I don't think either point is accurate, actually. Reviews -- professional reviews -- haven't complained about the portrayal of humanity in the series at all; quite the opposite, in fact. I think you mean a couple of Amazon reviews, which isn't quite the same thing. I just describe the kind of human that I saw every working day for decades, and if it isn't pretty, that's the reader's interpretation of it. Just as many readers have found a message of hope and human decency in the books. And the series isn't focused on Shan and Aras -- there are six books in the story arc and a big cast, and they get equal air time.
But it's all unsentimental, I'll give you that. Like I said, I just build the characters from scratch, put them in the scenario, and let the model run. The interaction between the characters is the plot. That's all there is to it, really. The behavior of individuals and organizations is the way real ones behave: no heroes, and no villains, just people who are mixed bags of good and bad elements. The alien races are treated exactly the same way. But if you've been raised on the kind of SF where humans are top dog, and the aliens are always evil invaders, then my books are going to disturb that certainty. But I do that in Star Wars, too. Because I wasn't steeped in the Star Wars culture to begin with, I found pretty bad things in the Jedi and some good in Vader, which comes from the journalistic approach I take. I don't know how to do anything else beyond asking awkward questions, I suppose. All my stuff is about the politics of identity at some level, and the lines we draw -- the point beyond which we abandon decency, and how we handle the moral dilemmas that our science and technology create for us..
Do you finish writing a tie-in before embarking on the next original book, or do you prefer to have multiple projects going at the same time?
I split my time pretty well equally between tie-ins and my own-copyright books. The schedules mean I don't usually have an unbroken run at a book -- sometimes I'll have to stop mid-manuscript and switch to another book because I need to do revisions and copyedits. But I can handle switching between books and even to short fiction and related features like the work I do for Star Wars Insider. I can either partition my mental hard drive and switch the other work off completely in my head, or let it stay in my conscious brain: with the latter, I find that sparks all kinds of useful ideas for the other work. The more you write, the more you write...sounds crazy, but once the creative juices kick off, they keep the process going. You know what they say: if you want something done, ask a busy person. It's about momentum.
One of the fascinating things about the Legacy series so far is how it reveals the fault lines that have always existed in the relationships of the Solo and Skywalker families: between husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and children. That's certainly at the heart of Bloodlines.
I'm not sure the fault lines are the issue, actually. But what's great in one part of your life can turn out to be exactly the same thing that isn't so great later. Real people don't change that much at a fundamental level -- although we show growth and epiphany in character arcs, of course, because that's the nature of fiction -- but the circumstances shift and what was your saving grace in your youth can make you a liability in your middle years and older. Take Han--his stubborn independence was terrific when the Empire needed overthrowing, but decades later, when the Solos and Skywalkers are part of the ruling elite themselves, the power brokers, he's a problem for Luke. Whatever happened to the farm boy and the space bum? They grew up, and the galaxy changed.
