## Chapter 7

1 I thought long and hard about how to write the sound of an igniting lightsaber. I finally went with snap-hiss.

—TZ

2 This gadget is now called a fibercord whip, but at the time it either hadn’t been named or I’d failed to find the right reference. (I suspect the former, since Lucasfilm didn’t correct it in the manuscript.)

On the other hand, as with many things Star Wars, it’s quite possible the weapon had several names. Maybe Fibercord Whip was once a trade-marked name that has now fallen into common usage, while smart-rope was the generic name.

Back in my physics days, we used to call this procedure hand-waving. I’ll be using more of it as we go along.

—TZ

3 As I mentioned in the foreword, one of my goals in writing Heir was to do something that was Star Wars but which didn’t just cover the same territory as the movies. Part of that challenge was to come up with new problems and weapons for our heroes to face.

Lightsabers are great for blocking blaster bolts and cutting through AT-AT armor, but what about something semiliquid?

Of course, once I’ve gotten Luke into this situation, I also have to come up with a way to get him out of it.…

—TZ

4 A writer absolutely has to make his villains clever and competent. It’s no fun—and no challenge—for the heroes to get out of trouble without sweating about it first.

—TZ

5 From the Star Wars movies, it’s clear that George loves a good, swashbuckling, Errol Flynn-type rope swing. Luckily, so do I.

—TZ

6 Along with things like the hot chocolate, one of the major complaints I received was that I’d used too many of the movie lines in the book. The accusation was that I was simply trying to connect to the movies to add legitimacy to my books.

I disagreed, and this particular quote is a good example of what I was actually trying to do. Every family, over their years together, develops a collection of private words and phrases that evoke incidents in their past—a kind of shorthand to their shared memories. In this case, Han’s comment is a reminder of the asteroid field incident, when his snap judgment (or so Leia thought at the time) proved to be the correct action. Leia’s response, again echoing that time, is her admission that he was right in that case and, yes, he’s probably right in this one, too.

—TZ

7 Even Yoda carried one, as we know now from the prequels.

—TZ