Chateau Lloyd

Like many people of a certain age, I was excited when I learned that George Lucas was going to finally tell the backstory of the original Star Wars trilogy.  I had been a huge fan back in the day, though by my 20s I'd gotten rid of most of the toys and apparel.  I enjoyed Episode I, but didn't feel it had measured up to the older films.  As the rest of the prequel trilogy came out, my disappointment deepened.  Episode III was something of a breaking point.  I hated that film and the only time I've seen it was the midnight premiere all those years ago.

 

As the years passed, I lamented all of the wasted creative opportunities the prequels had presented.  The core of the story has such tremendous possibilities of showing how a decadent Republic could fall into civil war and then become the Empire.  I felt that the key to the whole story was Senator Palpatine, whose rise to power would be fascinating to watch, but of course George Lucas had other ideas.  I'd sometimes outline my ideas at social gatherings and one day my wife suggested that I write it all down because she thought it sounded interesting.

 

I told her I didn't have any interest in fan fiction, and if I was going to write something that lengthy, I'd want to at least have a chance of selling it.  At the time of that discussion, Fifty Shades of Gray was a surprise best-seller, and my wife explained to me that it started out as Twilight fan fiction.  The author circulated it online and after getting positive feedback, she re-wrote it in a new setting while retaining the core story.  Why didn't I just do the same?

 

So that's what I did.  Over the course of a weekend in December, I sat down and cranked out a 20,000-word novella - the heart of the first book, A Man of Destiny.

 

Over the next couple of years the story took on a life of its own, which was only to be expected.  I've spent most of my life in or around politics and by that point had more than a decade of military service.    The Man of Destiny series was a place for me to share and explore what I had learned.  By the time I reached the end of Fall of the Commonwealth, it was clear that a trilogy did not complete my story, and thus The Imperial Rebellion came into being.

 

People who have read the books have told me I've "fixed" Star Wars, but I think the story goes beyond that.

 

Once you flesh out the various characters - not just Maxim Darius, Adam Flyte and Cristen Morra, but ones who have no clear parallel to the Star War films - the story has to move in a different direction.

 

The Man of Destiny series therefore stands on its own.  It can still be read as a rebuttal to the creative bankruptcy of the Star Wars franchise but I think it should be taken on its own terms.

 

After all, Star Wars borrowed heavily from The Hidden Fortress and 1930s serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

 

These books are available exclusively on Amazon.  Here are the links to purchase them: