showdown. Okay. So it
39:33
Speaker 4: had to be something where you had to ask yourself, God,
39:36
Speaker 4: you know, how how's can can Mace survive this? How
39:40
Speaker 4: do you create something like that? Uh? And so as
39:45
Speaker 4: I moved from creating a stick figure to creating fully
39:50
Speaker 4: fleshed out people. That was just in the process of writing.
39:53
Speaker 4: I didn't, like, you know, write an encyclopedia about their
39:56
Speaker 4: past or anything. Before I got started, I started with
39:59
Speaker 4: what I knewsed start writing, and then as I wrote
40:01
Speaker 4: and rewrote, I realized, oh, well, this would have to
40:04
Speaker 4: be true here, this would have to be true there.
40:06
Speaker 4: You know. It's it's like watch I write, like watching
40:09
Speaker 4: a polaroid picture develop I start with a basic idea.
40:16
Speaker 4: I go from there to taking everything I know about
40:19
Speaker 4: and putting on three by five cards and post it
40:21
Speaker 4: notes and whiteboards and anything else I can do. And
40:24
Speaker 4: I start building up an outline in a Google on
40:27
Speaker 4: a Google Doc, and I take everything I know and
40:30
Speaker 4: put it there. I'm not writing a book yet, okay.
40:32
Speaker 4: And then when it gets to about four pages, I'll
40:36
Speaker 4: have a couple people read it. I think, if the
40:38
Speaker 4: story went like this with this work, and if I
40:42
Speaker 4: can get a positive response, then I take that and
40:45
Speaker 4: I drop it into a screenwriting program and I wrote
40:48
Speaker 4: a script. I wrote a two hundred page script for
40:52
Speaker 4: this book. Because a script has dialogue and plot points.
40:57
Speaker 4: What you don't have is complex language and image systems
41:00
Speaker 4: and so forth. The poetics of language that you use.
41:03
Speaker 4: It's just does the story work? You know? And I
41:06
Speaker 4: in a month, I can write a script that it
41:08
Speaker 4: would take me take me a year to write the book.
41:10
Speaker 4: But when I've got that, I can say does this work?
41:14
Speaker 4: You know? And I there are other tricks that I
41:17
Speaker 4: use to test that, to look at the way different
41:20
Speaker 4: aspects of the story interact with each other. You can
41:23
Speaker 4: find out more about my writing process at www dot life,
41:26
Speaker 4: writing premium dot com. Anyway, once I've got that, then
41:33
Speaker 4: I take that the script and I transform it into
41:36
Speaker 4: a novel, and then I polish that. I already know
41:39
Speaker 4: the story works. Now it's just a matter of heightening
41:41
Speaker 4: the language and bringing things up and so forth. So
41:44
Speaker 4: at every step it was like Chew and Locke, What
41:48
Speaker 4: are they? Where do they come from? What do they want?
41:50
Speaker 4: You know? Why are they a threat? You know? Why?
41:53
Speaker 4: How how can I create some genuine tension for Mace?
41:57
Speaker 4: You know that we're not sure whether or not he's
41:59
Speaker 4: going to survive or someone else that we care about
42:03
Speaker 4: might not se you know. So anyway, it's long answer
42:06
Speaker 4: to a short question.
42:07
Speaker 5: And we're about to jump into our third ad, y'all.
42:11
Speaker 5: We promise we'll be right back, we promise well.
42:14
Speaker 2: And you did an excellent job with U with creating
42:19
Speaker 2: those connections, not only to Mace, but I think you
42:22
Speaker 2: conveyed a very like found relationship to help the readers
42:29
Speaker 2: want to be with these characters throughout.
