The Man, The Myth, The Legend or I Just Met Kevin J. Anderson!!!

Oh, boy. This is going to be a long one, so if you’re interested, buckle up your seat belt and get ready for the ride.

It’s probably obvious by now that I love Star Wars. I was two and a half when The Empire Strikes Back was released. We went to the drive-in to see it. I stayed up the entire time to watch, staying up even most of the way through Oh Heavenly Dog, the second feature. Needless to say, I’ve been hooked ever since.

So why do I preface my post this way? Because my love of Star Wars brought my attention to Kevin J. Anderson. Okay, little more of a history lesson first. In 1991, a little book called Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn hit bookshelves. Squealing Star Wars fan that I am, I had to have it. What? It was only the first book in a trilogy? Like Pokémon, I had to have them all.

To my surprise, the franchise had been opened up to other authors to come up with new stories in the Star Wars universe. I’m not ashamed of my collection, even if it’s no longer cannon. (But that’s another post…) So, pretty much the next set of books was Kevin J. Anderson’s Jedi Academy trilogy. I fell in love with them, and I had to have all the Young Jedi Knights books that he did with his wife, even though I was older than the target audience. Having read all the Star Wars books he’d written, I gained a new appreciation for him as an author, and even today, I seek out his books whenever I can.

Kevin J. Anderson has inspired me as an author, so getting to meet him, and hear him speak at RadCon in Pasco this weekend, has been a highlight of my life. I’m grateful for all the stories he’s written that I’ve read. He’s one of my heroes, and I feel blessed that I had a chance to tell him in person what his writing has meant to me. Once again, thank you, Kevin, for following your dream. One of the lives you’ve touched has been mine.