James Luceno

Around 1974 or 1975, while residing in Englewood, New Jersey, James Luceno encountered Brian Daley, a young man who had recently returned to the United States after serving in the Vietnam War. Daley was a student at Jersey City State College in Jersey City, and he was in a relationship with a woman who worked at the same restaurant as Luceno's wife. Both men were also in the process of writing their first novels, and when the women realized that their partners were both writers, Luceno and Daley were introduced and became close friends.

In 1977, Luceno and Daley attended the premiere of a film called Star Wars, which had received minimal media attention—neither man knew what to anticipate. According to Luceno, they were both "blown away" within the first five minutes of the film, and they left the premiere excited to have witnessed an engaging science fiction adventure. Daley believed that science fiction would never be the same, and Luceno later stated that the film transformed his friend's life from that moment forward. The film made a significant impact on both of them and became a recurring theme in their friendship and collaborations.

Shortly thereafter, Daley was contracted to write The Han Solo Adventures, a trilogy of novels based on the early life of the Star Wars character Han Solo. During the plotting of the stories, he frequently exchanged ideas with Luceno, who served as his sounding board. In 1979, Daley was also commissioned to write the script for a radio drama of Star Wars, and Luceno once again played the role of sounding board, assisting Daley in refining ideas as they were scripted. When Daley received confidential information about a plot element from 1980's The Empire Strikes Back concerning Luke Skywalker's parentage, he spoiled the surprise to Luceno before they had the opportunity to see the movie.

Luceno and Daley traveled extensively together, visiting destinations such as Nepal, Thailand, Peru, Tibet, and the jungles of Central and South America. In 1983, they spent five weeks trekking in the Himalayas, and upon their return to Kathmandu, Nepal, Daley received a telegram informing him that he had been hired to write a radio drama adaptation of the latest Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi. The film had only been in theaters for a short period, and the two located a low-quality bootleg copy of the movie at a Nepalese market and screened it for the Sherpas and porters they had hired for their trek.

When Ballantine Books' Del Rey imprint planned to revive the Star Wars universe in novel form, they intended to enlist both Daley and Luceno to write the new adventures. Risa Kessler and her colleagues at Ballantine contacted them, and the two engaged in extensive discussions about the franchise. Daley envisioned a series centered on the search for and training of a new generation of Jedi by Luke Skywalker, as well as the efforts of a secret group of Emperor Palpatine's followers to undermine him. Concurrently, Luceno began writing a book titled The Tao of the Force, a reference work featuring excerpts and lessons from ancient Jedi texts. Despite spending several months on the project, it was ultimately rejected by Star Wars creator George Lucas, who did not want the Force to be portrayed as a religion. Eventually, an internal power struggle at Ballantine resulted in them losing the license to publish Star Wars literature, and Bantam Spectra contacted author Timothy Zahn in 1989 to write Heir to the Empire, which launched a coordinated and cohesive Star Wars Expanded Universe. Luceno later reflected that Daley would have likely given the saga a mythological tone, in contrast to Zahn's military science fiction approach, and that Daley would have preferred a serialized narrative from novel to novel, rather than Bantam's approach of jumping around the timeline and filling in gaps in the story. Nevertheless, Luceno enjoyed Zahn's early Star Wars Bantam titles, as well as those by Kevin J. Anderson and Kathy Tyers.

Daley passed away on February 11, 1996 after several months of battling his illness. Luceno was profoundly affected by his friend's death, feeling like a parent who had outlived a child. Fans also deeply mourned the loss, and when Luceno and Lucia St. Clair Robson posted a notice of death online, messages of condolence poured in from around the globe. Luceno penned a eulogy for his friend, which was published in the twenty-ninth issue of the Star Wars Insider magazine.

When Del Rey books acquired the license to publish Star Wars fiction from Bantam in 1999, they envisioned a long, continuous series of novels that would progress chronologically. They believed that Bantam's approach of releasing standalone trilogies and one-shots in a non-chronological order had confused readers and hindered character development, and they began collaborating with Lucasfilm Ltd. to plan a series called The New Jedi Order, which would introduce new threats to the galaxy and a new generation of heroes. Editors at Del Rey contacted Luceno and invited him to join the project as a consultant, as they were familiar with his work on Robotech—specifically, his experience maintaining the continuity demands of an extended story with a passionate fan base, and his work concluding a lengthy narrative with The End of the Circle. In March 1998, Luceno attended the initial story conference at Skywalker Ranch, the San Francisco headquarters of Lucasfilm. Luceno then attended a follow-up conference in May to refine the ideas discussed at the first conference. Using a preliminary outline for the project already written by Del Rey Editor at Large Shelly Shapiro, Luceno collaborated closely with her and Del Rey editor Kathleen O'Shea to develop a five-year story arc, along with story arcs for each of the main characters. In 1999, Luceno participated in several planning sessions for the series at Skywalker Ranch.

Other participants in the early planning of The New Jedi Order included Lucas Licensing Executive Editor Sue Rostoni, Lucasfilm Director of Publishing Lucy Autrey Wilson, Dark Horse Comics Vice President of Publishing Randy Stradley, and several editors and authors from both Del Rey and Dark Horse. A basic storyline was developed, along with the series' primary antagonists: an extra-galactic species of bloodthirsty religious zealots known as the Yuuzhan Vong. Shapiro believed that Bantam's novels had created a sense of stagnation due to the lack of significant events affecting the main characters, and she felt that Star Wars had lost the realism and tension that had been present in the original trilogy. Her goal was to disrupt the status quo and demonstrate that the heroes could not always expect to survive, and the idea of the Yuuzhan Vong killing a major character in the series' opening volume was considered. When George Lucas vetoed the idea of killing Luke Skywalker, Stradley suggested the death of the Wookiee Chewbacca. Lucas also rejected the idea of the Yuuzhan Vong being Force-users, but he approved the majority of the series' outline, which was drafted and refined by Luceno. Luceno also wrote a "series bible," and he collaborated with author Daniel Wallace to expand the map of the Star Wars galaxy.

After Shapiro asked if he was interested in working on the series, Luceno immersed himself in as many existing Star Wars novels, comics, and sourcebooks as possible, although he had previously read many of the Bantam-issued novels as they were published, and the intention of The New Jedi Order was to not incorporate too many elements from the Bantam books so as not to alienate a new generation of readers, yet fans implored through emails sent to Del Rey to not ignore the continuity established by Bantam. Luceno relied heavily on Stephen J. Sansweet's Star Wars Encyclopedia, the guidebooks by Wallace, Bill Smith and Bill Slavicsek, and numerous fan glossaries and compendiums to maintain continuity. In his role as a consultant, he read and provided feedback on every manuscript submitted by The New Jedi Order's authors, but he was initially uncertain whether he would contribute any books himself. He was eventually contracted to write the fifth novel in the series, a planned paperback called Agents of Chaos. R. A. Salvatore wrote 1999's Vector Prime, the series opener, and was tasked with writing Chewbacca's death; when negative fan reaction to the character's demise manifested in scores of hate mail, Luceno commiserated with Salvatore by sharing stories of his similar experience with Robotech fandom, feeling that the death threats Salvatore received should have been hurled at Del Rey or to the whole creative team. Michael A. Stackpole was slated to write the next three novels, a trilogy titled Dark Tide, but when a change in plans compressed Dark Tide into a duology, Agents of Chaos was expanded into two paperbacks.

The New Jedi Order was conceived as a combination of hardcover and paperback novels, with major events occurring only in the hardcovers and the paperbacks filling in side adventures. Stackpole's manuscript for Dark Tide I: Onslaught revealed that the series' paperbacks would also contain significant plot points, and Luceno was tasked in his two paperbacks with writing about Han Solo—specifically, Solo's journey to find himself while grappling with the grief he felt over Chewbacca's death. Shapiro believed that many of Bantam's authors had not known how to handle Solo in their novels, resulting in character stagnation, and Luceno was eager for the opportunity to develop the character through more than just a simple action-packed adventure. He hoped to take Solo through a heroic journey reminiscent of the original Star Wars trilogy, and he viewed the first volume of the Agents of Chaos Duology as a "Han Solo, this is your life" novel. It had a working title of Solo Crusade, which was eventually changed to Hero's Trial.