42:31
Speaker 4: The entire I hope so, I, like I said, I
42:34
Speaker 4: honestly tried. You know that I love the fans. I
42:38
Speaker 4: love the fans, I love you guys. I totally get
42:42
Speaker 4: the power and the and the the value of having
42:45
Speaker 4: an enthusiasm. You know that. I think the Star Wars
42:49
Speaker 4: became what it is at one particular moment, and that
42:52
Speaker 4: was the moment. And I always say this, said this
42:55
Speaker 4: a lot. Where Luke is on the Death Star, you know,
42:58
Speaker 4: is going down the trench on the Death Are and
43:01
Speaker 4: you know his friends have been killed, and John Williams's
43:03
Speaker 4: music is going boom boom boom, and you know, Grandma
43:07
Speaker 4: Tarkt is saying fire up the laser, and Carrie Fisher
43:10
Speaker 4: with the cinnamon buns on the side of her head
43:12
Speaker 4: is looking very intensive and it looks like all is lost,
43:16
Speaker 4: all is lost, and things are happening so fast that
43:19
Speaker 4: you can't keep up. We had never seen effects like that.
43:23
Speaker 4: We'd never seen an avalanche of images and sound and emotions.
43:30
Speaker 4: It was absolutely overwhelming future shock. And at the midst
43:34
Speaker 4: of all of that, you heard Obi Wan's voice saying,
43:38
Speaker 4: trust your feelings. That was the moment at which people
43:44
Speaker 4: all over the world felt a chill. Could we all
43:47
Speaker 4: feel like our lives out of control and things are
43:49
Speaker 4: happening too fast? But to feel that in the in
43:52
Speaker 4: the middle of all of that, your emotions, your heart,
43:56
Speaker 4: you as an individual human being still matter. That is
44:00
Speaker 4: moment in which Star Wars went to a completely different level.
44:04
Speaker 4: And all I had to do was to understand.
44:07
Speaker 2: That, Uh, Katie actually had a really fun question to me.
44:16
Speaker 2: We love the quirkiness of the in universe. Just uh,
44:25
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna go ahead and say it. The game's
44:28
Speaker 2: Jajarik was mentioned in this book, and so the question
44:33
Speaker 2: is why was it so important to include the game
44:38
Speaker 2: Dajarik for one of the Jedi's most serious characters, like.
44:42
Speaker 4: Max, Because it enabled me to do a bunch of
44:47
Speaker 4: different things. It enabled me to talk about his relationship
44:50
Speaker 4: with Qui Gon. It enabled me to take Mace down
44:54
Speaker 4: a pick. He wasn't the best at everything that humanizes him.
44:59
Speaker 4: It was better than him at this game. Okay. It
45:01
Speaker 4: enabled me to have a way to explain why he
45:04
Speaker 4: was taking the mission. But more importantly than that, it
45:08
Speaker 4: enabled me to talk about something that was canon within
45:12
Speaker 4: Star Wars that suggested an organizing factor for the strategy
45:18
Speaker 4: that Mace had to use. That the idea is he
45:21
Speaker 4: had to set the pieces up and then he knew
45:23
Speaker 4: that once the game started, once the war started, he
45:28
Speaker 4: could not control it, because war is chaos. It also
45:32
Speaker 4: enabled me to create an organizing factor for the visualization
45:36
Speaker 4: of a complex environment. It would say, well, imagine a
45:40
Speaker 4: stack of the Jarik boards. You know, I had to
45:44
Speaker 4: There were so many things I had to try to
45:46
Speaker 4: accomplish that. What you look for is what I call
45:51
Speaker 4: complex equivalents. A when you have a huge amount of data,
45:55
Speaker 4: you look for the patterns that are similar within that
45:59
Speaker 4: and then what symbol can you use that represents a
46:03
Speaker 4: vast amount of information. Because if people already feel like
46:06
Speaker 4: they enjoy and understand Djarre because you saw it in
46:09
Speaker 4: the first movie, right, then if we if we can
46:13
Speaker 4: deepen that a little bit, now you have an organizing
46:16
Speaker 4: structure and all this information I'm giving you will fit
46:18
Speaker 4: into something and the process of learning is associating something
46:22
Speaker 4: you don't know with something that you do. So by
46:25
Speaker 4: using DJAR, not only could I deepen the Star Wars universe,
46:28
Speaker 4: I can use as an organizing structure. I can use
46:30
Speaker 4: it to suggest strategy. I could use it to talk
46:32
Speaker 4: about its friendship, on and on and on and on.
46:36
Speaker 4: This is the kind of thing that I look for
46:37
Speaker 4: with in a story. It's not just these pieces, but
46:40
Speaker 4: how do all pieces connect in a way that allows
46:43
Speaker 4: the reader to feel their way through the story rather
46:48
Speaker 4: than thinking their way through the story.
