Lit JCLit Exclusive: James Luceno Talks Sheev, New Imperial Palace, LucasFilm Story Group, and...

A novel set during the original trilogy following Palpatine's quest to become a god!?!

I did this interview back in November, ended up losing the recording, found it today, and I figured since I already mentioned I'd be doing it here and took some questions, I'd post it here exclusively for you guys instead of just clickbaiting you somewhere else. I also give permission to any Star Wars blog to reprint with proper accreditation if they wish. Enjoy.



On the initial pitch, research, and writing of Tarkin:

"Tarkin was pitched to me about a year ago. This was the fastest turnaround in my experience with Star Wars publishing. I spoke to the Story Group last October, and the book was released a year later."

"I didn't research my previous books the same way I did Tarkin. I grew up with the Hammer Horror Films, and they were really imprinted on me. I pulled out a few of those films before I did Tarkin just to give me a sense of Peter Cushing and a little about the way he delivered his lines. I wanted to try and stay true to that, the character that we will end up meeting in A New Hope."

On the recanonized elements of his earlier novels such as Dark Lord and Darth Plagueis:

"I write the book. I don't want to be too constrained by [rebranded canon]. I wait for the story board to kind of pass judgment. If there's a place they don't want me to go or mention, a species they think is problematic, they get back to me and ask me to tweak this or change this. I didn't let influence my storytelling."

"When I met with them, I had a sense of what the gameplan was. Not to rely so much on the existing EU. I did a lot of editorial work myself, I wrote a first draft and changed things that I myself thought might be problematic. However, they did ask me to change the species of a couple of characters, there were some minor cuts, but it wasn't an intrusive process. And they didn't really dictate to me where I could go."

As a consultant of the Story Group, is Luceno privy to any The Force Awakens information?

"No. And, I didn't ask for anything. I've been with the franchise for fifteen years now, and I had the majority of the prequels spoiled to me simply because I was writing direct tie in novels. It'd be nice going into Ep VII knowing nothing!"

On the Jedi Temple, now called the Imperial Place, being built on an ancient Sith alter, as per Tarkin:

"That did come out of discussions with the Story Group, because I was given some artwork that showed that the Palace, at least in the early era of the Galactic Empire, five years after Palpatine proclaims himself emperor, that he was going to be using the form of the Jedi Temple, which has a line of structures going around it. We began talking about the temple in general, and the notion that perhaps the Jedi had built the temple over a Sith shrine. I just ran with that idea. I don't know where the idea is going to go, we didn't discuss it really outside of a setting in the Tarkin novel. Not sure whether there are plans to expand on it in a book or movie."

On Sheev desiring to become a god/immortal, and a potential new book:

"Ever since I started writing in the prequel era, I've been dealing with Sidious and his grand schemes. I was going back to Cloak of Deception, Labyrinth of Evil, Dark Lord, Darth Plagueis... it's just something I've been thinking about, and an idea that I really hope I'm going to be allowed to carry forward at some point, it would have to be in a novel, set during the classic era films, A New Hope, Empire, somewhere in that time period. I haven't been commissioned to write that yet, so I don't know if I can carry that forward. Since I don't know what's going on with the coming trilogy, there may be elements in which JJ Abrams is doing that will render my idea obsolete. I'm not sure!"

"I know I'm still not done with the Emperor, and I hope I get a crack at that."

On... Sheev. What was the original name James had in mind when writing Plagueis?

"It's one of those things when I was working on the story closely with LucasFilm, it just wasn't deemed necessary. It never made it into the novel. Now, unless LucasFilm the okay to use that name, I don't really feel compelled to reveal it! [IG_2000 nags him] No! I don't want to go there because there's no point. That's something that would have to be approved by them before I reveal it."