Having been involved with The New Jedi Order from its beginning, Luceno found it relatively easy to transition into a writing role, but he did devote a significant amount of time to learning the rules and regulations of the Star Wars franchise. Challenged to write about an older and grief-stricken Han Solo, his goal was to approach Solo's grief in a mature manner and to distance the character from his wife Leia Organa Solo. Solo's withdrawal into himself after Chewbacca's death generated a negative reception, which surprised Luceno, as the series was intended to be darker, though it was possibly "too realistic" in the team's thinking. Luceno has identified Solo as one of his favorite characters to write, calling him the most human of the Star Wars saga's main characters due to his inability to evolve like his Force-sensitive family, and in focusing on him, Luceno was pleased to have the chance to write an homage to Brian Daley. Several characters from Daley's Han Solo Adventures reappear in Hero's Trial, and Luceno often felt his late friend's presence on his shoulder while writing the book. He found a bittersweet irony in the experience, as he saw his friendship with Daley as similar to the one between Solo and Chewbacca.

Daley's works were not the only source material from which Luceno drew inspiration while writing the Agents of Chaos Duology, as both novels feature returning characters from Bantam's various scattered Star Wars books. Boba Fett was even originally intended to appear in Hero's Trial, but he was written out due to concerns that the book was adding too many characters and replaced by Big Bunji. While further developing the story, Luceno also chose not to kill Roa during the attack on the Jubilee Wheel as originally planned, and the Fosh Jedi Vergere, who was designed as an unorthodox character from the start and was first mentioned in Greg Bear's 2000 novel Rogue Planet at the planning team's request. The books see Solo gain a new partner in the form of the Ryn Droma, whom Luceno hoped would complement Solo and help him navigate his grief. Hero's Trial was released on August, 2000, and its sequel Jedi Eclipse was released two months later, on October 3. Jedi Eclipse's working title had been The Crooked Sky. Both volumes sold very well, as every installment of the New Jedi Order performed strongly on the market, exceeding the expectations of the planning team.

Luceno had intended for Droma to remain as Solo's partner after the events of Agents of Chaos, but when letters poured in from fans indicating that they wanted to see Solo team up with his wife, Leia, Droma began to fade into the background. Luceno's role as a consultant continued; at some point, he sat down with Shapiro, Rostoni, and authors Troy Denning and Matthew Stover at Skywalker Ranch to discuss the future of the series. When the planning team decided to kill another major character—the Solos' son Anakin—some of The New Jedi Order's subplots were abandoned in an effort to spotlight Anakin prior to his demise, including one that Luceno had begun in Agents of Chaos regarding the rights and awareness of droids. The request to kill off Anakin also forced the team to quickly rethink the plot, as Vector Prime had already been outlined by that point. Luceno and the other writers agreed to kill Anakin upon concluding that they wanted a tragedy to accompany the Fall of Coruscant. The biggest casualty of the series' shift in focus was Michael Jan Friedman's Knightfall Trilogy, which was canceled entirely. Greg Keyes's 2001 Edge of Victory Duology replaced Knightfall and focused heavily on Anakin, and fewer New Jedi Order books released that year allowed Del Rey and Lucasfilm to publish several novels set in the era of the ongoing Star Wars prequel trilogy. Luceno was hired to write a lead-up novel to Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace titled Cloak of Deception, as well as an eBook novella called Darth Maul: Saboteur. The working title of the former was Vergence.

While writing Saboteur, Luceno found it challenging to get inside the mind of Darth Maul, a character with a mysterious background, and to write scenes from Maul's perspective. He attempted to imagine what it would be like to serve Darth Sidious, Maul's Sith Master, and chose to portray Maul introspectively, drawing inspiration from the relationship between Darth Vader and the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. In February 2001, Saboteur was released exclusively in electronic format on the websites of online booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble for $1.99. It was later included in the paperback reprint of Michael Reaves's 2000 novel Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter.

When Luceno initially viewed The Phantom Menace, the opening crawl piqued his interest due to its allusions to events preceding the film; Cloak of Deception allowed him to craft that history. George Lucas personally directed Luceno to create a political thriller centered around Senator Palpatine and Chancellor Valorum of the Galactic Republic, but he forbade him from revealing the Palpatine/Darth Sidious connection, considering it a spoiler. However, he permitted Luceno to portray Palpatine as a skilled politician and manipulator, which Luceno enjoyed by depicting them as distinct characters. To understand Palpatine's mindset, Luceno meticulously studied all of Palpatine's scenes in The Phantom Menace, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, aiming to replicate his mannerisms and speech. He also consulted several of William Shakespeare's plays to depict Palpatine's manipulative relationship with Valorum, whom he viewed as a tragic figure akin to Iago, Cassius, or Richard III. Luceno likened the writing process to being tasked with describing the Garden of Eden before the encounter between Eve and the serpent.

Luceno found inspiration in political thriller writers such as Frederick Forsyth and Robert Ludlum while writing Cloak of Deception, but his initial drafts were action-heavy, focusing on Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and other supporting characters. Shapiro and Rostoni aided him in reducing the action, achieving a balance between politics and lightsabers. After completing his first draft, he received the script for the upcoming film Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones, which provided insight into the Galactic Senate's inner workings and allowed him to introduce organizations that would later appear in the film. At Lucas's request, he incorporated a character from the film into his novel. Luceno also seized the opportunity to expand on an in-joke that Lucas included in The Phantom Menace: the Asogians, a species referencing the main character of Steven Spielberg's film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. As a nod, Luceno named Grebleips—"Spielberg" spelled backwards—as the species' Senator and designated Brodo Asogi, the name given to E.T.'s planet in William Kotzwinkle's spin-off novel E.T.: The Book of the Green Planet, as their homeworld.

Upon its release, Cloak was the earliest adult novel in the Star Wars timeline; therefore, Luceno chose to treat it as an introduction to the entire saga, providing brief explanations of Star Wars universe elements that some readers already understood, such as Jedi Knights, the Force, and the dark side. He likened it to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit serving as an entry point to The Lord of the Rings, a challenge he relished, as was creating an entire backstory for Valorum based on a single line from The Phantom Menace. He felt the entire novel depended on that line, finding the process of thinking backwards to be a valuable exercise. In contrast to writing during the New Republic era in The New Jedi Order, Luceno believed that the formality of speech, costume, and behavior on Coruscant during the Republic era barely concealed the Galactic Republic's corruption, as everyone was too cynical to care about the hypocrisy, comparing the Galactic Republic to Rome before the Roman Empire's fall and the New Republic to America during the American Revolutionary War.

Luceno aimed to replicate the three-part structure of the Star Wars films and honor as many of the saga's conventions as possible; once he had the complete story, he treated Cloak of Deception as the novelization of a Star Wars film playing in his mind. Another source of inspiration was the Ethiopian city of Lalibela, which found its way into the book. Cloak of Deception was published in hardcover on May 29, 2001.

Throughout the production of The New Jedi Order, Luceno and Shapiro consulted, and at the halfway point, they reassessed their progress, discussing what remained to be done and how to conclude the series. Given Luceno's involvement from the beginning and his knowledge of nearly every proposed idea, he emerged as the obvious choice to write the final volume; he was familiar with the characters and story arcs and possessed a wealth of information. Many of the series' secondary plot lines remained unresolved, and Luceno compiled a three-page list of dangling threads that needed resolution. In total, the book took nearly a year to research and write, and he derived considerable satisfaction from being selected to conclude the series. Boba Fett, who had previously been cut from Hero's Trial, was one character he was finally able to include in The New Jedi Order.

