AdmiralWesJanson posted:

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RotS- Mon Mothma, Bel Iblis, Bail Organa, Fang Zhar, and others all decide that the Petition of 2000 didn't work, and that a resistance needs to be formed. They decide to stay low, and so set up the foundations on their own worlds, keeping low.
Atrivis- Mantooine and Fest begin to coordinate their resistance after a disasterous strike on Mantooine that Fest knew was coming.
Corellian Treaty- Mon Mothma, Bail, and Bel Iblis decide that the time is right to openly merge their resistance groups, and have Mothma make a Declaration of Rebellion.

Bria could have influenced the merging of the groups rather than the creation.

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Rouge77 posted:

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My opinion about her work is mixed. The writing itself and the plots are good craftmanship, but nothing extraordinary. Certainly better than in a significant part of the Bantam novels. I would not compare her to Anderson, to whom she is clearly superior. And then there are the continuity problems, but they are mostly caused by later developments, and nothing that she could be blamed off. The many connections to EU are nice, but I shudder to think what could happen to them because of the TV series...

The positive aspects are the portrayal of characters. I like Han in these books, there really is some development in his character, so that the young Han of the first novel isn´t the Han of ANH, but the Han of the last book mostly feels like the person we will meet in the Mos Eisley cantina. Chewbacca is better than in most of SW novels, which sadly doesn´t mean that much, but still, he feels like Chewbacca of the movies. What comes to Bria Tharen, she is ok. I understand the need for a character like her and maybe she is a little bit too good to be true, but I don´t feel that the author have made her better than Leia or something like that. The only major problem I have with her is that her activities should have not necessarily have to be tied to the happenings in ANH - same can be said about Kyle Katarn´s story, though.

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dp4m posted:

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Card_Dreamer posted:

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How exactly is Bria's involvement in the Rebellion impossible?

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Unless you believe that Mon Mothma and others waited the approximately 7 - 9 years after the events of Revenge of the Sith required to sustain Bria's background that she was intrumental in the formation of the earliest cells of the Rebel Alliance then it simply no longer works.

Unless she was really that much of a drug addict to believe it, I suppose.

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accrispin posted:

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Okay, I'm going to give this a shot.

(Just FYI, I have never been an addict of any kind. I just wrote about one. Doesn't mean I AM one. That's kind of the definition of fiction -- the author MAKES IT UP.)

I don't claim to be a perfect writer. I think I'm a pretty good storyteller, but I have strengths and weaknesses like everyone else. I am certainly no stylist. My writing is plain and straightforward. At its best, it's "cinematic," with a "transparent" style that allows readers to easily visualize the events I'm chronicling as though they were watching a film -- perfect for doing film and television tie-ins. At its worst, my style is overly simplistic, and comes across as non-literary, slick, and "juvenile."

I guess if I think I have any one strength in writing tie-in fiction, it's that I believe I have a good "ear" for the way beloved characters (like Han, Lando, etc.) speak. I think my dialogue is pretty faithful to the characters we've seen on screen. Their speech patterns are familiar, and unique to them.

I certainly did as much (or more) research as the other Star Wars novelists back when I was first hired to do the Han Solo trilogy. I read every adult novel, and most of the gaming guides, before writing my trilogy. It's too bad subsequent events have negated the continuity in my trilogy, but that's the way the cookie crumbles in writing tie-in fiction. You get used to it.

That's also part of the reason that I have given up writing tie-in fiction, at least for now. Lucasfilm didn't approve the idea of a Leia backstory because they want to keep that era of the SW continuity untouched for the television series they're considering. That was the only Star Wars project that interested me at this point, so I didn't attempt to propose anything else. Just writing a plain old EU type adventure doesn't seem worth the research it would take, and, let's face it, those characters have had dozens and dozens of adventures by now. It would be difficult to come up with something intriguing and diverting in that universe within the constraints of the continuity that's been set up. And I'm not interested in writing just another adventure. I have to have an emotional link to the story I'm writing, feel that I'm chronicling life events of great importance to the characters. I've turned down some very lucrative tie-in projects because they didn't emotionally "resonate" within me.

So these days I'm writing my own books. I'm lucky in that I've always had a career writing original novels, as well as tie-in books. Not all tie-in writers have been able to manage that, and I feel very fortunate.

Anyhow, if I can answer any questions about the directives I was given, in writing the HS trilogy, it was all a long time ago, but I'll do my best to recall how it was.

Best,

-Ann C. Crispin
Author: STORMS OF DESTINY/HarperEos
www.accrispin.com

P.S. Anyone who liked the way I handled battle scenes, can check out the first 100 page of STORMS for free on my website, in case you're interested in the book.

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