Some words from the author.

Sometimes very large ideas begin out of the smallest moments. This one started at a science fiction convention in Dartmouth, NS where Dave Prowse was the guest from a conversation about what the worst job in the Star Wars Empire would be. My take on it was being Darth Vader’s personal assistant would probably really suck and that idea wormed into my brain and settled there like a song you can’t seem to stop humming.

It would surface every now and then and I would write some pages but they never went anywhere so I let it go and went on to other things. Later on, in the late 90’s,I found the Imperial Order, on online Star Wars club based around the Lucas Arts Game TIE Fighter and it was run by a charming guy named Ged Larsen. While playing in this club the online persona of Merlyn developed and the story made headway but I kept it to myself and other things got in the way.

Several years later when I began to play Star Wars Galaxies the story resurfaced again, this time reborn as a blog but the blog style didn’t really work and eventually it led into an online book in serial form which ended very recently with the last post.

My goal was to write this story to its completion and since I already knew the ending and had a rough draft version written well before the 1st book ended I thought it was do-able. I had no idea it would turn into this and it has been an interesting journey.

It wasn’t set out to be a “Thrawn” fan fiction although many read it this way. In fact it wasn't a "fanfic" at all as far as I was concerned I was just writing a book, and mostly for me. It grew into something more and fanfic is the lable most people seem to want to use. I personally just call it writing books that won't ever be professionally published In teh end what ever lable gets used doesn't matter.  It was a story about a girl who ended up in an unlikely job and what happened next. I had never intended for it to turn out to be an intense love story but it is on many levels and about all kinds of love both good and bad. I tried as much as I could to stick to canon and be as true as I could to all the pre-existing characters out there while weaving my own story throughout in such a way that it left no big footprint or impact yet at the same time could be plausible and realistic. There is something incredibly challenging about doing this and it was a lot of fun to try.

There are a lot of original characters in these books that have nothing to do with George Lucas’s creations and they were a lot of fun to write. There are also characters in these books who exist in real life. They were someone’s ‘toon’ in Star Wars Galaxies or they were people I knew from the Imperial Order. I am deeply grateful for having been allowed to “use” them in this fashion and I hope I did them justice. It was a way of keeping them alive long after the platform where we met had vanished.

A lot of people have helped along the way not the least of which are my husband and Nathan P. Butler who is the creator of the Star Wars Time Line Gold.I would also be amiss without saying thank you to the incredibly dedicated readers (you know who you are) who nudged, commented, and helped shape the books along the way. You have no idea how important you are. The fact that people actually read and seemed to enjoy this story kept me going through some pretty grim moments.

Now the process of editing and cleaning the books up so that the story runs smoothly begins, so that they can be without all the fill stuff that went in it to pad out the blog posts. It will take a while but I think the end result will be worth it.

I will ask that the hosted pdfs here stay here. Please do not post or upload them or host them anywhere else. Link to this page if you’d like to share it and maybe let me know you’ve done so. It’s nice to be asked.

I should also add for the lawyers out there I have not ever and will not ever make any money off this. It is not for sale. To the best of my knowledge no one else is making money off it either and if they are  they do so without my knowledge and against my express wishes. Copyright of all the Star Wars everything belongs to Lucas Film Limited and I am deeply grateful that we can play in this sandbox without too much fear of reprisal. I would ask the same respect for my own creations as well.

So to everyone out there who is in love with the Star Wars world, felt that Darth Vader was more than just an evil masked villain, fell in love with Grand Admiral Thrawn and has looked for more I hope that you enjoy this small contribution. It was a labour of love.