Well, I guess you could say that I got my start in the old (heh) days of Usenet. alt.startrek.vs.starwars (hereafter known as ASVS) was still a hotbed of discussion in early 2000, back in the times before anyone realized just how one-sided the ST vs SW argument was. Having said that, they had an excellent fan fiction community, which I have to thank them for. Without their reviews and critiques, my writing wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today.

My longest-running project has been a story I called "Intergalactic Alliance." It started off back in 2000 as a what-if question I had posed on ASVS, since the Outbound Flight had always been one of the mysteries introduced in the Thrawn trilogy that I had always wanted to find out more about (and the novel Outbound Flight wouldn't be written until 2009). I decided to take the idea and turn it into a story: what if Outbound Flight survived and wound up in the Milky Way?

Over the past 19 years (!) I've gone through no less than eight complete drafts of the first story, A Prelude to War. Originally it was going to just be one book. I portrayed Outbound Flight as a small mission on a CR-70 Corellian Corvette, which wound up in the TOS-era Milky Way, and was rediscovered by the Rebellion around the time of TESB. It was quickly pointed out to me that a Corellian Corvette would be too small for such a mission, so starting with my third draft the ship switched to a Neutron Star-class Bulk Cruiser; around the same time, the timeline shifted to Voyager-era Trek and New Jedi Order-era Wars. The fifth draft was my first completed version of the story, but as much of an improvement as it was over the four previous drafts, it had serious plot shortcomings that prevented me from continuing its sequels. I went back to the beginning with the intent of doing a quick revision to correct what I perceived as the most serious flaws; about halfway through my revision, I realized that I would have to completely rethink the plot of the story.

Today, I'm confident that my eighth revision is solid enough to stand with the best published fiction of both universes. OK, maybe that's a little much to say, but at some point you have to say enough is enough and stand by your work.

Unfortunately for the story, I no longer plan to complete the two sequels I had planned for it. Once A Prelude to War is finished, I'll be moving on to other projects.