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S02E27: Expeditiously Chatting with EK Johnston, Part One
28 Plays3 months ago
What do Star Wars novels, Narnia, The Boxcar Children, and forensic archaelology all have to do with each other? They're all subjects we discuss with our very special guest EK Johnston, author of Ahsoka, the Queen Cycle (?), Crimson Climb, and more!
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Transcript
Introduction to E.K. Johnston
00:00:01
Speaker
We're talking to Star Wars author E.K. Johnston, and we're doing it real quick. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a Star Trooper?
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello, welcome to Short for a Stormtrooper and friends, I am so excited to bring you today's episode. We had the opportunity to talk to a real live Star Wars author, someone who is writing canon Star Wars material.
00:00:30
Speaker
i was introduced to EK Johnston or Kate as she goes by, ah by our old friend Joe Maritz. And we had the chance last week to talk. And we're going to dive in with three full episodes of our conversation with E.K. Johnston.
E.K. Johnston's Writing Journey
00:00:45
Speaker
She's a great author. She has written Ahsoka. She has written the Queens series. We'll talk about those in a week or two here, as well as Crimson Climb, a follow-up to Solo, a Star Wars story, and a whole bunch of other things. so So in today's episode, we're going to take some time, get to know Kate, know how she became a Star Wars fan and a lot more about her. Very interesting person. I'm sure you'll love it.
00:01:10
Speaker
So with no further ado, here is me and Kate. All right, Kate, thanks again for joining us. No problem. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah, it's great to
Early Star Wars Influences
00:01:21
Speaker
have you.
00:01:21
Speaker
I would love to dive in and understand you as a Star Wars fan. Before we get into any of your work, just your experience with Star Wars. And i I will say, if the internet doesn't lie to me, I think you and I both have a passion for C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia.
00:01:42
Speaker
Yes. yeah And I know that you're a fan of a whole bunch of other properties. So give us a picture of E.K. Johnston as the fan and particularly the Star Wars fan. And how did that happen?
00:01:53
Speaker
um So I don't really remember not being a fan of Star Wars, um which is the case for a lot of people. um But I didn't get it from my parents. I got it from my older brother. um He's about 10 years older than I am.
00:02:04
Speaker
he's in 74 I'm born in 84.
00:02:07
Speaker
And um he was the one who was like and into Star Wars before I was born even really and then afterwards. um And we had he had a bunch of action figures but my mom had like donated them to a kindergarten teacher friend of hers so like don't know you want to think what they're worth but like, i mean, they weren't worth anything at the time but like it was all the original Kenner stuff.
00:02:29
Speaker
um But one one thing we had, um because we didn't have the actual movies. um So one thing we had was a vinyl ah book on tape, for lack of a better word, of ah Return of the Jedi. And it had like all of the soundtrack stuff on it as well.
00:02:45
Speaker
So I just remember listening to the record and there's a part ah where they do like a bit of Leia's internal monologue when she finds out that Vader is her father. And that's like one of my serious childhood memories. I was like, it's not even a line from the movie. It's like something they made up to put this audio book in context.
00:03:01
Speaker
um But it was really cool. And then like, I just remember like the Darth Vader breathing, just like being a thing that frightened me my whole, my whole childhood.
00:03:12
Speaker
um And then the first time I remember actually watching it, I would have been maybe like seven
Impact of Fantasy on Imagination
00:03:18
Speaker
or eight. i was at a friend's house and a New Hope was on like just television in the afternoon.
00:03:24
Speaker
And I remember I had to go home. So I called mom and I was like, I'm going to be like five minutes late. Is that okay? And she was like, why? And I was like, I'm going to bike home during the commercial break. There was a commercial break in the middle of the trash compactor scene and I just booked it home. Yeah. Yeah. yeah do two two to And then there was a decent chance mom wasn't goingnna let me watch the movie when I arrived home too. Like that must be said. She did. So I did get to see the whole thing mostly.
00:03:51
Speaker
um But yeah, I will always remember like, just like frantically biking home from my friend's house that day, hoping to like be able to finish A New Hope, to find out if they ever got off the Death Star um when when I got home.
00:04:03
Speaker
That's so great. So so yeah your exposure to the story started with playing with action figures and then going to this audio before you even saw the movie. Yeah. That is an amazing. I had like the Clone Wars entrance before the Clone Wars was a thing. Because the Clone Wars entrance, the kids come in through Lego, right?
00:04:19
Speaker
And then they watch the show. And I had that, but like before it was cool, if you will. Yeah, that's so amazing. Which was fun. So what are some of the other things that you're passionate about?
00:04:31
Speaker
um Am I right about the Narnia? Yes, you are correct for the Narnia thing. um but the two things that I kind of associate the most with Star Wars um are the Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings, which was another story I was huge fan of when I was kid.