Luceno conceived the book's title—The Unifying Force—from the concept of the Unifying Force, a forward-thinking view of the Force focused on the consequences of actions. The Jedi's struggle to navigate the war was a major theme throughout the series, and Luceno envisioned The Unifying Force as primarily about the Force and its redefinition by Luke Skywalker's New Jedi Order. The title also extended to the Galactic Alliance assembling a unified force of fleets against the Yuuzhan Vong, and to the Yuuzhan Vong Shamed Ones, outcasts who would play a crucial role in ending the war. The author's favorite characters to write in the novel were those forced to re-evaluate long-held beliefs, including Jacen Solo, Luke Skywalker, the droid C-3PO, and the Yuuzhan Vong characters Nom Anor and Harrar. Through Harrar, Luceno hoped to give the Yuuzhan Vong more depth than typical black-and-white villainy, viewing them as tragic wanderers rather than hateful invaders. He drew inspiration from the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, such as the Maya and the Aztec, cultures with inherent tragedy, and he aimed to imbue the book with moral ambiguity. Del Rey editor Steve Saffel had previously wondered if such cultures could serve as models for the Yuuzhan Vong during the series' initial brainstorming sessions.

Although the planning team discussed the possibility of wiping out the Yuuzhan Vong at the series' end, they felt that a merciful option would be more compelling, sending the invaders into exile. Luceno originated the idea of the primary villain being a puppet, which emerged during The New Jedi Order's earliest story conferences; he also considered killing Han Solo in The Unifying Force, but ultimately decided against it. In writing the book's final scenes, he drew inspiration from the ending of The Lord of the Rings, which conveyed a sense of closure. He attempted to leave the characters in positions where fans could envision their future lives, later admitting that he was attempting to wrap up the entire Star Wars saga with the book. However, the saga continued with more books, to the point where Luceno felt there were no new directions for the characters to explore.

The New Jedi Order had been a challenging project, due to the numerous contributing authors pulling the storyline in various directions, conflicting deadlines with the authors' non-Star Wars novels, illnesses, canceled books, last-minute changes to the story arc, and fan reactions to Chewbacca's death. Nevertheless, Luceno found it to be an interesting series and a valuable experiment for Star Wars fiction, stating that The New Jedi Order became more enjoyable and exciting when its plot was completely transformed midway through, allowing its authors to do more than simply fill in the gaps between major plot points. He expressed relief when it concluded, joking that he was a Star Wars EMT, with fellow author Aaron Allston calling The Unifying Force "a giant NJO band-aid."

The Unifying Force was released in hardcover on November 4, 2003, and Luceno toured the United States throughout November to promote it. Included in its release was a CD-ROM featuring an e-book of Vector Prime and a round-robin interview with Luceno and other members of The New Jedi Order's development team. His next project was more personal, as he decided to pursue a lifelong dream of acquiring land in the Yucatán Peninsula. Having learned to thatch in Guatemala, he hoped to build a thatched-roof house on the property. He intended to take a long break from Star Wars, but after being shown art of the Battle of Hoth and of Ben Kenobi's hut, he agreed to write the reference book Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy. Published by Dorling Kindersley, it was illustrated by Hans Jenssen and Richard Chasemore, with renowned Star Wars scholar Curtis Saxton serving as a consultant—Saxton had previously written the fan project Star Wars Technical Commentaries. The book was released on August 5, 2004, to coincide with the release of the Star Wars Trilogy on DVD.

As the galaxy's Clone Wars unfolded across Star Wars media, Luceno reviewed the original manuscripts and outlines of the novels and comics that contributed to the Clone Wars multimedia project, discussing them with Shapiro and Rostoni. He was commissioned to write a lead-in to Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith set during the Clone Wars, starring Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi; the novel, Labyrinth of Evil, was marketed as a "must-read prequel" to the film. While he appreciated that Star Wars films typically began in the middle of an action sequence, leaving the backstory for audiences to infer, he eagerly accepted the opportunity to write the background for Revenge of the Sith's opening battle. Luceno received the first draft of the movie's script and was regularly updated on its revisions; in January 2004, he spent two days at Skywalker Ranch discussing the script with Shapiro, Rostoni, Howard Roffman, and Matthew Stover, who was writing the film's novelization.

One of Luceno's key tasks in the book was to create a backstory for General Grievous; he was also able to address unresolved plot points from Attack of the Clones, such as the mystery surrounding the erasure of Kamino from the Jedi Archives, which Lucas chose not to reveal in Revenge of the Sith after shifting the story's focus to Anakin Skywalker. He compiled a list of questions that Stover posed for him during a meeting with George Lucas, who provided input on the backstories of both Grievous and Sifo-Dyas, as well as on Grievous's attack on Coruscant. Believing that the fighting would primarily take place on the ground, Luceno initially envisioned Chancellor Palpatine being whisked away like George W. Bush in Air Force One during the September 11 attacks, but Lucas revealed that it would primarily be a space battle and suggested that he consider the Secret Service sequestering Dick Cheney in a hardened bunker on that day. Lucas also provided information on Count Dooku's allegiance to Darth Sidious and on the prophecy of the Chosen One, which gave Luceno a solid foundation and assured him that there was a compelling story to be written. The author traveled to Mexico to develop his book's plot; when he saw a fellow traveler reading Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October, he conceived the idea of writing about a hunt for Darth Sidious, which shaped Labyrinth of Evil's story.

Stover and Luceno maintained contact, with Luceno reading Stover's novelization as it was being written and Stover reading Labyrinth of Evil's outline, incorporating references to it into his own manuscript. He kept Luceno informed of his progress, but many of those references were ultimately removed. Scenes were also cut from the film as its script evolved, including an exchange between Obi-Wan Kenobi and a Clone Commander that had inspired Labyrinth of Evil's opening scene; General Grievous also became a different character in later script versions. One scene from the script that made the final cut included a reference to the planet Cato Neimoidia, which Luceno used as a starting point for his story—he aimed to make Labyrinth of Evil more directly connected to Revenge of the Sith than previous prequels had been. He frequently spoke with Rostoni, Episode III Set Diarist Pablo Hidalgo, and The Making of Star Wars Revenge of the Sith author Jonathan Rinzler, all of whom were attending dailies or viewing rough cuts of the movie. He was also writing the reference book Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith: The Visual Dictionary for Doring Kindersley, which granted him access to film stills, props, other photographic material, and insider information, while he collaborated with both Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic.

A highlight of writing Labyrinth of Evil for Luceno was portraying Skywalker and Kenobi as friends rather than in their usual master-apprentice dynamic. He gave them a smooth and light-hearted rapport, partly as a contrast to the grimness of The New Jedi Order and partly because Labyrinth was the saga's last opportunity for lightness before the dark Revenge of the Sith. With Skywalker set to turn to the dark side in the movie, Luceno wrote him as no longer fearing dark power, but rather becoming infatuated with it, building on character development from the Clone Wars multimedia project. After his outline was approved by Lucasfilm, he was dismayed to learn about two other projects in development: the third season of the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon and a comic series from Dark Horse tentatively titled Star Wars: Countdown, both of which were telling the same lead-in story as Labyrinth of Evil but in different ways. Attempts were made to divide characters and plotlines, but the animated series was not scheduled to be storyboarded until after Labyrinth of Evil's manuscript was due. Luceno later stated in an interview with Star Wars Insider that fans might find "slightly different accounting of the same events." The Star Wars: Clone Wars team built their story around Luceno's book, but they diverged from its details to better suit the climax of an animated series. Brief mentions of characters and a planet from the series were inserted into Labyrinth of Evil at the last minute. Countdown, however, eventually became Star Wars: Obsession and told a different story, including the fate of Asajj Ventress, who was originally intended to appear and die in Labyrinth of Evil.

The political subtext about the rise of dictatorships in the Star Wars prequel trilogy was carried over into Luceno's work, but he did not attempt to compare George W. Bush to Palpatine, despite accusations from some readers—the novel's "Homeworld Security" was borrowed from a Dark Horse comic, and the term Triad of Evil was simply a light-hearted homage to what he considered a very interesting phrase. Labyrinth of Evil was released in hardcover on January 25, 2005, and the Visual Dictionary on April 2.