46:51
Speaker 2: Yeah.
46:51
Speaker 4: I hope that answers your question.
46:53
Speaker 2: Oh no, it does.
46:55
Speaker 4: You can say this is a game for me. I
46:58
Speaker 4: love this game, and we love writing. I love storytelling.
47:02
Speaker 2: We we love the passion that that comes from these authors.
47:08
Speaker 2: And you could really tell by these interviews that I
47:13
Speaker 2: hope that you get the chance to do one. But
47:16
Speaker 2: recently Star Wars has been doing these almost like how
47:21
Speaker 2: Variety does the actor with actors and they interview each other.
47:25
Speaker 2: Star Wars has been doing these small little interviews with
47:30
Speaker 2: with the author to authors. So if you ever get
47:33
Speaker 2: the opportunity to do one, I would absolutely love to
47:36
Speaker 2: hear you talk about writing process and Star Wars with
47:40
Speaker 2: some of these other.
47:42
Speaker 4: You said, you know, ask me anything you want.
47:47
Speaker 2: So one question that might be a little controversial, just
47:51
Speaker 2: because of the debates of of course the breaking of
47:58
Speaker 2: the rules and what are Jedi supposed to be versus
48:01
Speaker 2: their duty and all of these other things. Obviously, the
48:05
Speaker 2: movies can't be changed. It's happened, we've all seen them.
48:09
Speaker 2: You can't go back and change those. But with your
48:13
Speaker 2: detailed relationship for Mace with Kinshan, do you think anything
48:18
Speaker 2: would have changed for Anakin if he had confessed with
48:22
Speaker 2: Mace's feelings for Padme.
48:27
Speaker 4: What a great question. Yes, I think that if he
48:32
Speaker 4: had confessed his feelings for Padme, something would have to
48:36
Speaker 4: have changed. How would it have changed is another question
48:39
Speaker 4: that I do not know, but it is obvious that
48:41
Speaker 4: it would have changed things depending on who he talked to,
48:46
Speaker 4: the moment which he talked to them, you know, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Anakin,
48:53
Speaker 4: you know, working backwards from Anakin becoming Darth Vader, it
48:57
Speaker 4: was obvious that there was no way out for him
49:00
Speaker 4: him that once you've established that he's Darth Vader, and
49:03
Speaker 4: then all you could do is say, and this is
49:05
Speaker 4: how he became Darth Vader. So if you know the endpoint,
49:11
Speaker 4: all that's left is how did this happen? What were
49:15
Speaker 4: his initial flaws, What were the circumstances that exacerbated those flaws,
49:22
Speaker 4: What were the points in which he almost saved himself
49:25
Speaker 4: and almost pulled himself out of it? What was the consequence?
49:29
Speaker 4: I mean, the first those first six movies are the
49:32
Speaker 4: story of the Skywalker family very directly, where Luke and
49:41
Speaker 4: Darth and Anakin are the major players. But they're also
49:47
Speaker 4: puppets of fate because we know where the story ends.
49:51
Speaker 4: So the job of an author is to acknowledge that
49:57
Speaker 4: your characters are puppets controlled by fate, but to give
50:00
Speaker 4: them enough inwardness that the strings don't show, or the
50:05
Speaker 4: string we can forget the puppet strings and just embrace
50:09
Speaker 4: the story. Mm hm, you know, suspension of disbelief. We
50:14
Speaker 4: know that Anakin has to end there. We give him
50:18
Speaker 4: certain flaws about love and connection and inability to save
50:22
Speaker 4: his mother, and his anger issues and you know, love
50:26
Speaker 4: with an older woman and having to keep it secret,
50:29
Speaker 4: and all these things have to contribute to our sense
50:33
Speaker 4: of he's caught in a trap he can't get out
50:35
Speaker 4: he's going to end up Darth Vader, you know, and
50:38
Speaker 4: he's weird. Al Yankovic said, you know, maybe later he'll
50:45
Speaker 4: be Vader.
50:46
Speaker 2: Anyway, I have we have two more questions before before
50:53
Speaker 2: we let you go, because I do know you're on
50:55
Speaker 2: a little bit of a time string we're getting.
