Are you a longtime fan of the series? WJW: I got the job because, well, they asked me. I’d like to think it was because they’d read my other books and liked them. I was a fan of the films, but had never read any of the books. Imagine my surprise to discover that Han and Leia had produced three children and that Luke had married a woman who wasn’t in any of the movies! DR: How much input and creative freedom did you have in writing Destiny’s Way? WJW: There is a NJO series arc, and the arc demanded that certain things take place in Destiny’s Way. The rest of it was up to me. The demands of the story arc were fairly flexible, and I experienced little difficulty building a story around them. DR: Was this the first time that you’ve worked in someone else’s universe? What are some of the difficulties involved in this kind of corporate collaboration? WJW: I’ve worked in the Wild Cards shared-worlds universe—some of those books are coming back into print—and I’ve also written for films and TV, which are collaborative media.