Upon the release of Labyrinth of Evil, Luceno was already working on another book: Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, which was set immediately after Revenge of the Sith and formed a loose trilogy with Labyrinth and the movie novelization. It focused on Darth Vader, Darth Sidious, and a group of Jedi who escaped the Great Jedi Purge, but it was titled and promoted as a Vader-centric novel despite the character's relatively limited role in the book. Originally scheduled for release in early 2006, its publication date was swapped with Timothy Zahn's novel Outbound Flight and moved to late 2005 to capitalize on the ongoing hype surrounding Revenge of the Sith. Similar to Labyrinth of Evil's marketing, Dark Lord was promoted as a "must-read sequel" to the film.

With Dark Lord, one of Luceno's primary goals was to contrast the Jedi and the Sith. He aimed to illustrate the differences between the relationships of a Jedi Master and a Jedi Padawan and a Sith Master and a Sith apprentice, and he also sought to parallel the story arcs of Darth Vader and the Jedi Roan Shryne—he wrote Vader as moving further away from the Force while Shryne moved closer to it. In the book, Shryne was one of several Jedi who initially felt disillusioned with the Force after the purge. Luceno drew inspiration for writing Vader after speaking with a LucasArts employee who had worn Vader's suit for a photo session and described the experience of being inside the costume. He described Vader's role in the novel as "a kind of hero-myth in reverse," and he enjoyed writing Vader due to the character's rich potential created by Revenge of the Sith.

Dark Lord was published in hardcover on November 22, 2005; when some fans complained about Vader's limited role in the book, Luceno later apologized for the misleading title in an interview. He took a sabbatical from writing after its release, but he was hired to consult with authors Aaron Allston, Troy Denning, and Karen Traviss on a nine-book series set after The New Jedi Order. A scene from Dark Lord was recreated in the fifth issue of the comic series Star Wars: Dark Times, written by Mick Harrison (a pseudonym of Randy Stradley) and released in 2007. The issue featured Vader and was set during the same time period; Luceno was credited in the comic for writing the scene's dialogue. He was also approached by Tommy Yune, director of the Robotech film The Shadow Chronicles, about writing a novelization of the movie, but he declined, feeling it would contradict what he and Brian Daley had already written. The content of Luceno's Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy was reprinted in the October 2005 compendium Star Wars: Complete Locations, and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith The Visual Dictionary was similarly reprinted one year later inside Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary.

After a multi-week trek in the Guatemalan jungle, Luceno checked his email at an internet cafe, where he discovered an email from Lucasfilm asking if he was interested in writing a novel about Darth Plagueis, a character mentioned in Revenge of the Sith and name-dropped by Luceno in Labyrinth of Evil. He stated that he "nearly keeled over" upon reading the email, as he had hoped to write about Plagueis but believed the character would be off-limits. He was thrilled by the opportunity, and his involvement with the project was first announced on StarWars.com in June 2006 in an article projecting a 2008 release for the book. Luceno was invited to Skywalker Ranch to discuss the novel, and his visit coincided with story conferences for the nine-book series Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, on which he had been hired as a consultant. He attended the conferences, where a story was outlined that would see Jacen Solo fall to the dark side of the Force, a character direction that Luceno had not envisioned while writing The Unifying Force. He had believed that Jacen was the natural successor to lead Luke Skywalker's New Jedi Order, and in a 2007 interview, he remarked on the character's fall by saying "I didn't see that coming, to tell you the truth."

Luceno engaged in several conversations with Lucasfilm representatives regarding the optimal approach for the novel. Before commencing writing, he provided a comprehensive outline, collaborating primarily with Howard Roffman to determine permissible and restricted content. George Lucas also participated in the initial planning stages. Luceno corresponded with Lucas, inquiring about the possibility of Plagueis being non-Human. Lucas stipulated that Plagueis could be a Muun, providing Luceno with artist renderings and production sketches of Muun characters. Furthermore, Lucas shared details about Plagueis's persona and mandated that Plagueis wear a transpirator mask due to a past accident. Luceno's original concept envisioned the novel as a first-person account, narrated through a holocron discovered by Palpatine immediately following Plagueis's demise, detailing Plagueis's life. Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles served as a major inspiration for this format. Another initial concept involved structuring the story around a pursuit of immortality between Plagueis and Qui-Gon Jinn, who were unknowingly pursuing the same goal and inadvertently hindering each other's progress. The narrative would conclude with Jinn contacting the Whills, enigmatic entities first mentioned in an epigraph within the original Star Wars novelization.

After months of contemplation and preparation, Luceno commenced writing the book in earnest. However, he soon received feedback indicating that Lucasfilm desired a more prominent role for Palpatine. They felt that Palpatine's narrative held greater appeal than Plagueis's, a directive Luceno welcomed, as he had anticipated limitations on extensively focusing on Palpatine. Nevertheless, one Lucasfilm staff member strongly opposed certain aspects Luceno intended to explore in the novel. In a 2008 interview, Luceno speculated that he had overreached by rendering Palpatine's background and history excessively concrete, thereby diminishing the mystique surrounding his character and undermining his portrayal as an embodiment of evil, a perspective shared by George Lucas and Ian McDiarmid. He later characterized his initial Qui-Gon Jinn-focused outline as "scattered, excessively lengthy, and overly ambitious in resolving every loose end." The project was suspended in 2007 to allow for decisions regarding the nature of the Sith and their Rule of Two. Lucasfilm staff also opted to reassess and await Lucas's developments with projects like the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series. The novel was superseded by Drew Karpyshyn's Darth Bane: Rule of Two and rescheduled for release on December 26, 2007. Luceno remained optimistic about the novel's eventual revival, and Sue Rostoni assured fans that Lucasfilm valued him as an author. Leland Chee, the custodian of the Star Wars Holocron continuity database, confirmed that Plagueis remained canonically a Muun despite the cancellation. In 2009, Wizards of the Coast released a miniature figurine of Plagueis as a Muun wearing a transpirator mask.

In 2007, Luceno received an offer to author a book centered on the Millennium Falcon, a starship that had attained iconic status. Del Rey had recently renegotiated their contract for publishing Star Wars fiction. During a story conference discussing novels under the new contract, both Pablo Hidalgo and Leland Chee independently drew inspiration from the Death Star novel and proposed a book about the Falcon. Shelly Shapiro granted Luceno considerable creative latitude, suggesting that it could be an anthology of short stories, provided it was set after Legacy of the Force and featured Allana Solo, Han and Leia's granddaughter. The formal proposal stipulated that it should depict an aging Han Solo investigating the Falcon's history, describing the book as a "love letter to Falcon fans" devoid of "galaxy-shattering events." While the anthology concept appealed to him, he desired it to function as a novel. He ultimately perceived the final product as a hybrid, with the story featuring a diverse cast of characters recounting the ship's history through the perspectives of its former owners. The book portrays Han Solo investigating his ship's past amidst a grand treasure hunt. Luceno felt as though he were writing ten distinct novels due to the multitude of characters, settings, and viewpoints. It was an unprecedented undertaking for him, yet he relished the challenge.

The novel was simply titled Millennium Falcon, a decision Luceno hoped would attract casual readers. Although situated late in the Expanded Universe timeline, he endeavored to create a standalone novel accessible to new readers, utilizing the stories of the ship's previous owners to introduce and allude to various eras in the Star Wars timeline and summarize events since Return of the Jedi. He aimed to avoid portraying the Falcon as possessing a droid-like level of consciousness, but he did aspire to imbue it with its own origin myth and a history as rich and varied as Solo's. He believed the ship possessed an intriguing history from its initial mention in the original Star Wars film, with further hints in The Empire Strikes Back and its cameo in Revenge of the Sith fueling his imagination. Its presence in the latter film, in Luceno's view, laid the groundwork for a comprehensive story in which the Falcon had been owned by more than just smugglers and soldiers. To maintain intrigue, he assigned it more unconventional owners, such as a circus. His objective was for the ship to impact the lives of everyone who had piloted it.

