Explore The Creative Process with Bestselling Author Claudia Gray
After a short hiatus, we are back with a very special show for all of the Star Wars fans out there! For this week’s show, we had the pleasure of interviewing the sensational Claudia Gray: New York Times Bestseller & author of some of the most popular Star Wars books in the current canon, including Lost Stars; Bloodline; Leia, Princess of Alderaan; & The High Republic: Into the Dark.
Born Amy Vincent, she adopted the pen name Claudia Gray & began her career venturing into the genre that has inspired so many fan fictions over the years: romantic fantasy. While her first book collection, the Firebird series, received moderate success, it was her tales of forbidden vampiric love in the Evernight series that truly put her on the map. The first book in the series (also called Evernight) was released in 2008 & almost immediately found its place with readers of all ages. The School Library Journal’s review praised the book saying, “Gray’s writing hooks readers from the first page and reels them in with surprising plot twists and turns, and the open ending will keep them guessing and waiting on the edge of their seats for the next book in the series.” Even L.J. Smith, renowned author of The Vampire Diaries, was quoted saying, "Once I picked Evernight up, I couldn’t put it down! I can’t wait for Claudia Gray’s next book!"
For some authors, such high praise early in their career might be enough to make them complacent with their next book, but that was not the case here. In fact, the second book in the series, Stargazer, became a #1 New York Times Bestseller, which then lead to two more entries in the series, Hourglass & Afterlife, along with a spin-off novel titled Balthazar. Following her success with vampires, Claudia’s next series, Spellcaster, dove into the world of magic & mystery. Throughout these fantastical stories of supernatural romance, the ability to give her characters a sense of life and develop them into fully fleshed-out people is what kept bringing readers back to her stories time & time again. In fact, it was that very thing which caused Disney & Lucasfilm to seek her out for her very first Star Wars novel: Lost Stars.
Now, at this point, some of you may be skeptical about how we could possibly know that Disney was thinking when they hired Claudia to write the seventh book in the new Disney/Star Wars canon. However, the answer to this is obvious. The first five books that Disney greenlit were all focused on existing characters that were guaranteed to be successful no matter what. The sixth book, Aftermath, was a collection of stories primarily designed give context to the Star Wars galaxy following The Return of The Jedi & to prepare audiences for the upcoming theatrical release of The Force Awakens. Lost Stars was not only the first, standalone novel to feature entirely new characters without cameos from any of the “Big Three” (Luke, Leia, or Han), but it was also chosen as the book to feature alongside Star Wars: Aftermath as part of the “Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens” marketing campaign. Considering that Claudia had only written one science fiction novel at this point (the Firebird series: A Thousand Pieces of You) & the majority of her notoriety was based in Vampires & romance, an outside observer who had never read the Evernight series would think that Disney took a huge risk putting a book from a relative unknown within sci-fi circles front & center at the height of Star Wars’ public resurgence.
Luckily, when September 4, 2015, rolled around, Lost Stars hit bookstore shelves all across the country & immediately sparked something in the fanbase that many had thought long lost ago during the dark days of the franchise…hope! Review after review came out praising it for its fully developed & nuanced characters, along with a story that exposed all the shades of grey that exist in Star Wars in ways that very few authors have ever done. The craziest part of it all was the fact that Lost Stars, who’s story was primarily set during the time of the original trilogy, became significantly more popular with fans than Aftermath, which was designed to give fans a preview of what the Galaxy would become in Disney’s very first Star Wars movie. With so much success from her first entry into Star Wars, it is no wonder why the next two books that Claudia was tasked with writing were to feature the iconic Princess Leia!
As was the case with Lost Stars, Star Wars: Bloodline quickly became a massive hit. This suspenseful thriller not only showed readers that Leia became even more of a badass in the years following Return of the Jedi, but it did the one thing that all three prequel movies attempted to do & generally missed the mark for; it made the politics of Star Wars genuinely fascinating & enjoyable! Sadly, in December of 2016, as Claudia was finishing her follow-up novel, Leia, Princess of Alderaan, the world received the news of Carrie Fischer’s passing. As devastating as this was for fans, the timing also created exceedingly high stakes for the 2017 release of any Princess Leia-centric novel. A lesser person might have broken under that much pressure, but not Claudia. She finished strong & released the book to yet another round of highly positive reviews. What is more, while there have been a handful of Princess Leia focused novels published over the years, most settled into moderate to less-than-stellar reputations for their characterizations of the beloved princess turned revolutionary. Meanwhile, these two books quickly became the new de facto standard for what a Leia story should be. To many at that time, these books brought a sense of comfort to them amid their real-life heartbreak.
As of today, Claudia has contributed a grand total of six novels, three comics, & one short-story to the legacy of Star Wars, as well as being part of the core story group for the High Republic era stories since its inception in 2018 (back when it was still being called “Project Luminous”). Thanks to her continued success, even more noteworthy opportunities have fallen into her lap, including the three-part House of El story for DC Comics from 2021 to 2023; a mystery novel for Disney’s The Haunted Mansion released back in August of this year; and her upcoming 2024 novel for The X-Files: Perihelion. To be honest, there is so much more that we could talk about with Claudia’s career & her library of work, but at this point, we know it would be so much more interesting for you to hear her thoughts on writing & her career directly from her. As such, it is our immense pleasure to say that on this week’s edition of Dallas Geek, we will have the privilege to sit down with Claudia Gray & explore her creative process & career together. So, join us this week as we try our best to keep our inner fanboys in check while giving all of you a peek behind the curtain at this literary VIP!