On the New Jedi Order series:

"I think the problem with a 20 book series... it was supposed to be even longer... it had too many writers in the end. On a series like that, you need someone who is equivalent to something of a story runner. The overseer of the TV series whose judgment is final in terms of plot points and character development. Just think that we had too many people. If I was ever in charge of the series, I would NEVER use that many writers. I think that's why the series moved away from some of the planning. It's a tricky situation to plot out that many books and expect every writer to stick with the program. "

"Nothing else in the Star Wars universe has been done to that extent where you are telling one long story, a story spread over five years."

On any other subjects he'd like to tackle in the Star Wars universe:

"One era that interests me is The Old Republic. There are plenty of good stories in that era. I don't have a character in mind or a sense of where I can go, there's some interesting things that can be done with the early Jedi, plot points leading up to the Republic."

"[The Story Group] could end up rewriting the history of the Old Republic we've grown accustomed to in the EU."

 

References to Darth Bane in Luceno novels give the impression of someone far more awesome (imho) than the character that Karpyshan wrote about. If only Karpyshan had Luceno editing him.

 

Well, now we have:

Spoiler

 

I'd love a novel about what's going on on Coruscant during ANH. I want to see the Senate's reaction to ths capture of Leia, the dissolution of the Senate, what Sheev says on Holonet when Alderaan is destroyed, and how he handles the destruction of the first Death Star.

I also want more Imperial court intrigue, starring Mas Amedda and the Peculiar Hat Crew.

 

Was at the Del Rey booth at Celebration on Friday, when Christie Golden was signing, trying to keep track of my three year old. I looked up for a second, and there's Luceno, just ducking behind the curtain to give someone an interview, so didn't get to say hi. Doh!

 

Interested to see where they go with this too.

Filoni mentioned it at all the Clone Wars Untold panel as well. Apparently it came from Lucas:

http://www.starwars.com/news/swca-the-untold-clone-wars-panel-liveblog

 

Good stuff.

Just to be clear: the bold is your emphasis, correct?

 

So he'd still like to do a Palpatine-centric novel? Sweeeeeeeeet.

I'd love him to do a Dooku one some day too, as Dooku is such an underappreciated character, who I'm sure would benefit so well from the Luceno treatment.

 

Same here. I want to see (read) the moment when Dooku joins Sidious and it would be a chance to clear up all the Sifo-Dyas and Order 66 stuff.

 

TCW handled the Sifo-Dyas thread, but it would be nice to see it all wrapped up neatly in a Tyranus novel.

 

Oddly, the Databank still says he contacted the Kaminoans - and not Dooku disguised as him:

http://www.starwars.com/databank/sifo-dyas

 

[quote="IG_2000, post: 52325682, member: 1339285"
On the New Jedi Order series:

"I think the problem with a 20 book series... it was supposed to be even longer... it had too many writers in the end. On a series like that, you need someone who is equivalent to something of a story runner. The overseer of the TV series whose judgment is final in terms of plot points and character development. Just think that we had too many people. If I was ever in charge of the series, I would NEVER use that many writers. I think that's why the series moved away from some of the planning. It's a tricky situation to plot out that many books and expect every writer to stick with the program."[/quote]

That is bloody accurate.

However.... Books do have showrunners, they are called editors.

 

That's because as far as I know, Sifo-Dyas contacted the Kaminoans on Palpatine's suggestion, then Dooku killed him and disguise himself as Sifo-Dyas in any subsequent contact.

 

Whoh! Unexpected super cool interview with the reticent obscure reference guru himself! Many thanks, IG_2000!!!!

Good grief! I had no idea it was meant to be longer. I knew they had cut that one Knightfall arc, but I thought it was because they had replaced it with something else. Huh.

...you're telling me there's still a chance for an Emperor Palpatine novel?

 

It was touted as 25 novels, waaaay back in the beginning. There's at least one interview where it's described this way (Salvatore, I think).

I'm pretty sure Year 3 was Knightfall plus a single Greg Keyes book, which was then expanded to a duology. That's why there's only two between BP and SBS instead of four like the rest.