While visiting Skywalker Ranch to discuss the project, Luceno had the opportunity to attend story conferences for the forthcoming nine-book Fate of the Jedi series. Considering his novel would serve as a bridge between Legacy of the Force and Fate of the Jedi, he deemed his attendance at the meetings crucial. As the new series developed, he incorporated more setup for it into Millennium Falcon, maintaining communication with series authors Troy Denning and Aaron Allston to ensure he was fulfilling their requirements. The character of Seff Hellin was conceived to initiate significant events. Initially, the book was intended to be set in the immediate aftermath of Legacy of the Force, but Luceno advocated for shifting it to two years later. While he desired a lighter tone than Legacy of the Force, he recognized the need to address the death of Jacen Solo, which had occurred at the series' end. These additional two years would allow Han and Leia Solo to resolve the issue and anticipate a brighter future. He also worried that the book would resemble Hero's Trial if their grief remained too raw, and he believed that a seven-year-old Allana would be a more compelling character than a five-year-old Allana.

At this juncture in his career, Luceno found writing about the Jedi increasingly challenging, as different authors often held divergent views on the capabilities of the Jedi and the Force. With Millennium Falcon, he welcomed the opportunity to write about more grounded and less ethereal aspects of the Star Wars universe. He also described the project as "a breath of fresh air" due to its focus on a small-scale narrative rather than large-scale galactic events that propelled an ongoing series. He appreciated the emphasis on characterization rather than having "each line of dialogue read like an oracular pronouncement." Despite this, he expressed concern that standalone novels like Millennium Falcon risked being perceived as filler, irrelevant to the overarching saga. Luceno incorporated several easter eggs into the book, including a description of Han Solo referencing the song That's Life, popularized by Frank Sinatra. The phrase "The Wook, the Crook, and me," spoken by Leia in the book, originated with Lucia St. Clair Robson and Brian Daley. Luceno also credited Daley with sparking his initial thoughts about the Falcon, as they frequently discussed the ship and compared it to their own dilapidated cars while Daley was writing The Han Solo Adventures. However, an oversight by Del Rey prevented St. Clair Robson and Daley from being acknowledged, as the dedication page was omitted from the initial hardcover release. Its December 2008 publication date was exchanged with Matthew Stover's Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, expediting its release and transforming its publication into a rushed endeavor. Consequently, he never received the book's galley proofs, and he was surprised to discover a final copy of the book on his doorstep one day, lacking its dedication page and including edits he was unaware of.

The Millennium Falcon hardcover was released in bookstores on October 21, 2008, and StarWars.com commemorated its release with a week of content dedicated to the iconic starship. Labyrinth of Evil and Dark Lord were also bundled with Matthew Stover's Revenge of the Sith novelization in a paperback edition titled The Dark Lord Trilogy, which was released on August 26.

With the planning of 3-D releases for the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Dorling Kindersley approved expanded editions of their visual dictionaries. The Phantom Menace in 3-D and its visual companion were released in 2012. However, the planned expansion of Luceno's original Revenge of the Sith dictionary progressed only to the outline stage before the 3-D versions of Episodes II and III were indefinitely delayed. A personal project he pursued relentlessly, however, was his Darth Plagueis novel. Following Millennium Falcon, he inquired with Howard Roffman about the possibility of revisiting the project and was flown to Skywalker Ranch for a personal meeting with Roffman. Luceno advocated for the revival due to his extensive contemplation of the character of Plagueis and his reluctance to abandon him. He also considered it an honor to write about such a pivotal character and was willing to compromise to ensure the novel's realization. Roffman offered guidance on perceived shortcomings in Luceno's original outline and suggestions for improving the story, primarily by emphasizing Palpatine. Luceno initially hesitated to humanize Palpatine or portray him sympathetically, viewing Palpatine as an embodiment of evil within Star Wars, akin to Professor Moriarty's effectiveness as an evil representation for Sherlock Holmes due to his lack of background. However, he drew inspiration from the Star Wars prequel trilogy, which depicted Anakin Skywalker's transformation into Darth Vader, and realized he could focus on Palpatine without diminishing his character.

Luceno dedicated months to numerous revisions and submissions of various outline versions before he and Roffman reached a consensus on the book's direction. The novel, simply titled Darth Plagueis, was thus resurrected. While some of his original concepts were retained, most were discarded to allocate more of the book's focus to Palpatine and his relationship with Plagueis. Luceno worked so closely with Roffman, bypassing both Del Rey and the standard Lucasfilm editorial staff, which was a novel experience for him. He characterized Roffman as "George's right-hand man at Lucas Licensing" and inferred that Roffman was directly communicating with Lucas regarding much of the content in Darth Plagueis, as approvals often seemed to originate from Lucas through Roffman. Luceno ultimately designed the plot and story structure, and while some of his ideas were rejected, he later acknowledged that their removal was beneficial. Overall, Luceno's discussions with Roffman spanned approximately one year of preparation. He had previously been allotted around six months for each of his novels, but from Darth Plagueis's initial pitch to its publication, Luceno had five years to develop it. He continued to contemplate it after its 2007 cancellation and researched The Phantom Menace's pre-history, utilizing both Star Wars novels and Wookieepedia as resources. He believed that extensive research was crucial given the breadth of territory Darth Plagueis was poised to cover.

That expansive scope allowed Luceno to consider Darth Plagueis as a hidden history of the Star Wars prequel period. His deep knowledge of the Expanded Universe, along with the notes he had accumulated over time, enabled him to incorporate significant existing characters and events from that era to enrich the narrative. He approached researching the era with a dedication akin to that of a historian writing a factual account. Concerned that the novel might become overwhelming due to excessive references, he consciously avoided overdoing them. He didn't want readers to struggle to understand the allusions, a challenge that proved more difficult in the final act as the plot began to converge with the timeline of The Phantom Menace. Beyond established continuity, Luceno also kept abreast of future developments, maintaining regular communication with Leland Chee and Dave Filoni, the supervising director of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series, to stay informed about their plans for Darth Maul's character and backstory.

While crafting Darth Plagueis, Maul occupied much of Luceno's thoughts. After submitting the novel's manuscript, he was commissioned to write two short stories centered on the character. He already had ideas for these stories, envisioning them as potential excerpts from Darth Plagueis if he hadn't chosen to maintain a focus on the main characters' perspectives. Luceno collaborated closely with both Filoni and Ryder Windham during the development of these stories, as Windham was simultaneously working on The Wrath of Darth Maul. Given Filoni and The Clone Wars's team's specific vision for Maul's background, they engaged in a dialogue until they reached a consensus on Luceno's portrayal of the character's transformation into a Sith Lord. Remembering how his earlier backstory for General Grievous had been superseded by The Clone Wars, Luceno was wary of potential conflicts with the cartoon's future storylines.

Darth Plagueis presented Luceno with his first real opportunity to delve into Palpatine's inner thoughts without the limitation of concealing his Darth Sidious identity. He and Roffman jointly decided that the novel would not explicitly reveal Palpatine's ultimate plan to overthrow his master. Instead, it would subtly hint at Palpatine's own agenda and include subtle instances of his manipulations. Knowing that he couldn't rely solely on space battles and lightsaber duels to maintain reader interest, Luceno employed political intrigue and machinations as key narrative devices. In shaping Palpatine as a young man, he considered various possibilities before settling on the character as a pampered heir to a fortune, which allowed his understanding of the character to evolve. He later admitted that he devoted more thought to the scenes featuring a young Palpatine than to any other part of the novel, with the scene of Palpatine and Plagueis's first encounter undergoing numerous revisions. Luceno ultimately discarded much of the material he wrote about young Palpatine, remaining mindful of the risk of making the character too sympathetic. However, he did write a scene depicting Palpatine's transition from inherent evil to overt evil, though he chose not to elaborate on Palpatine's childhood and leave that aspect of the story untold, describing the scene as one of the most unsettling parts of the book and admitting that writing it was disturbing. Regarding Palpatine's relationship with Plagueis, he credited Roffman for consistently reminding him that the two Sith should be partners throughout the book, plotting together rather than openly plotting against each other. This gave him a perspective on the Sith that differed from the traditional portrayal in the Expanded Universe. An early draft of the novel featured Plagueis discovering Palpatine's first name but never using it, as a way of appealing to his apprentice's inflated ego, but this idea was ultimately removed. Luceno also drew inspiration from The Godfather in depicting Plagueis as a kind of mobster. In creating Plagueis's master Darth Tenebrous, Luceno chose the Bith species for their reputation for braininess, although he was initially hesitant due to associating the Bith with the jizz-playing musical band from Chalmun's Cantina until he realized that a single species could encompass a wide range of personality types. Leland Chee first mentioned the character of Darth Tenebrous in a 2006 blog post announcing the finalists for the Darth Who Contest organized by Del Rey, and Luceno had previously stated in 2008 that he would have chosen that name for the first Sith Lord to use the Darth title if he had been able to. He also created the character of Darth Gravid to explain why Plagueis lacked access to certain ancient Sith teachings and Force techniques, finding Gravid's story increasingly compelling as he developed the character.

