Sooty and a clean Sweep
I'm an old journo, as you almost certainly know by now, and like any good journo (there are such animals, honest) I prefer to be proactive, not reactive.
But today I'm reacting, because somebody blurted out something on a forum, and the rumours started. Yes, for once a rumour is actually true; I've withdrawn from the sequel to Imperial Commando 501st, which was going to be my final Star Wars novel. I had issues over contractual matters and working practices that still showed no signs of being resolvable after a couple of years, so I told the publisher that I would not be doing the book.
A quick detour from the main item on the agenda: I realise many of you may not actually know what "contractual" means for a writer, so here's a one-minute guide to the writing industry in plain English. By contractual, I mean all the stuff that's not related to what's in the books themselves. It's convenient shorthand for the business side - your day-to-day working relationship with the publisher. That includes the contract itself (which titles, how many, when they're due, how much money, when you get paid and so on) to working practices, which are rarely written into the contract and tend to be the things you have to work out informally. Those vary from publisher to publisher and editor to editor. They're the nuts and bolts of how the job gets done and how you're treated, and cover a wide range of things from being kept fully in the loop about your project, to being given the chance to check the galleys before the book's printed, to whether you deliver the manuscript electronically or as hard copy, and even which colour of pencil the production people prefer you to use if you're marking up a paper manuscript. One thing that often doesn't appear in the contract is the format of the books (hardcover, paperback) even though that usually makes a big difference to how much you get paid. Publishing isn't quite like any other business model I know.
So if you have ambitions to be a professional writer in any medium - novels, comics, movies, games, TV, even non-fiction - remember that the only assets and resources your business has is you. One-man companies are the most vulnerable in the business world because you're the smallest plankton in the corporate food chain. Things that would probably only put a dent in a bigger company - long delays, projects that fall into indefinite limbo along with your cheque, late payment, non-payment, last-minute total makeovers, contracts that never materialise, mail that never gets answered, editors and producers who move and leave your show/ book/ movie a sudden orphan, and pestilence, flood, and network cancellations - can be catastrophic for a very small one. Those are the things that present the daily survival challenges that can put your business in jeopardy, and they're usually totally beyond your control. This is why you have to spread your risks. Writing is the easy bit. Few would-be writers are aware of the daily reality, but then most writers never give up the day job, and the world's a harsher place if you're a full-time pro. You can find yourself out of work on an unknown someone's whim without any warning or explanation on any day, no matter how successful you are, so you always need to have not only a Plan B ready for instant action, but a C and D as well. (Personally, I plan all the way to Z. But then I've been writing for a living - for paper and screen - nearly all my working life, and I don't believe in luck.)
But I digress. Back to the studio, as they say. I realise from the tsunami of mail I've had since my announcement in August that quite a few of you aren't up to speed with the general situation and have missed some of the salient points. Fair enough: here's a recap. I'm answering only the most frequent questions you've been sending me, to save you the trouble of mailing me again or relying on fifth-hand misquotes from fan sites.
1. Yes, the Boba Fett novel was cancelled by the publisher because of potential canon clashes with the upcoming TV series, as you have already heard from other sources. No, I really don't have a clue what those clashes might be. Sorry.
2. No, I wasn't ever going to be able to deal with Sev's fate, because he was off limits. I've been saying that for four years, and there's even an FAQ on my web site explaining the situation.
3. No, I can't reconsider. It's sweet of you to keep asking, but I had to make my decision nearly a year ago. When I was finishing 501st in January this year, I was told about a significant continuity change coming up in the Clone Wars cartoon. (As was mentioned and shown in a couple of books that came out in the summer - this is not confidential information of any kind now.) I was told that the Mandalorians were being revamped as long-standing pacifists who'd given up fighting centuries ago and that Mandalore was now a post-apocalyptic wasteland devastated by war. I was told not to refer to (recent) Mandalorian history because of that, as it was obviously at odds with the old continuity in my novels. That's fairly common procedure for any franchise - but unfortunately it wasn't that simple in practice. The two Commando series - and quite a few older books and comics, come to that -were based entirely on that original history, and basic logic meant that the fundamental plot of the series could never have existed if this had been a pacifist society. Neither could any of the characters or their motives have existed, because they were wholly based on a global warrior culture living on a non-nuked Mandalore. I had some discussion in January with the editor about possible ways around the problem, but after that, I heard nothing to indicate that the position would change, so the plan went ahead to wind up my existing storyline in the two books that were already in the pipeline. It was too late for me to rewrite 501st even if the changes hadn't made that pretty well impossible.
4. No, it doesn't make any difference if that canon changes again in the future. To answer the what-if question put by many of you, if that new canon is ever modified (and no, I've been given no indication whatsoever that it would be, so please don't get excited... ) then it was already too late for me ten or eleven months ago. That was when I had to make my decision. No writer can put the rest of their work on hold to see what might happen at an unspecified date in the future on the off-chance of being given an occasional paperback to write. That's the reality of work-for-hire, and writing in general; you have to cast your net wide, and across all media. As much as I've enjoyed writing for all you Star Wars fans, and you've been terrific to me, it wasn't my whole career and neither could it have been, even if I'd wanted it to be. As a freelance studio director from my TV days used to say: "I can't sit around waiting for the next series of Sooty*." The canon changes were the key deciding issue in a single series that I was hanging around to finish, but the contractual/ working practice side of things was the main influence on my longer-term decision.
Some of you have already asked what's going to happen to the book, but I just don't know - and I actually don't know any more than I did in January. All I can tell you is what I would have written had I gone ahead with IC#2, and - summarizing loosely - the main characters would have escaped the Empire in the ba'slan shev'la you already know about from Legacy of the Force. (But you knew all that from Revelation anyway.) I would have left the story in a state where the powers that be could either put it on ice forever, or resurrect it with another writer and a new direction. I don't write scorched-earth roadblock endings that make it impossible for other authors to continue stories, because that's pointless and unprofessional, and the only person who suffers is the reader.
So there you have it. I've rescheduled, I have a lot of new work to do, existing work to finish, and several new cell phones. (Don't ask... ) And I'm having an indecent amount of fun using skills I haven't exercised in a very long time as well as learning new ones I didn't know I had in me.
But that's another story - one for next year.
Again, it makes more sense that they would be given that the majority of grouped Jedi would've been on Coruscant when Order 66 was initiated as the rest would've been scattered about with their own armies fighting the separatists.
Definitely pick up Karen Traviss' "Clone Commando" series. It's some of the best Star Wars stories period, let alone just the best clone-related stories.
