The Star Wars: The High Republic authors, Daniel José Older and Alyssa Wong, talk to StarWars.com about their longtime friendship and latest collaboration, Escape from Valo.
Authors Daniel José Older and Alyssa Wong have been friends and fans of each other’s work for nearly a decade. After meeting in 2015 at the launch party for Older’s first novel, Half-Resurrection Blues, they quickly formed a mutual appreciation that went beyond the page.
Their shared beliefs in creating chaotic and flawed characters, an affinity for imagining a wide spectrum of individuals whose identities reflect the full array of real Star Wars fans, and a shorthand that includes sharing pictures of birds during brainstorming makes them uniquely suited to co-write Escape from Valo, the newest middle grade book in Star Wars: The High Republic. With a cast of kids that bring the charm of The Goonies crew to the world of Valo, their story imbues a sense of hope and self-discovery to a younger audience during a period of anarchy in which the Nihil remain victorious.
In the latest installment in the StarWars.com series celebrating Phase III in Star Wars: The High Republic, which continues next week with Escape from Valo arriving January 30 and the monthly release of Older’s ongoing Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures comic series tomorrow, listen in as the two writers reflect on their collaboration, their fictional kids, and avian character vibes.
Daniel José Older: It’s so great to see your face.
Alyssa Wong: It’s great to see your face, too! I owe you a call and three emails.
Daniel José Older: I hope you know we don’t keep track of that stuff. When did we first meet?
Alyssa Wong: At the launch party for your very first novel in New York City.
Daniel José Older: It’s so wild that you were at that we go that far back. And the second time we met was at the Nebula [Award]s, right? You probably won something, because you’ve won every award in sci-fi.
Alyssa Wong: That was the year I won for Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers. I was like, “Daniel’s really great. It’s so good to see you again.” You were like, “I dunno who you are.”
Daniel José Older: [Laughs.] No, not true! I knew exactly.
Alyssa Wong: [Laughs.] I’m just messing with you.
Daniel José Older: For the record, I was really happy to see you. I was a fan of your work already, and you were a friendly face in a room full of people. We had no idea how well we would one day know each other. But you won all those awards before you were even…excuse me, this is your first book, right? You are one of the most award winningest authors of the genre, and you haven’t written a book until now? Do you realize what a flex that is?
Alyssa Wong: You’re so sweet. Isn’t this your 20th book?
Daniel José Older: Yes, it is my 20th. And you dragged me out of retirement. I was literally the aging hitman in a cabin with a dog. I was the guy who’s just like, “I’m retired!” And then it was a combination of you and Mike [Siglain], but I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for you. I told Mike, “I love comics. I’ve written millions of words in my life in prose at this point, and I’m good for a little while.” And, then, I don’t know how exactly it happened; I knew you were doing the middle grade, but you were having second thoughts about it. And I think we were kind of like “What if we did it together?”
Alyssa Wong: So, what you’re saying is it’s my fault.
Daniel José Older: Yes, absolutely. 100%. I blame you. Affectionately.
Alyssa Wong: I blame you, too. I was like, no one’s going to let me write kid lit. I was asked to do a short middle grade comic once for an all-ages and they were like, “No, this is too dark.” And I thought it was really happy! So, I figured nobody would let me do it, and I was really nervous about it. You are the reason why I was like, “OK, maybe I can do this.”
Daniel José Older: And [before that] I knew I wanted you to show up in Star Wars. [Alyssa laughs.] I thought you were going to be on me the second I asked this question, but I was wrong. You had no idea. I don’t remember if I texted you or not, but I know I was like, “So Alyssa, if you were in Star Wars just hypothetically, what would your role be?” And you had no idea what I was talking about.
Alyssa Wong: No. I just thought it was a question that you asked your friends.
Daniel José Older: That’s why I got away with it. It’ll never work again now that I’ve done this. What did you say? You would be the stressed-out coordinator of an assassin ring?
Alyssa Wong: I did because I couldn’t hack it as a Jedi. This is really what I would be a hundred percent.
Daniel José Older: That’s perfect. And I took the assassin thing and made [Crash Ongwa] a bodyguard. And then you said pink hair and I was like taking notes in the corner. [The Phase I YA novel] Midnight Horizon came out of that conversation, basically. It makes so much sense because who has access to everybody and everything? Bodyguards. They are in every space where important things are happening. They have to know the city backwards and forwards. They have to understand the dynamics around them. All that and all that is really cool to write. And especially for it to be a teenage girl. It made it really interesting and so much of the story just naturally grew out of that. Just that one conversation became Crash and the crew and Midnight Horizon just unraveled before me. I infamously wrote it in 20 days because of that. So here we are.
Alyssa Wong: We wrote the first draft of Escape from Valo in 21. We’re vibing.
Daniel José Older: That’s right, man. Not that it’s a competition, but we’re beating ourselves constantly. And that was so much fun.
Alyssa Wong: Crash is so fun. You caught me completely by surprise. I had no idea. And when Tales of Light and Life came around, the fiction anthology… [The editors asked] “Can you write Crash?” And I was like, “I don’t know. Can I?”
Daniel José Older: Meanwhile, my plan all along was that one day you would write yourself, so it worked. What was it like writing yourself? Was it weird?