50:57
Speaker 4: Yeah, I might be able to give you another a
50:58
Speaker 4: couple of extra minutes if you have some good questions
51:01
Speaker 4: from people who are watching, you know.
51:02
Speaker 2: So otherwise this.
51:04
Speaker 4: Is burn.
51:07
Speaker 5: And this should be our final ad break. So y'all,
51:11
Speaker 5: thanks for bearing with us. We appreciate y'all. We'll be
51:14
Speaker 5: right back.
51:15
Speaker 2: One deep cut that we that I found out after
51:21
Speaker 2: the fact, because of course Katie, with her great knowledge
51:26
Speaker 2: of legend books and everything else, you added into the
51:31
Speaker 2: very end of this book in the last chapter Yoda
51:36
Speaker 2: training with Nakata Nakata del Gormo. Why add this to
51:45
Speaker 2: this book now?
51:46
Speaker 4: Because Lucasfilm felt it was time to establish that to
51:51
Speaker 4: establish very simple that is, writing within a immedia tie
51:58
Speaker 4: in or an established world is a little bit like
52:02
Speaker 4: Fred Astaire being given a stage and some props and
52:06
Speaker 4: he looks at this and says, how do I create art?
52:09
Speaker 4: I had the job of threading, a lot of moving needles,
52:13
Speaker 4: and what remained constant was my commitment to telling the
52:18
Speaker 4: best story that I could, and that means that I
52:21
Speaker 4: have to make these people happy. I'm a tiny little
52:25
Speaker 4: cog in a great big machine and I understand that,
52:29
Speaker 4: and it does not hurt my ego. You know, if
52:32
Speaker 4: I went into this, you know, I knew the job
52:36
Speaker 4: was dangerous when I took it, as Super Chicken said,
52:38
Speaker 4: Saint super Chicken. So it was what do you need
52:43
Speaker 4: from me? Am I prepared to give this to you.
52:46
Speaker 4: If I'm not, I would say no. But if I am,
52:49
Speaker 4: then I follow the rules, and if I have an
52:52
Speaker 4: argument with them, I try to argue as little as
52:56
Speaker 4: possible and to save all of my my capital for
53:02
Speaker 4: the moment which I feel that that the argument must
53:06
Speaker 4: be one. I will give up many things. There were things,
53:10
Speaker 4: there were things I did with that book that that
53:14
Speaker 4: I there's one thing I will say when we're off
53:17
Speaker 4: the air, if you're still on, if you want to
53:19
Speaker 4: hear that, you will love But I can't I'm not
53:22
Speaker 4: going to say it publicly. Uh, but it's a it's
53:24
Speaker 4: a it's a good thing. It's one of those Oh
53:26
Speaker 4: damn I promised the fans would have loved it, but
53:29
Speaker 4: it was not to be. I can you know, this
53:34
Speaker 4: is the business. This is the business that that if
53:38
Speaker 4: that you give fred a stare, a stage, a stage
53:40
Speaker 4: of any size, and props of any kind, and he
53:43
Speaker 4: would create art. Why because he was a master As
53:47
Speaker 4: simple as that. He was a master. Well so am I.
53:53
Speaker 4: I'm not at for at the stairs level, but I
53:55
Speaker 4: am a master of my craft and it is my
53:58
Speaker 4: job to do the very best I can. When I
54:00
Speaker 4: accept the responsibility, you better bring. You better believe I'm
54:03
Speaker 4: going to bring the best I've got. I'm not going
54:05
Speaker 4: to sit back sniping at her, thinking I'm writing down
54:09
Speaker 4: or any nonsense like that. This is my life, this
54:12
Speaker 4: is what I do, and I will not live a
54:15
Speaker 4: day of my life without feeling I have done something meaningful.
54:18
Speaker 4: So I would have been utterly betrayed by any urge
54:21
Speaker 4: inside me to say you're gonna make me do what.
54:23
Speaker 4: I can't do this. I can't do that. You know.