00:04:44
Speaker
And the Darth Vader breathing and the ringwraiths were always really cool closely linked in my like... fear sources, I guess. um And when I was little, I spent a lot of time in the backyard doing what I now know as live action role play of ah Chronicles of Narnia and Star Wars, like a combination the two.
00:05:05
Speaker
So like talking animals and telekinesis. Yeah. Yeah. You're painting the picture of like my, I'm maybe a few, many years older than you. So like I was the 10 year old boy that George Lucas actually created Star Wars for. I was 10 when it came out.
00:05:20
Speaker
And that whole summer, you know, we spent the entire summer in Kurt Barrett's backyard playing with, you know, crates that we were turning into X-wings and big giant tinker toys that we turned into lightsabers.
00:05:32
Speaker
We actually had, so yeah, we actually had two and a half acres and had a little wood lot. um And my brother built us a tremendously unsafe Ewok village, like in the trees.
00:05:44
Speaker
We all got like terrible rope burn and like slivers and you name it. But nobody fell out of a tree, which I feel is a miracle actually. But um we we definitely had all kinds of stuff going on in terms of like Star Wars as a kid.
00:05:58
Speaker
That's amazing. And what are some of the... I kind of capped out nicely too, because The Phantom Menace, like I grew up thinking that we were never going to get another movie. Like I remember figuring out what Roman numerals and being like, what do you mean episode four? Like what happened to the first three? Where are they? And my brother was like, oh, well, he told the middle of the story and we're probably never going to get the beginning of the story.
00:06:18
Speaker
um And then on my 15th birthday, ah Phantom Menace came out and that was like... George Lucas was like, I'm going to make E.K. Johnston's 15th birthday amazing.
00:06:30
Speaker
She's going to get Padme Amidala. That's going to be her birthday present. And it worked. It was a great birthday present. And ah ah re Revenge of the Sith also came out on my birthday, however many years later.
00:06:41
Speaker
um Kind of a downer comparatively. But um but it was it's always really cool. So it's things I associate now, like the prequel trilogy, I associate with like my birthday and spring and the whole like high school to university period of my life, um which which is also pretty neat.
00:06:58
Speaker
I totally do that too. Like when May comes around, it's like I combine the excitement of a new Star Wars movie with the end of the school year. yeah And so, you know, even though it's been years since I've had a summer vacation, I still make that connection.
00:07:12
Speaker
um What are some of the connections that you see between like Narnia and Lord of the Rings and Star Wars? That might be a basic question, but. I think it's mostly the size of the story. Like it's these really big worlds that you can in.
00:07:26
Speaker
as the main characters, but it's also really easy to make up your own characters yeah in the world um and, you know, force your siblings to also play the characters that you've made up for them.
00:07:37
Speaker
um So i feel like that's something that
From Fan Fiction to Forensics: A Unique Path
00:07:40
Speaker
they have in common. um They have a lot of symbology in common. Obviously there's a lot of like um like religious influence in both or all three of them. um And then there's also a certain amount of like idealism in all of them.
00:07:56
Speaker
um in terms of how government should work and uh you know how how things should be and how we should be to each other and I think those are the things that really kind of tie tie them together so how did you start writing then uh so I did start with fan fiction uh yeah yeah I wrote a boxcar children fanfic when I was like Oh my gosh. You I grew up on the same stuff. Yeah.
00:08:20
Speaker
I wrote a, I wrote a box for children ah fanfic when I was 10 because Benny always got to do the cool thing. And that made me mad. So i wrote a version of the story where like Jesse and Violet got to do the cool thing rather than just like make dinner, which like is important. And Jesse obviously liked it and she did get to do important stuff sometimes, but I felt like she deserved like her own mystery sometimes.
00:08:41
Speaker
yeah um So, Jessie and Violet were like much, I don't even think the boys were in it. I think it was Jessie and Violet and Aunt Jane and that was it. um And there might've been a murder, I don't remember. And so that was kind of how I started. And then when I went to university, um I had my own internet access for the first time.
00:08:59
Speaker
um And I used to go to the library and read fan fiction and then like erase the search history like 14 times before I left. um just in case but then I started when I had my own laptop I started reading more and I started writing more and I started actually in CSI which was the show I was really into at the time yeah um and then it was so CSI uh which I think is now called TSI Vegas but it wasn't back then because there was no other one um and uh Stargate and Alias were like the sort of places that I started out and then ah The Two Towers came out when I was in first year. So we were right in the middle of Lord of the Rings fandom as well. And it just kept getting bigger from that point.
00:09:36
Speaker
I was never in the Star Wars fandom. Interestingly enough, I didn't write Star Wars fanfic. Like I never wrote anything down. And I only read a couple of them. um And it was funny because i never really wanted to write Star Wars fanfic because I i had other ways of like participating, I guess.
