Like I said, the SWFA has maintained its website for almost as long as the group has formally existed. It's here that I made my first significant, albeit unofficial, forays into Star Wars. The links are below. Though unofficial, these early pieces got me noticed in the Star Wars community, and the positive response gave me the confidence to keep on knocking on Lucasfilm's door till they gave me some work.

Loose Canon: A Discourse on the Public Direction of the "Official" Star Wars Universe (2000)

My memorable first foray into the battlefield that is Star Wars canon. Written prior to the existence of such attempts at formalizing continuity as "Infinities," "G-canon," and "C-canon," etc, the editorial argued for total inclusivity regarding Star Wars literature, a view that has gained considerable legitimacy in the years since. I was pleasantly surprised a few years ago when I found one Kasia Rostkowska had translated this op-ed piece into Polish: "Dyskusja o kanonie SW."

The State of the Galactic Civil War--Part 1: From Endor to Coruscant (2000)

This is the one that garnered me a small cult following in the Star Wars community in my pre-LFL days. An essay outlining in excruciating, and I do mean that literally, detail the confusing happenings in the Star Wars universe immediately following the events of Return of the Jedi to the end of Mike Stackpole's X-Wing novels, the academically-inspired process of citing every source I referred to was so grueling I had to quit for a good three or four months before I could even look at the essay again.

The first of three planned parts covering the 20-odd years of post-Jedi literature available at the time, I was so put out by the time I finished the first part that I never wanted to write Star Wars again. Thankfully, I soon after had my first official Star Wars proposal accepted for a project on the Emperor's Hands. It was in this project that I made official many of the conjectures I first ventured in this essay.

MIA -- Arbitrator of Sins (1999)

Folks have often asked me about my short story Arbitrator of Sins, detailing the final battle of the Mandalorians during the Clone Wars. Cleary a major inspiration for my recent work on "History of the Mandalorians," it (along with my contributions to Zardra's Star Wars FanFic Database) was removed from the web around five years ago when I first started writing officially for Lucasfilm. It's possible that I may bring it out of retirement some time in the future, but for now it's stashed away on my flash drive in folder "Star Wars Stuff." ~ Abel G. Peņa

BLOG INDEX

MYSPACE PROFILE