Luceno's discussions with Roffman revealed the necessity of incorporating midi-chlorians prominently into Darth Plagueis. Despite Luceno's reservations about the concept of midi-chlorians, feeling that they diminished the Force's mystique, he acknowledged their place in the Star Wars saga and the impossibility of avoiding their use. Aware of the potential controversy surrounding them, Luceno drew inspiration from his readings on particle physics and described them as intercessors rather than independent Force-carrying particles. While this deviated slightly from their portrayal in The Phantom Menace, he believed the explanation was more logical and relished the challenge of making sense of the midi-chlorian concept. This allowed Luceno to explore the Force in a rational and scientific manner and to portray Plagueis as a scientist rather than solely a mystic, drawing inspiration from H. G. Wells's story The Island of Doctor Moreau in this portrayal. Matthew Stover expanded on this character thread with Darth Tenebrous in the companion short story The Tenebrous Way, depicting Tenebrous experimenting in the style of a classic science fiction mad scientist despite having no communication with Luceno during its writing. The focus on midi-chlorians also enabled Luceno to depict the creation of Anakin Skywalker, but he was prohibited from revealing whether Skywalker was a successful result of Plagueis's manipulation of the midi-chlorians or whether he was created by the Force as a response to Plagueis's experiments. Luceno knew the answer but was not allowed to explicitly state it in the book.

During his initial meetings with Roffman, Luceno expressed his belief that there was no suspense surrounding Plagueis's death, as Star Wars lore had already established that Palpatine killed him in his sleep. In Dark Lord, Luceno had mentioned that Plagueis had transcended the need for sleep, and he hoped to honor his own continuity and retcon Plagueis's death to make it more exciting and less anticlimactic. However, he was firmly informed that Plagueis absolutely had to die in his sleep—there would be no lightsaber duel or other retcon. Accepting this, Luceno inquired whether the character could still be alive during the events of The Phantom Menace. He wanted to introduce an element of surprise, and from his first viewing of The Phantom Menace he had sensed a more sinister force at play than just Sidious and Maul. He received approval from the highest levels of Lucasfilm and was thrilled, as this opened up a wealth of possibilities and an element of surprise that would captivate readers. He carefully considered how Plagueis would be defeated by his apprentice, bearing in mind Palpatine's skills in manipulating others and instilling a false sense of security. Luceno rewrote Plagueis's death scene multiple times, seeking input from Shelly Shapiro on how to optimize it. Ultimately, he chose to open the book with a preview of the scene, prompting readers to speculate on when, rather than how, it would occur.

To amuse himself, Luceno incorporated subtle humor into the book, including a "Sith Bith" whose name translates to "Darth Dark" and some wordplay involving the word "Muun." He often found himself laughing at his own writing while trying to keep the jokes from being too obvious. Darth Plagueis was released in hardcover on January 10, 2012, and was later nominated for the 2012 Goodreads Award for Best Science Fiction. The short story Restraint was included in a paperback re-release of Michael Reaves's Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter on December 27, 2011, and the short story End Game was included in a paperback re-release of Terry Brooks's novelization of The Phantom Menace on January 31, 2012. Despite the addition of new content, neither paperback received a new ISBN, which created difficulties for some fans ordering them online. Luceno took a vacation to Mayan sites in Mexico in late 2011.

On October 30, 2012, StarWars.com announced that The Walt Disney Company had acquired Lucasfilm Ltd. from George Lucas, and that Disney, under the leadership of new Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, would commence production on new Star Wars films, including a sequel trilogy. Another announcement followed on April 25, 2014: the new films would not be bound by the Expanded Universe, which would be rebranded as "Star Wars Legends," while a new canon would be established under the supervision of a Lucasfilm Story Group. This new canon would encompass the six main Star Wars films, the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series, and the upcoming Star Wars Rebels cartoon.

Mike Fessler, an author whom Luceno had encountered around the early 2010s, contacted Luceno to request assistance in securing the necessary publishing deal and licensing agreement for a visual reference guide dedicated to clone troopers. Impressed by Fessler's concept and manuscript, Luceno offered to leverage his connections to support Fessler's collaboration with Lucasfilm, Del Rey, and DK Publishing. By mid-2012, the book was nearing completion when Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm in October led to the cancellation of all unreleased or planned books pending further review. While awaiting confirmation, Luceno remained supportive of the book's fate and maintained contact with Lucas Publishing. The subsequent cancellation of The Clone Wars and the termination of the Expanded Universe resulted in the official abandonment of the project.

However, Del Rey retained their publishing license for books within the new canon, and several such books were announced on April 25, including Tarkin by James Luceno. The project had been proposed to Luceno in the summer of 2013 while he was developing a novel about Emperor Palpatine set between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back as a continuation of the Darth Plagueis narrative. Feeling stuck with the Palpatine novel, he realized that setting Tarkin early enough in the Imperial Era would allow him to advance the stories of Palpatine and Darth Vader while keeping the focus on Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin. Although initially concerned that the Tarkin character might not appeal to casual readers, the challenge ultimately became enjoyable.

Tarkin had fascinated Luceno since his first viewing of Star Wars, and he considered the character as representative of the Empire as the Death Star itself, given his casual destruction of planets and his unwavering self-assurance that blinded him to the fatal flaws of the Death Star. Luceno had many questions about Tarkin's identity and origins, and he engaged in extensive discussions with Brian Daley after first seeing the film, attempting to determine Tarkin's position within the Imperial hierarchy.

Luceno believed that Tarkin was among the Empire's elite and likely one of its architects, and he and Daley had pondered the seemingly genuine friendship between Tarkin and Darth Vader. This friendship, along with Tarkin's command of the Empire's ultimate weapon, served as a starting point for Luceno's vision for the novel. Exploring these aspects required delving into Tarkin's past. He had a general idea of the story and its timeline placement when he attended a conference with the Story Group at Skywalker Ranch in October 2013, which sparked numerous discussions, including one about Tarkin's background. Luceno wished to avoid making Tarkin too similar to Palpatine by giving him a wealthy upbringing, so Story Group member Pablo Hidalgo suggested that he originate from a colonial planet.

This suggestion provided Luceno with a fresh perspective on Tarkin's origins. While Tarkin appeared cultured, dignified, intelligent, and entitled in Star Wars, the colonial concept introduced the notion that he had grown up on an Outer Rim planet and had to strive to gain acceptance among the Core elite. Luceno had encountered colonials raised in Tanzania and Kenya during his travels in East Africa, and he drew upon these experiences as inspiration for Tarkin. He found the brainstorming session with the Story Group consistent with his past experiences, stating that "There's always been a story group." His Tarkin meeting at Skywalker Ranch proceeded in the same relaxed manner as his previous novel meetings, involving conversations about Star Wars over coffee and doughnuts with a story group, the only difference being a few new faces. They discussed developments in Star Wars Rebels and upcoming bonus episodes of The Clone Wars, and he was even granted access to the Rebels series bible and some of the show's scripts. Luceno left the meeting feeling that the Story Group was not attempting to dissuade him from any of his ideas for the book. He contemplated Tarkin for several more months before developing a formal outline.