Dark Tide was supposed to have a middle book, Siege, which was cancelled for whatever reason and merged into the other two. But then Agents of Chaos was expanded, so no net change.

That only accounts for two gaps, so the other four seem to have been scrapped in the planning stages, or at least before anything was announced about them.

CooperTFN, anything to add?

 

Dark Tide lost the middle book (Siege). Knightfall was... I don't know whether it was replaced by Edge of Victory or if EoV was just expanded from one book to two, but either way that's another 1-2 books "lost".

At the same time, while it was meant to be longer, you were also supposed to be able to read just the hardcovers and still get a comprehensible story. That obviously fell by the wayside somewhere.

 

Twenty-one books is the figure I saw given most often while reading early NJO interviews. I think they probably had a larger number in mind in initial brainstorming sessions --- Salvatore says here that it was initially thirty, and Kuo-Yu Liang confusingly says here that there will be six to ten paperbacks per year --- but by the time Vector Prime was published I believe that they had twenty-one as their number, with VP coming in '99 and then five books a year for the next four years. Luceno says twenty-one here (podcast interview), and I'm pretty sure I saw it mentioned in some Insider articles too.

This TFN article from 2000 reports that Keyes was initially set to do only one book.

What we know about Knightfall's cancellation: Shelly said this in 2000 (scroll to the bottom): "It was decided, after much dialog back and forth about ongoing story development, to shift a portion of the New Jedi Order's focus. We also felt that reducing the number of NJO books next year would allow us to better spotlight the prequel novels, which constitute another exciting new direction for Star Wars fiction."

Luceno also says in this interview that the storyline he started in Agents of Chaos about a potential droid revolution was jettisoned so that Anakin Solo could be built up as a character prior to Star by Star. Sounds like that's a likely contributing reason for Knightfall's cancellation --- build up Anakin's character rather than Danni Quee's.

Tyers also said here on these forums that the cancellation was to allow more attention to go the NJO's hardcovers.

 

woo NJO

 

That sounds right--21 is the number I remember; 5 HCs with 4 PBs between each. If anything longer was ever planned I don't remember anything about it. I might speculate that their initial heady plans were to fill their whole contract that way, but eventually they were too tempted to do prequel stuff like Rogue Planet and DMSH and that forced NJO down.

 

I wish we had gotten some more NJO novels.

 

I'd prefer a tighter structure, whether that meant more novels or less.

What I really wish is that we'd gotten more standalone works set in the era. I tend to give Invasion a lot of leeway (despite it really only being okay at best) because of that - well, that and being the only real visual media work for the YVW.

 

The NJO could have been better with a tighter focus on the hero's journey early on. I think the intention to have the series be longer is apparent in the design in which the series is more spaced out early on between milestones for Jacen with tangential subplots and the war itself being the focus, with Jacen's story and the war beginning to overlap with Destiny's Way. I guess I can't really say what would have been better, because I think it works okay the way it is where it runs gamut of storytelling around the war early on before focusing in at the conclusion, but it may have worked better if it was more varied throughout with more emphasis on the periphery toward the end, or with a tighter focus throughout.

I completely agree with Luceno about the NJO needing a showrunner and I got the impression that he sort of filled the role, and that was the difference between what made the NJO a success versus LOTF/FOTJ, which I don't think had a guiding vision behind them but three authors jockeying for primacy. We like to blame Denning and he seems to have had something of an advantage in that he got to end each series, and was the progenitor of the core concept of the LOTF.

I've felt for a long time that the Expanded Universe itself needed a showrunner to maintain consistency in tone and storytelling and to better mesh things. It seems like the Story Group is actually doing that now, and people like to make light of it as though it's a PR thing that isn't different than the way things were run before, but I think they're taking a more proactive stance with regard to storytelling and actually planning things out, whereas I think previously Leland was more reactive to stuff that he was given, and I don't think anyone else was even involved in the storytelling across the board.

 

If there ever was a good reason for the name Sheev, the novel should be named Sheev.