Note: I thought this would be fun to do. Feel free to share your own story!

Even before I ever became obsessed with Star Wars, even before I saw the movies, I loved the LEGO Star Wars game. This game was on the Wii, and it had Episodes 1-6 to play the story as it appears in the LEGO Star Wars animations. I remember thinking that Padme was the coolest person and that Jar Jar Binks was OP because he could jump super high. This was before I understood any of the actual story. My siblings and I used to sing this dumb song that went something like this:

We are not clones

We are the Skywalkers

We will fight for Amidala

Who rules Naboo, oooo, ooo, ooo

(I don't think I, as an eight-year-old, quite understood the story at the time.)

When I was twelve, TFA came out, and my parents showed us Episodes 1-6 in preparation for watching the ST. No matter how much I loved the originals, the prequels were always my favorites. Padme was my personal hero as a young tween and I wanted to be like her when I was older. I remember having a crush on Anakin (still kind of do....don't tell anyone). 

At this point, I'd consider myself a casual fan. I had never seen anything besides the movies, and I had no knowledge of the EU. I loved TFA, and even today it's my second favorite Star Wars film. This casual fan-stuff continued till the summer of 2018, when I started watching Clone Wars.

My Clone Wars experience was honestly absolutely golden. I thought everyone was super well-developed and I loved the stories. I thought Ahsoka was the most inspiring character in the show, and I teared up when she left the Order. The Clone Wars made me want to get into the larger EU of Star Wars. But I still wouldn't consider myself obsessed.

I was browsing around Pinterest one day, finding aesthetics of Clone Wars villains for a collage, when I stumbled across a Pinterest post that basically summarized Unknown Soldier. It was definitely now that I actually got hooked on Star Wars, Star Wars, and more Star Wars! Watching Clone Wars, I suddenly felt sadness and sympathy toward Grievous. 

I wanted to get more into detail, so I started researching about Unknown Soldier and its story. Eventually, I wanted to read some fanfictions on the backstory since there aren't any novelizations about him and Ronderu. It surprised me when I saw only one fanfiction on Wattpad about them - Walking Away From the Republic, by seokjynerso. Why didn't more people know about this sweet, sad story, and would it change their perception of him if they did?

I was determined that the truth would not die with the decanonization of the old EU, and I wanted to write a fanfiction about Qymaen and Ronderu leading up to when he became cyborg. This was the first time in two years that I'd touched fanfiction for any fandom, and the first time for Star Wars. I started writing some random scenes on Evernote, without having done any research, and realized that they sucked an egg - badly. 

So, I researched. I grew to learn about Grievous in both Legends and Canon, using predominantly the old backstory in my portrayal of him. The original plan of the book was for it to be about his fall, and it was to be titled Only In Nightmares; Only In Dreams. I was scared to even publish it eventually on Wattpad, but a fellow Star Wars fan named SapphireAlena convinced me through her work that it was okay to write fanfiction. So, even though you aren't a Grievous fan....thanks for inspiring me. 😂

However, a strange new development occurred. I found that I was growing to like Ronderu....a LOT. And I formed attachment to them both, which is why I am so passionate about Unknown Soldier being awesome. I decided that I couldn't have this be an only-sad story. So, Only In Nightmares; Only In Dreams became an AU about what would have happened had Ronderu lived and found Grievous again during the Clone Wars. I renamed it The Last Qymaili because she became the bigger focus of the book. 

And then, in December, I got some awesome Legends works for Christmas. Labyrinth of Evil greatly helped me make sure Grievous wasn't OOC (out of character), and RotS-N taught me that sometimes beautiful writing styles can have a plume of D-R-A-M-A. I'm now collecting Legends literature, thanks to my new EU obsession. And the rest is history....