The rebranding of the Expanded Universe as "Legends" did not restrict Luceno, as he could still reference the lore if he chose. The planet Murkhana and the character of Armand Isard fit into the narrative he was crafting, so he incorporated them instead of creating new elements. He also referenced the Eriadu Conference from his earlier novel Cloak of Deception, among other Legends references. He cleared some references with the Story Group beforehand, while others he included based on his intuition, and they ultimately survived the editing process. The editors made minor cuts and requested changes to the species of several characters, but Luceno did not find the process intrusive.

Aware of his tendency to include excessive exposition in his books, he self-edited, removing non-essential references and avoiding the forced inclusion of too many characters in the novel. He did not believe that the Expanded Universe was diminished in any way and hoped that readers could enjoy and embrace multiple versions of certain events, similar to the various interpretations of the quest for the Holy Grail. He personally was not ready to dismiss the Expanded Universe and did not want fans to disregard its quality storytelling, acknowledging that some fans were frustrated by the rebranding of the EU as Legends, which Luceno attributed to Disney's decision.

With the Dark Times open to new exploration in Star Wars fiction, Luceno considered how to depict the era, ultimately deciding to focus on the Empire's military strength, in contrast to Darth Plagueis, which emphasized economic and political manipulation. Set five years after the Clone Wars, he portrayed the Emperor as still consolidating power and determining whom he could trust as the Empire worked to control the galaxy. He was mindful of John Jackson Miller's A New Dawn, which was being written concurrently and was set several years later, as it depicted the Empire as a more established organization. Luceno stayed informed about Miller's outline submissions and his discussions with the Story Group and Dave Filoni. Setting Tarkin shortly after the events of Revenge of the Sith allowed Luceno to provide a snapshot of the Empire's early days and to offer an origin story for Tarkin set years before his command of the Death Star, intending to foreshadow the character's appearance in A New Hope. He aimed to suggest that Tarkin's casual disregard for life when destroying Alderaan stemmed less from psychopathy and more from his role as an instrument of Imperial authority. Luceno believed that Tarkin's arrogance was unique, in that he saw himself as part of an elite and chosen master race responsible for supervising lesser groups to prevent chaos and lawlessness. This arrogance originated from Tarkin's survival through specific trials.

These trials, which began at the age of eleven, gradually shaped Tarkin's worldview and transformed him into a callous commander. Embracing the colonial concept, Luceno envisioned a young Tarkin undergoing harsh ordeals in the wilderness of his homeworld of Eriadu, viewing the cycle of life and death as a trap and perceiving nature as a battle for survival rather than finding the Force and goodness within it, as a Jedi might. Escape could only be achieved by fighting to the top of the food chain, instilling in Tarkin the belief that blunt force and ruling through fear were the appropriate responses to combating chaos. These characteristics led Luceno to consider Tarkin the Star Wars equivalent of Heinrich Himmler or Hermann Göring. Other historical figures who inspired his portrayal of the character included Niccolò Machiavelli, Oliver Cromwell, Adrian Carton de Wiart, James J. Andrews, Julie d'Aubigny, Anne Bonny, and George Armstrong Custer. He also studied Tarkin actor Peter Cushing's performances in old Hammer Horror films, as well as his roles as Dr. Who and Sherlock Holmes, to capture his voice and mannerisms. Luceno studied similar movies for a scene with Christopher Lee's Count Dooku, enjoying the thought of the two actors interacting as they had in numerous classic horror films.

Other inspirations for the novel included a photograph Luceno had taken in the 1970s of a pride of lions resting atop a rocky outcropping during his travels in Africa. The animals, appearing as lords of all they surveyed, served as a basis for Tarkin's rite of passage in the Eriadu wilds. The character of Jova, Tarkin's great-uncle and wilderness guide, was an amalgamation of several people Luceno had met during his early travels in Africa and the Americas, particularly a Belizean in Guatemala who viewed every venomous animal in the forest as a potential enemy and killed any he encountered. The inclusion of the former Jedi Temple as the new Imperial Palace stemmed from discussions with the Story Group, leading Luceno to receive artwork depicting the Palace, which had a line of structures surrounding it, five years after Palpatine proclaimed himself emperor during the early era of the Empire. The book also establishes that the Jedi Temple was built atop an ancient Sith shrine, drawing inspiration from historical examples such as Hernán Cortés building churches on the sites of razed Aztec shrines in the conquered city of Tenochtitlan. Additionally, sources such as Ryder Windham's Death Star Owner's Technical Manual were consulted when Luceno decided to portray the battle station as a looming and nebulous background threat in the story.

Darth Vader's character was intentionally crafted without a specific viewpoint by Luceno, who appreciated the notion of readers imbuing him with their own interpretations. Furthermore, he aimed to keep Tarkin uncertain about Vader's true sentiments. Vader, lacking a face to express emotions, appeared to Luceno as a living Rorschach test, leading him to portray the character through his words and deeds. Reflecting on Tarkin's relationship with Vader, Luceno noted that in A New Hope, Tarkin's lack of surprise upon learning that Obi-Wan Kenobi was Vader's former Master suggested a deep knowledge of Vader's history. He and the Story Group surmised that Tarkin harbored suspicions about Vader, even believing him to be Anakin Skywalker. Luceno drew inspiration from several The Clone Wars episodes for their dynamic—a trilogy of episodes from the show's third season depicted the start of their association, while the end of the fifth season showed Tarkin prosecuting Skywalker's Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, for murder. This latter event allowed Luceno to establish their relationship on a tense note, with Tarkin suspecting that Vader resented him for his attempt to convict his apprentice. Despite this, Luceno believed that Tarkin's reference to Vader as "my friend" in A New Hope held some truth, hinting at a shared past and mutual respect. Luceno also recognized Tarkin's role in The Clone Wars as revealing a character more calculating than simply ruthless, and more knowledgeable about the Empire than merely obedient.

During the writing process, the Story Group inquired whether Luceno wished to reveal Palpatine's first name, Sheev, which George Lucas had conceived for the long-gestating Star Wars: Underworld live-action television series. He found the choice of first name perplexing and unexpected, having envisioned Greco-Roman names for Star Wars characters that subtly hinted at their nature. While he acknowledged potential allusions to concepts like Shiva or a shiv, he ultimately accepted it but feared it might be too disruptive if included in the book. Upon realizing the name would eventually be used, Luceno agreed, deciding that Palpatine would reveal it as a means of inducting others into his inner circle. The name's leak prior to Tarkin's release generated considerable online buzz, surprising Luceno with its unexpected magnitude.

Luceno had contemplated Palpatine's ultimate objective for years, having extensively written about the character and the dark side. He felt it had to transcend mere immortality, perhaps resembling winning the Game of Thrones or "covering the lands in a second darkness" like Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, or even something entirely novel within science fiction and fantasy due to Star Wars's unique position among such franchises. He therefore explored the idea of Palpatine utilizing the dark side to reshape reality according to his sinister designs, and the result surprised him. Luceno desired to further explore this concept in the future, envisioning a concluding chapter to the loose trilogy initiated by Darth Plagueis and continued by Tarkin, focusing on Palpatine's attainment of ultimate metaphysical power and his belief that the final conflict between light and dark must occur in an otherworldly realm.

In the book, Tarkin's adversaries were a group of rebel hijackers, whom Luceno intentionally differentiated from typical insurgents by incorporating diverse character types such as media personnel and former spies. He also sought to move beyond a simple black-and-white morality, posing the question of whether they were "good guys" without providing a definitive answer. Luceno also conceded that they served, in a way, as a MacGuffin to facilitate interactions among the Imperial characters in the story. Political intrigue took precedence over conventional Star Wars space battles to maintain the focus on Tarkin, but when battles did occur, Luceno consistently positioned the character as close to the action as possible. He worried that the space battles might clash tonally with the rest of the book and only gained full confidence in the novel after submitting a first draft to Del Rey.

Overall, Luceno had approximately six months from the initial concept of Tarkin to the submission of the draft. Despite concerns that the novel was too concise, he believed it was complete and refrained from expanding it before submission. Following feedback from Del Rey, he refined certain scenes and added others. Tarkin was released in hardcover on November 4, 2014. During the book's promotion that month, Luceno expressed his desire to visit recently excavated Mayan sites in southern Mexico. Tarkin was reprinted in October 2015 in the anthology The Rise of the Empire, which also included A New Dawn and three exclusive short stories.