Alyssa Wong: It was a little weird, but it’s fun. She feels real to me now. And we get to meet this new character Ruu, who is a Jedi. Well, he’s not a Jedi anymore…He’s gone from Padawan to vigilante. He’s sort of a Ronin kind of figure trying to find a place and whether or not his heart is just consumed by vengeance. He’s showing up more in Phase III. He’s my sweet baby.
Daniel José Older: We’re really good friends outside of the page, no question. But in any good friendship, especially in a working friendship…we have different strengths and we pull each other in different directions in a way that makes the work stronger. It is never about ego. And I love that. I think that’s such a cool thing that’s true throughout The High Republic, but I think that’s particularly true in our partnership and the way that we create.
Alyssa Wong: I think so, too. And I feel like I learned so much from this book and so much from you.
Daniel José Older: We have different tropes. I was thinking about this the other day when someone tweeted something about the two different kinds of villains and it was really hot villains and then absolute loser villains. And those are the two villains that we always write. Except I’m always writing losers and you’re always writing really hot villains. But between the two of us we have lots of hot loser villains.
Alyssa Wong: We do. And it’s my favorite now. I love a hot loser villain, so good. I feel like one of the things that I learned from you is that we write families very differently. For me, family is a perfect catalyst for trauma and stressful feelings. I’m thinking about all the characters I wrote for Aphra. I write lots of stressed out, sad characters, but I never really write anybody crying about it. They’re just like, I guess I’ll just fold this into myself and implode messily at some point.
Daniel José Older: Makes sense. In a fictional landscape, that is a good move, if not in real life.
Alyssa Wong: That’s true. Not in real life. It’s important to not do that, and get therapy. And you were like, “But Alyssa, consider there’s this character who has a great relationship with her family.” Your characters are so open with their emotions and really joyful. It shows a sense of both vulnerability and strength that I really, really appreciate. And it’s one of the things I love about High Republic Adventures and especially Zeen. I love Zeen! You write good people really well, and that is not one of my strengths, but I think after writing this book, I’ve gotten a lot better at it.
Daniel José Older: I would argue that it is one of your strengths. You just don’t recognize it as such. What we share in common is …it’s hard for us to write just straight up lawful good. But you write really good people with really good hearts who are in really bad situations and do their best and fail and then do their best again. I think you just have an understanding of character that goes really deep and isn’t just like, “Oh, this guy has a cool power. Now I’m going to put him against this guy who has a cool power. Bunk bonk whoa!” Some stories just feel like that over and over. Your characters have lived life so deeply. They always have to pick themselves up from the ashes of their own terrible decisions and learn how to love again over and over. That’s so beautiful.
Alyssa Wong: Now you’re going to make me cry. [Laughs.]
Daniel José Older: Cry! Do it.
Alyssa Wong: I mean, that makes me really happy to hear…and in Escape from Valo we have characters who are struggling with how big their emotions are. We get to see people make really difficult choices in impossible situations. It makes me really happy that we get to do that in a middle-grade because I think a lot of kids are going through that. Whether or not adults want to acknowledge that, I think that there are a lot of kids who are really struggling. It’s nice to be able to see that reflected in the stuff that you read.
Daniel José Older: Right. Have you read Hans Christian Anderson? Fairytales are dark and that is a lot of where middle grade comes from. Because kids do go through horrible experiences and it’s not fair to deprive the kids who have been through that of literature that speaks to them in order to protect the ones who haven’t. The heart of so much children’s literature is having fun, telling a good, fun adventure story and also doing it in a way that speaks to all the different truths that kids are living, including the really hard ones and not trying to shield them from it or pretend like everything is awesome. I think we, as writers, owe it to them not to BS them, not to lie to them. Something I was excited about going in is knowing the edge that you bring, the darkness that you bring to the story. I bring it, too. And that we [would] be able to find balance within that, which we did.
Alyssa Wong: The discovery is my favorite part of writing. My creative process requires an element of chaos. When we were talking about what this book was going to be, we broke story together and our original idea was like Star Wars, kind of The Goonies, but with the worst kids in their Jedi class, basically. I think you took the first crack at the outline and you broke it down chapter by chapter.
Daniel José Older: If the outline is holding you back, you’re doing it wrong. It’s a great scaffolding, but you cannot be beholden to it. And I think we both knew that instinctively. Let’s talk about these kids!
Alyssa Wong: Yeah, let’s talk about the kids.
Daniel José Older: I love these kids so much. First of all, we need to pour something out for the two that didn’t make it, because we went into this with two Scooby crews, practically [Alyssa laughs.]
Alyssa Wong: I can’t remember if it was you who was like, “This is maybe too many kids.” I think it was you. I was three chapters in and I was like, “It’s too many kids.” We lost two characters who we had planned out, but what it did was open up so much space for the rest of them to really develop and sing.
Daniel José Older: Yeah, exactly. Ram [Jomaram] was kind of our throughline. All these kids are Valo kids that were in the Valo temple. I love this notion that these kids are basically feral. They’ve been living in the woods on their own with no adult supervision for the past year, ever since the Nihil took over. They don’t have guidance and haven’t for a long time and are also dealing with the trauma of losing their Masters. They’re living under occupation of war, but they also have each other. So, there’s so much light and darkness just in their backstory.
Read the conversation in full here, and preorder Escape from Valo now from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, out on January 30th — happy hunting!
