Uhl Eharl Khoehng And A Blast Of Inspiration

Posted on 02 August 2010

This weekend was something of a tsunami of creativity for me.  On Thursday my friend Andrew Gilbertson announced the release of Chapter 3 of his audio drama Star Wars: Marvels*.  So I decided to listen to the first chapter and halfway through became inspired to start writing on something I’ve been wanting to write for a long time, an audio adaptation of Patricia A. Jackson’s short Star Wars story “Uhl Eharl Khoehng,” a story about the Brandl family who is caught up in the machinations of the Emperor’s Jedi Hunting group called the Inquisitors, and about a rebel captain Fable Astin who falls in love with Brandl’s son Jaalib, an accomplished actor. It is loosely based on one of Shakespeare’s plays (I forget exactly which) and it comes out as truly Shakespearian in nature, and it is that quality that has made it stick in the mind of many a Star Wars fan since its publication in the Star Wars Adventure Journals in the 90′s.

So I did.  I wrote it.  I started Friday evening and finished Saturday evening.  The first draft is finished, and the working title is “The Edjian-Prince,” the name of the character that Brandl’s son plays in the story.  I’m not sure if I’m ever going to produce it.  I want to, and I know exactly who I want to play Jaalib and Fable.  But I don’t have the time to oversee it, or the cash to buy the audio editing program I’d need to properly mix it, so for right now it’s remaining a creative writing exercise.  I bet I will get to it eventually, but several things are going to need to change first.  Still, I remain optimistic that my second draft will properly dramatize the story for audio.

Add to that that just this Sunday evening, I edited three entire chapters of my first Vergence novel.  The middle chapter was the longest chapter in the book.  Together all three chapters clocked in at one quarter of the first draft, 15,000 words.  That’s a lot of reading and note taking!  Sadly this isn’t a full editing session, as I’m just going through it to find the story promises I’ve made (intentionally and unintentionally), but I feel a major sense of accomplishment in editing a quarter of my novel in this second level pass, and writing a brand new audio drama script in a single weekend.

I don’t think I’ll be this productive again for awhile, but who knows?

For this week, I’ll mark the same goal; edit three chapters.

*Star Wars: Marvels.  Download all three released episodes.  Now.  Even if you aren’t a Star Wars fan, you will be entertained.  Its crisply written dialogue and well-voiced characters–especially Andrew Gilbertson’s Jaxxon and Jim Perry’s Han Solo–make this a story you won’t want to miss.  Frankly I’m surprised at how good it is, because I listened to the first episode thinking it was going to be something slightly odd (because it’s about a six-foot tall green bunny rabbit), but nothing that stood out.  And I was totally wrong!