Star Wars Fanfic Literally Changed My Life
by LorenRhoads

My mom took me to see Star Wars the summer it came out. Mom wasn't really a science fiction fan, but the movie had gotten such great reviews that she thought it might be worth taking a chance on. I had never seen anything like it. I fell head over heels in love with the story from the moment Luke watched the twin suns set over Tattooine. Like Luke, I was growing up on a farm. At 13, I knew there was a big world outside my small town that I ached to explore. I yearned for an adventure to spirit me away, but Star Wars gave me a way to escape in my imagination.

I didn't start writing my Star Wars stories down until I became friends with Martha Allard (also on Wattpad). I was sitting outside the high school, waiting for my mom to pick me up, when I saw Mart carrying around the novelization of Star Wars. From that point on, we were inseparable. We had lightsaber battles in Mart's front yard, writing marathons sprawled on her bedroom floor, and hung on each other in breathless excitement each time a new Star Wars movie came out.

Mart and I dressed up as our characters and went to conventions before cosplay became a phrase used in America. Our favorite con was MediaWest, the definitive Science Fiction/Media convention in Michigan. All these years later, she still goes when she can.

Back in the 90s, Mart decided we should put our stories together in a zine to sell at MediaWest. The first edition was called simply Anthology. It's where the very first Raena Zacari story appeared. ("Claustrophobia" is now on Wattpad as part of Life During Wartime, Volume 2.) The zine later became Tales of a New Republic and went for three more issues.

Writing for the zine, I learned to collaborate. Because it was fanfic, my writing reached beyond people I knew to touch strangers. I received my first fan letter. After that, I worked hard to make each story better than the last, because I had the sense that there was an audience waiting to read them.

Once I went to the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop (as it was known in those days), I succumbed to the pressure to write "original stories set in original worlds." I didn't lose my love of fanfic, but I let myself be driven to focus on other things.

Nanowrimo, the National Novel Writing Month, brought me back to Raena's story. I adapted my Star Wars character so she could have adventures of her own outside the Star Wars universe. I used Nanowrimo to write The Dangerous Type.

Once I got started revisiting the old stories, I discovered that I missed writing about Raena, so I used Nanowrimo 2012 to write a sequel. That turned into the novel Kill By Numbers.

In the summer of 2013, I mentioned to a local editor that I'd written a space opera and had a Nanowrimo draft of a sequel. He asked to see The Dangerous Type. After a couple of weeks, he asked to see Kill By Numbers, even though it wasn't really finished. A week later, he wrote to ask, "You can write a third book, right? I told the publisher they should offer you a contract for a trilogy."

I saw, "Yes, of course I can write a third book." (Eep!) That turned into No More Heroes, which was written earlier this year.

Long story short: because of the lessons I learned writing fanfic, I sold a space opera trilogy to Night Shade Books. The Dangerous Type came out in July this year, followed by Kill By Numbers on September 1. No More Heroes comes out on November 10.

In the meantime, I've been putting the original fanfic stories, as published in Anthology and Tales of a New Republic, up on Wattpad. For the first time ever, my stories are appearing in chronological rather than publishing order, beginning with the Battle of Hoth and working through the fall of the Empire. Those stories contain the first appearances of my characters Raena Zacari, the Imperial assassin, and her friend. the arms dealer Ariel Shaad, as well as Raena's former commander Lord Jonan Thallian. In the fanfic, Thallian is an Imperial "diplomat" (read: torturer), who was versed in the Sith lore. I had to remove the Star Wars reflections to publish the novels, but it feels good to see them intact again on Wattpad.

I love these old stories. I'm grateful to Wattpad for giving me a venue to share them with people who love Star Wars as much as I do. And I absolutely cannot wait for The Force Awakens in December!

Do you plan to turn your fanfictions into original stories?

P r o f i l e S p o t l i g h t:

starwarsfans
The ambassador-managed profile dedicated entirely to the much-beloved Science Fantasy franchise.