00:09:51
Speaker
um And then the first time I was ever like, oh man, I really want to read Star Wars fanfic. I couldn't because um I was a Star Wars writer now. But the time when I desperately, desperately wanted to, it was right after Rogue One. I was like, I wanted to read every single fix it that everyone had written and put on the internet. And I couldn't do it because it was my job now.
00:10:15
Speaker
That's so funny. Well, yeah can we take a detour then into Andor for a second? um I haven't actually seen season two yet. i haven't seen season two of Andor yet. I know, i know. i was I've been on a deadline for like two months and it's a sci-fi book with a political line running through it. It's like, I haven't watched Murderbot either because like I had to like keep focused on this book. And I was like, as soon as I start to watch either Murderbot or Andor, they're both just going to take over my life. So I haven't had the chance to watch them yet.
00:10:41
Speaker
Um, but I am super excited too. I know just, I have it muted across like all social media, so I don't spoil yet spoilers. So I don't, I literally don't know what happens, but just seeing people's reaction, i was like, ah, see we've done it again on the end or front here.
00:10:55
Speaker
We have. Yeah. And it's been living rent free in my head for that, you know, since it came out. So I'm sure the same thing will happen to you. Very smart. if you're on a deadline, not to engage. Yeah. Yeah. I can't.
00:11:05
Speaker
It will absorb your thoughts. So, um, With CSI, I also read you have a background in forensic archaeology. I do. It's that same type of forensics, right? Yes, it is. and That's what that is.
00:11:18
Speaker
Yeah. So um forensic archaeology. So forensic anything just means like the law is you do it to practice the law, basically. So like there's forensic accounting and there's forensic entomology and there's forensic whatever.
00:11:29
Speaker
um So archaeology with a forensic bent to it is basically evidence collection, which is kind of what archaeology is to start off with, um because you are looking at evidence. um And so we did learn more like crime scene oriented stuff. So like different contexts that I'm used to for my undergraduate.
00:11:51
Speaker
Like I learned to take apart cars, like how to find like hidden wall safes and like stuff like that. um And then my thesis was on ah body recovery, because that's something that, um or human remains recovery, because that's something that people aren't always trained to do um if they're like a police officer or a firefighter or whatever. And I will always remember, we went to watch... um uh a house fire like that was a practice so like they they set the house on fire and then like the firefighting students put out the fire and then they like searched for evidence and all of the archaeologists were like sitting on a bench like waiting for them to be done so we could do our sweep and we're all sitting there and we're watching them and we're watching them and we're all we watch we all sit there and like all of us see this one kid it wasn't a kid he was like 21
00:12:41
Speaker
pick up what is very clearly the gun to us, but it's burnt. So like, there's no wood left on it. It's all twisted stuff. Picks up the gun and tosses it. And all of us were like, and he looked over and we weren't supposed to tell them, but like, we couldn't, I think at that point we couldn't help it. So he looked over and he was like, what? And we're like, um, nevermind.
00:13:01
Speaker
It was really funny. Um, just like, and the point of the exercise was to like, to teach firefighters to think like archaeologists, to like think about like how they're gathering evidence and stuff.
00:13:12
Speaker
um And of course, in a fire scenario, sometimes you can't because it's on fire. But, you know, if you the fire was out at that point. So if you have like a chance to do it, you can. um And Even though like i didn't really do that part of my life professionally for an extended period of time, um it is very much part of writing.
00:13:33
Speaker
um Because first of all, authors often need to know how to get rid of fictional bodies. um And so I can usually help them out with that. um But in terms of like archaeology at it heart at its heart is finding the pieces of a life and then like constructing a narrative.
00:13:50
Speaker
And really that's what writing is too, except I can make up literally everything. So um that's kind of how you you get from forensic archaeology to where I am today.
00:14:02
Speaker
So who would have thought we would have talked about Star Wars, the boxcar children, Narnia, CSI, and archaeology, and we didn't even talk about
Episode Conclusion
00:14:12
Speaker
Indiana Jones. and so A lot of fun, lot of laughter. I think we maxed out the audio a little bit. So sorry if you had to turn down your volume a little bit. Hard to keep it under control, but we had a really good time.
00:14:23
Speaker
We'll bring you part two of our conversation next week. In the meantime, please hit like, hit subscribe, tell all your friends, write us a review, join our Discord, drop me an email, all sorts of great stuff happening in Star Wars, and we would love to have you with us.
00:14:39
Speaker
So we'll see you next week. Until then, may the Force be with you. Take care. Bye-bye. Who's that line? What's choice to do? Podcasts help you see them through. Star Wars is your favorite unit.
00:14:50
Speaker
Let's chat for 15 minutes. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a sporn trooper? Aren't you a little short for a sporn trooper?