54:26
Speaker 4: I'm a big boy, and I've been in this, you know,
54:29
Speaker 4: for a long time and published over three million words
54:31
Speaker 4: of fiction. When I sign up for Star Wars, my
54:34
Speaker 4: job is to deliver Star Wars. Okay, it's like I
54:38
Speaker 4: want people to feel like, damn, that was some Star
54:41
Speaker 4: Wars right there. So Lucas gets to say, add this,
54:46
Speaker 4: add this at this.
54:49
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, well it was. It was a very nice surprise,
54:56
Speaker 2: according with the Katie because, like I said, oblivious to me,
55:00
Speaker 2: I read and I was like, oh that's nice, and
55:01
Speaker 2: the case like that was.
55:03
Speaker 4: Not my choice. That was our choice. You know, probably
55:08
Speaker 4: think this was made partially by committee, partially by an
55:11
Speaker 4: individual artist who puts their heart into it, you know.
55:14
Speaker 3: And we always hear about how the story group comes
55:17
Speaker 3: in and is like, hey, can you include like these
55:19
Speaker 3: little bits in this story? But it's nice to hear
55:23
Speaker 3: like one specifically because oftentimes you can kind of go,
55:27
Speaker 3: was this like an author pick like to include this
55:30
Speaker 3: bit from Legends or was this a story group? Because
55:34
Speaker 3: I grew up on Legends. So that's always going to
55:36
Speaker 3: be like my favorite place, even though I love the
55:39
Speaker 3: books that have come out currently, Like don't get me wrong,
55:42
Speaker 3: but like that was my home. Like my daughter's name
55:45
Speaker 3: Maara after mar Skywalker, so like that's just where I'm
55:50
Speaker 3: always gonna have.
55:51
Speaker 4: There are characters in this book that were named after you.
55:54
Speaker 4: Know some of my relatives. You know, Maya is my
55:58
Speaker 4: grand niece, Yeah, is my grand nephew. And Nala is
56:04
Speaker 4: my daughter's pitbull, my grandpuppy.
56:11
Speaker 3: Now I have a dog named Antilles after What's I
56:17
Speaker 3: totally get that.
56:19
Speaker 2: I know that me and Katie are really eager to
56:24
Speaker 2: hear some of the juicy stuff that you can't share
56:27
Speaker 2: on air. So we'll go ahead and leave with this
56:30
Speaker 2: last question. You know, talking about how you know people
56:34
Speaker 2: who want to see Star Wars and hear Star Wars
56:38
Speaker 2: went with your writing. But I would have to ask
56:43
Speaker 2: if people loved reading glass Abyss, what other books of
56:48
Speaker 2: yours would you recommend if they like?
56:51
Speaker 4: I would recommend on my mailing list at www dot
56:54
Speaker 4: stephenbarnes List dot com because we do a show every
56:58
Speaker 4: week where we talk about writing and life and being
57:00
Speaker 4: a warrior in your life and you know how to
57:02
Speaker 4: be a Jedi even if you don't have Midichlorians, So
57:05
Speaker 4: stephenbarnes List dot com. But my favorite of my books
57:10
Speaker 4: other than other than you know now, my favorite of
57:14
Speaker 4: my books I think would be a book called I
57:17
Speaker 4: wrote called Lion's Blood. It's available on Amazon, and I
57:21
Speaker 4: put six years of my life into researching that book,
57:25
Speaker 4: and I'm very proud of it. I may never put
57:28
Speaker 4: that much work into a book again, except the one
57:30
Speaker 4: I'm working on right now. My wife is encouraging me
57:35
Speaker 4: to put my my ego aside and go for it
57:41
Speaker 4: in a way that I have not for a while.
57:43
Speaker 4: And I I take my wife very seriously.
57:51
Speaker 2: It's fun to hear. I actually just pulled it up
57:55
Speaker 2: and adding to Kart right now, So I will definitely
58:00
Speaker 2: read Grabbing that book for sure.
58:03
Speaker 4: I love you, know you guys. Like I said, I
58:05
Speaker 4: really enjoyed the interview that you did, and I'm glad
58:08
Speaker 4: I reached out to you. And you know, I've never
58:11
Speaker 4: I hope I will always be nervous about my writing.
