Which is where Voronica Whitney-Robinson comes in. Whitney-Robinson, the author of December's Star Wars Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine (Del Rey, $7.50) may be a new-comer to the Star Wars universe, but she's earned her stripes as a speedy writer. We're talking Anakin Skywalker's Podracer speedy. Lando Calrissian's patter with the ladies speedy. That kind of speedy.
Whitney-Robinson proved that with her first novel, 1999's Spectre of the Black Rose, part of the Ravenloft series published by Wizards of the Coast. Whitney Robinson had met up with a friend from her teenage years, James Lowder, who thought she'd be a good pick for a future short-story anthology. But Whitney Robinson's fiction debut would come quicker than she'd imag ined: Lowder was halfway through writing Spectre when his father became ill, so he sug gested to Wizards that Whitney Robinson step in as co-writer and finish what he'd started -- in just six weeks. Could she really do that? Wizards wanted -- or perhaps needed -- to know.
"Not knowing that I couldn't, I said sure," she recalls.
She could and she did, which meant she was soon asked to do so again. Whitney-Robinson was brought in as a replacement for another writer to pen one of seven novellas that made up 2000's Halls of Storm weather, the first book in the Forgotten Realms' Sembia series. That effort earned her the chance to write her own novel in the series, 2002's Sands of the Soul, which came with the unaccustomed benefit of a relatively normal production schedule. (Another book, The Crimson Gold, appeared in December.)
Last summer, with Star Wars Galaxies attracting avid gamers, both Lucasfilm and Del Rey thought a novel that tied in with the multiplayer online game would be a good idea. But no such book had been planned. Could one be plotted, written, edited, and published on the double? Del Rey turned to Lowder and Whitney-Robinson to divide the work. When Lowder had to drop out, Whitney-Robinson said she could handle the job herself. Given her track record, who'd disagree?
"I can't play it very long because it's addictive -- and I have a book to write," she says.
The Ruins of Dantooine is a Star Wars Galaxies novel, but Whitney-Robinson stresses that playing Galaxies won't be a prerequisite for enjoying the book.
"It'll tie in loosely with the game but will stand alone," she says.
The heroine of The Ruins of Dantooine is Dusque Mistflyer, a bio-engineer plying her trade on Naboo shortly after the events of A New Hope. Dusque and an Ithorian colleague are in a Naboo casino when a mysterious stranger approaches them. His name is Finn Darktrin, and he has a dangerous secret: He's a spy for the Rebel Alliance. Darktrin tries to recruit Dusque, thinking she'd be excellent cover for his activities -- after all, her profession lets her travel the spacelanes largely free of Imperial scrutiny. Darktrin's quarry is a Holocron that contains a list of high-level Rebel sympathizers within the Empire's ranks -- a prize that can't be allowed to fall into the hands of the Imperial agents who are also seeking it.
The novel unfolds on a number of planets familiar to Galaxies players, including Naboo, Lok, Corellia; and (naturally) Dantooine; and -- as with the game -- Dusque and Finn will cross paths with some rather famous names, such as Skywalker, Solo, Calrissian, and Organa. Galaxies fans will even recognize settings contributed by the game's players, such as a hotel on Naboo where animal training is a main event. Indeed, the influences run both ways: Some creatures and species seen in the book will appear in the game after publication, as will the book's main characters. (Future Galaxies novels are a possibility; Whitney-Robinson says, "I would love the opportunity to do more.")
So how'd Whitney-Robinson learn to be the writing equivalent of Han Solo's quick draw?
Her short answer is that "my parents never told me there was something I couldn't do." The longer answer is that she's always had tales to tell -- and some interesting opportunities to tell them. While today she's a marine biologist based in Seattle, Whitney-Robinson spent three years with the Peace Corps in Africa, much of it spent living in a mud hut in Cameroon lit only by a kerosene lantern. (She was once mistaken for a reincarnated witch doctor, but that's a tale for another column.)
Cameroon is close to the equator, which Whitney-Robinson says meant, "I had a long night every night." She took advantage of those nights, reading hundreds of books ranging "from classics to bodice-rippers" and writing stories for her own enjoyment -- sometimes 20, 30, or even 40 pages of hand-written tales a night.
"I'd never been in a situation in my life where I was so focused," she recalls, adding that "it was a good time to practice."
All that writing by kerosene lamp doesn't mean Whitney-Robinson's stock of stories is exhausted. Some are emerging now: She recalls coming across a drawing she did years and years ago of a woman with Han Solo, her favorite Star Wars character as a girl. The drawing, she says, is Dusque and Han -- even if it took years for the world to put Whitney-Robinson in a position to turn a sketch into a story.
"I've been waiting for the opportunity to put pen to paper," Whitney-Robinson says. "These deadlines are my opportunities."
This story originally appeared in Star Wars Insider #73