In an interview in December 2014, Luceno reflected that the plots of most of the Star Wars prequels had been spoiled for him due to the direct tie-in novels he had written. He expressed a desire to approach 2015's Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens without any prior knowledge. However, the film's story was revealed to him in April 2015 during Star Wars Celebration Anaheim, and he subsequently read the script before the movie's release. The Force Awakens premiered in December 2015, and its planets and locations were incorporated into an updated version of 2005's Star Wars: Complete Locations. This book encompassed all previous editions of the Inside the Worlds of series, including Luceno's Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy, and was published on September 27, 2016. The reprinting of Luceno's earlier work brought some elements of Star Wars Legends into the new canon, such as Ackmena the bartender, who originally appeared in 1978's The Star Wars Holiday Special. A significant Star Wars event in 2016 was the theatrical release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the inaugural film in the Star Wars Anthology Series, a collection of movies designed to explore characters and events beyond the core episodic saga. In 2015, Luceno was commissioned to write Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel, a prequel to the movie, and he was granted access to both the story treatment and shooting script of Rogue One. During meetings with the Story Group, he was shown film art and some early footage, and the book's development proceeded in tandem with the film's. The people involved in making the movie provided input on the novel.

As he had done with his previous tie-ins, Luceno considered the origin of Rogue One's complete story—while he felt the movie was self-contained and didn't require any backstory, he viewed Catalyst as a book for enthusiasts seeking additional details. Although no specific line in the film alluded to a particular past event, the movie clearly established a prior relationship between two of its characters, Galen Erso and Orson Krennic, and Luceno made it his goal to reveal the nature of that relationship. He portrayed them as having met before the Clone Wars as part of a Republic-sponsored program for young geniuses, giving them a "college buddies" dynamic that Pablo Hidalgo likened to the film The Social Network. Luceno initially intended to cover a wide range of topics in the book and feature a large cast of characters, including Count Dooku and the Emperor, but upon considering the film's development, he scaled back his ambition and made Catalyst a more intimate, character-driven novel. He focused on the relationships among a select few individuals: Krennic, Erso, and Erso's wife Lyra and daughter Jyn. Rogue One featured an older Jyn as its protagonist, and Luceno believed that depicting her parents' dynamic was crucial because they both influenced who Jyn would become. His objective was to inform Rogue One rather than replicate or spoil it, and to incorporate an appropriate level of foreshadowing despite the book being set decades earlier.

To understand how Mads Mikkelsen and Ben Mendelsohn—the actors portraying Erso and Krennic, respectively—operated, Luceno studied some of their other films, paying close attention to their diction and body language. He initially assumed that Mikkelsen was playing Krennic, the villain, before being corrected, and Mendelsohn's Krennic proved to be an intriguing villain for him to write. Krennic was unlike a Sith and lacked Tarkin's calculating nature; he possessed a gambler's mentality, could discern people's tells, and was a liar and manipulator who would stop at nothing to achieve his goals. These qualities, combined with his volatility, made him a unique antagonist, but Luceno endeavored to portray his younger version as less impulsive and volatile. Luceno included Tarkin in Catalyst and enjoyed juxtaposing him with Krennic due to their contrasting methods of achieving their objectives. However, his plot required an additional foil for Krennic, and he created the Dressellian smuggler Has Obitt, who played a significant role in Krennic's schemes.

Rogue One was not the sole influence on the writing of Catalyst, as Luceno also treated it as a prequel to his earlier novel, Tarkin. That book had prompted him to consider the early days of the Empire and its transition from the Old Republic, as well as how members of the Imperial Court would vie for position in the Emperor's inner circle. This concept lent itself well to the rivalry between Krennic and Governor Tarkin, as did the construction of the Death Star, which was central to Catalyst's plot and which Luceno believed would impact the long-term goals of career militarists and politicians like Krennic and Tarkin. He enjoyed depicting the earliest stages of the weapon's conception, which he thought could tie into the idea of Palpatine having a far-reaching plan—a future novel about Palpatine was still on his radar—and he extensively researched The Manhattan Project, which he considered an appropriate real-world analogue to the Death Star. Like the Republic, the United States and United Kingdom had spearheaded the development of a major weapon out of fear that their enemy was already creating one.

Erso was written as a conscientious objector to the Death Star project, whom Luceno compared to a scientist who would refuse to work on the atomic bomb. However, as Luceno could not find any Manhattan Project scientists who had rejected the call of duty, he had to draw on other historical influences for Erso's character. He also gained a better understanding of how to write Krennic when he learned that Erso would be a subject of Krennic's manipulations. Erso's wife, Lyra, was described by Luceno as "the person who keeps the genius Galen grounded," and he wrote her as a confident and physical counterpoint to her cerebral and antisocial husband, who loves him despite their differences and who helps him communicate with the outside world. In early meetings with the Story Group, it was decided that Lyra would somehow be in touch with the Force without being overtly Force-sensitive. Another important character in Catalyst is Rogue One's Saw Gerrera—Luceno initially wanted to give him a large role, but discussions led to the decision to develop him in other Rogue One–related projects. Ultimately, people directly involved with the movie wanted him to appear at the end of the novel, and Luceno was then granted permission during rewrites to use him extensively after all.

Lacking any footage of the character, he required assistance in finding the voice of a younger Gerrera. Additional help came in the form of inspiration from his travels, and locations in Ethiopia and Bolivia found their way into the novel, with the former being a low-lying volcanic region that seemed ideal for one of Catalyst's settings. Regarding other sources of inspiration, Luceno indicated in an interview that he was still largely drawing from a Legends basis while writing the book. Catalyst was released in hardcover on November 15, 2016, but earlier that year Luceno traveled to Kenya and developed an interest in African history. In 2018, his work on Revenge of the Sith The Visual Dictionary was included in the Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary, New Edition, which featured material from the newest Star Wars films.

Regarding his long-planned novel focused on Emperor Palpatine between Episodes IV and V, Luceno has mentioned that it's an idea he sincerely hopes to pursue at some point, although he has yet to be commissioned to write it. He speculates that his proposal could potentially be rendered irrelevant by new elements from the sequel episodes. Luceno has also expressed his desire to write a story set during the Old Republic-era because he believes there are compelling possibilities to explore with the early Jedi Knights.

He has remained current with the Star Wars Expanded Universe over the years, reading books, comics, and Wookieepedia entries and taking notes along the way, both for professional and personal reasons. Luceno believes that continuity is extremely important, as he feels that the more a universe is thoroughly developed, the more enriching the reading experience becomes. This perspective stems from his work with Robotech, where he and Daley were required to maintain their books' continuity as closely aligned with the original animation as possible. By prioritizing continuity, he strives to make the Star Wars universe as believable as possible, creating a universe that the reader is intimately familiar with. He has compared writing Star Wars fiction to inhabiting a vast world where numerous events have already transpired, and he references those events to enhance the world's realism. He also draws inspiration from visually striking characters in an effort to make his books visually engaging and film-like. His travels have frequently influenced his writing, and locations from countries such as Nepal, Tanzania, and Ethiopia have served as inspiration for settings in his Star Wars novels.

When writing for Star Wars, he is always considering the fans and what they would enjoy reading. Some of his favorite Star Wars scenes to write were the Jedi reclaiming Coruscant from the Yuuzhan Vong in The Unifying Force, and when he attempted to imagine in Dark Lord what it would be like for Anakin Skywalker to awaken in the Darth Vader suit for the first time. Similar to Brian Daley, he believes it is crucial to provide droids with a point of view, as much of the Star Wars saga is conveyed through droid characters.

Comparing the experiences of writing an original novel and writing tie-in fiction for a franchise like Star Wars, Luceno has described the former as far more organic, with stories and characters emerging from carefully cultivated seeds. He has likened the latter scenario to writing historical fiction, with its established characters and rigid rules. Luceno has expressed a preference for writing in the Star Wars prequel era, which he finds epic and operatic, filled with rich and almost melodramatic language.