58:14
Speaker 4: I'll always have that sinking feeling in my stomach, you know,
58:17
Speaker 4: with a bad review, and I feel a certain exultation
58:20
Speaker 4: with a good review. So I haunt, you know, I
58:23
Speaker 4: look at that until I've seen ten twenty reviews and
58:26
Speaker 4: kind of get a sense of the pattern, and then
58:28
Speaker 4: I can back away from it. It's like, okay, fly free,
58:30
Speaker 4: little bird. But I hope I never stop caring about
58:35
Speaker 4: how people respond, you know, And I thank you and
58:41
Speaker 4: I'm very, very grateful that you found things to love
58:44
Speaker 4: in something that represents a year of my writing life.
58:48
Speaker 4: That's what we hope for. I'm not going to lie
58:50
Speaker 4: about that.
58:52
Speaker 2: Well, weave an awesome read. It was an awesome read.
58:55
Speaker 2: We greatly appreciate for you reaching out to us. Now.
58:59
Speaker 2: I know that you've already plug them in, but we
59:01
Speaker 2: love plugging our shows and everything else. Can you please
59:06
Speaker 2: tell the audience again everything that you're currently doing.
59:10
Speaker 4: That you Oh, I'm working on a dramatic podcast, you know,
59:14
Speaker 4: like an old time radio show. We have our life
59:18
Speaker 4: writing podcast that comes on every week life Writing Podcast
59:22
Speaker 4: dot com where we talk about writing and life. And
59:25
Speaker 4: then I do the fire Dance Group, which is about
59:29
Speaker 4: personal development. I'm working on a martial arts body horror piece.
59:37
Speaker 2: Oh wow, and.
59:38
Speaker 4: It's not like anything that's been imagined. David Cronenberg directing
59:41
Speaker 4: Enter the Dragon. Any you'll have it. And you know,
59:46
Speaker 4: I'm raising my family in training to go back to Manila,
59:51
Speaker 4: and in twenty twenty six, I spend a week in
59:54
Speaker 4: week there practicing stick fighting and knife fighting. Oh my god,
59:57
Speaker 4: what a great week I had. So I'm just you know,
1:00:00
Speaker 4: I'm just involved in my life man. I you know,
1:00:02
Speaker 4: I finished another book with my mentor, Larry Nivin, and
1:00:06
Speaker 4: we're working. Actually we're going to be direct. We've got
1:00:09
Speaker 4: funding to direct, to direct and produce a short film
1:00:12
Speaker 4: from one of our ip and then if that works
1:00:15
Speaker 4: out well, we'll be directing the full version of the movie.
1:00:20
Speaker 4: So the ideal outcome for this book is that it
1:00:23
Speaker 4: does so well that Lucasfilm wants me back. But I'm
1:00:25
Speaker 4: so busy, I ain't got the time to do it.
1:00:29
Speaker 2: We would love to hear that update. We would love
1:00:31
Speaker 2: to hear it.
1:00:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, afore off the air, I will tell you what
1:00:35
Speaker 4: the sequel to this book would be. All that, but
1:00:40
Speaker 4: I'll tell you. So let's close this. I can.
1:00:42
Speaker 2: I can talk to you with that. Maybe I'll come
1:00:45
Speaker 2: back on some other day with that. Guys, you know
1:00:49
Speaker 2: all of our plugs. We're not going to keep you
1:00:50
Speaker 2: off for too much longer. So thank you again for
1:00:54
Speaker 2: taking your time to listen to this interview, and again
1:00:57
Speaker 2: go out and get Star Wars, Mace Windu Class Abyss.
1:01:02
Speaker 2: It is available Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local library.
1:01:07
Speaker 2: If you are an audiobook listener, you can check it
1:01:09
Speaker 2: out on Audible and With that, guys, thank you so much. Katie.
1:01:15
Speaker 2: You go ahead and do your intro because I always
1:01:17
Speaker 2: I always get the I always want to start it
1:01:19
Speaker 2: and then I always trip up, So you you do
1:01:22
Speaker 2: your magical intro.
1:01:23
Speaker 3: With that, guys. With that, guys, I want to wish
1:01:26
Speaker 3: everyone a great day or night, whatever time the day
1:01:29
Speaker 3: you are listening or watching, and we will see y'all
1:01:32
Speaker 3: next time. May the Force be with you.