FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Where has your Star Wars work appeared? My official Star Wars work has appeared in several publications, including Vader: The Ultimate Guide, The Official Star Wars Website, Star Wars Insider, Dungeon Magazine, The Official Wizards of the Coast Website, Star Wars Gamer, and The Official Star Wars Fact Files. What books/novels have you written? I was a contributing author to the Star Wars sourcebooks Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide and Vader: The Ultimate Guide, the travel anthology Italy From a Backpack, and the e-book anthology Reach for the Stars! Award-Winning Promotional Plans To Jump Start Your Branding Career. How did you become an official Star Wars author? How can I become one? A combination of persistence, luck, and hard work. The short version of the story is that, in the year 2000, the new publication Star Wars Gamer was soliciting writers via its website. I pitched something and was rejected. I followed up this rejection with another pitch that was accepted. From then on, I used my Star Wars publishing credit as leverage to get more Star Wars work, ad infinitum. This summary does zero justice to the real struggle of publishing professionally. Here’s the truth: I’ve been writing creatively since I was at least six years old. Before becoming an “official” Star Wars writer, I’d written dozens of stories and poems, published a couple things in my high school newspaper, attempted two novels (and failed), made clumsy, naïve and unprofessional pitches and submissions to several publications, wrote fan fiction, essays, and editorials for several popular Star Wars websites for several years, and finally got something (a poem) published in a local literary journal. Then I got rejected by Star Wars Gamer, then I got my next pitch accepted. And this was actually less of a struggle than the average writer goes through in order to get published. My best advice for becoming a Star Wars author: just get published first. Anywhere and as often as possible. Local newspapers, high school and college newspapers, small-run literary journals, fansites, your own website and blogs. This means writing a lot and submitting a lot. That also means investing a lot of time and effort aside from whatever obligations you already have (job, family, school) and a lot of rejections. It’s hard work and can really fuck with your ego and self-esteem. So you better love to write or be a masochist, and preferably both. Pages: [1] [2]

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