One year ago, on July 12, I finished a lovely fic called "From the Depths" about a Jedi revolt on a prison ship during the Purges. Absolutely everyone died at one point or another and I loved it, but not for that reason. It also happened to end on my 20,000th post at boards.theforce.net.

I decided, before posting that, that post 20,001 and on for an entire year would not have a single character death. I thought that I would chicken out, find an excuse, sneak the proverbial cigarette and write a few massacres off-screen.

Well, it is now 1:40 a.m. MST on July 12. It has been one year since I decided to make that my own personal challenge and at precisely 12 a.m. MST, I killed Luke Skywalker.

My intrepid roommate, who reads Star Wars fanfic on occasion and is entirely cognizant of just how excited I was to be getting close to the date of death, turned to me around 12:04 and asked how I felt. Grinning, I said, "Thrilling to be killing." Yes, all, I know how strange that sounds.

It's not like I haven't made it fun for myself. For the last 100 days of the year without death, I wrote one vignette per day. A lot of fun things came from that.

I gave Luke a pet wampa on Hoth named Snookie.

I wrote Boba Fett and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day.

I wrote a random fic about Stacey (aka Pink 5) applying to Rogue Squadron after the Battle of Endor and among my 34 reader responses were comments from ChrisHanel and FX_guy. While looking at Chris' profile, I realized he was involved in Pink 5 movies. I went "OMGSQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" at my blog about that and subsequently found out that FX_guy is Trey Stokes, the director, whereupon I hyperventilated, went "OMGSQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" some more and thought I couldn't be happier. As a result of that random Vignette 63, I now get to have input from the fine people who work on there whenever I write Pink 5 fanfic.

In my favorite of the humorous ones, I had Jaina give a report for Father's Day on what her grandfather was like. No, she did not choose Bail Organa or Han's dad. She talked about Vader and the vig ended with Jacen starting his report on the grandpa that his other grandpa blew up!

I wrote things in 10 minutes or 6 hours.

I made myself cry on occasion.

I made myself giggle hysterically on occasion.

And throughout, I wrote many stories. One was supposed to have Alderaan blow up and it didn't, so I had to write Alderaan throughout the years of Star Wars.

One has Luke, Leia and Han going back in time to kill Vader. No one was sure if they would decide to do so. Now they're still not sure and it's a lot of fun.

I have been rewriting a fic about Vader's war crimes trial and the original ended with Anakin dying the night before his sentencing. Now, I have the option of having him live or get the death penalty.

In short, I've driven my readers insane while they hoped that I would finish off fics before the year was up while others hoped that I would write an epilogue to a story just so some people could be ruthlessly murdered as they deserved.

And what did I learn in a year without death? Well, a few things!

1) There are things much worse than death and I'm not just talking about for the characters. If you ever want to torment readers to the brink of insanity, let them know that, while it would be merciful for Leia to kick the bucket at a certain point, nope, it wasn't going to happen!

2) There are infinite possibilities for character development if they are required to survive something that they think they couldn't possibly live through.

3) It is much more rewarding at times to avoid the possibility of redemption through a death sentence.

4) I am never ever ever ever ever ever doing a long-term challenge again.