Like most people my age, I grew up watching the Star Wars movies. The original was released the summer before I turned eleven years old. Six years later, I was better able to appreciate that slave girl outfit that Princess Leia was forced to wear by Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi. She looked stunning, but then again, she had always looked stunning in the Star Wars movies in spite of the strange other-worldly hairstyles.
I never had serious aspirations to act, although I did participate in my high school theater club. Writing was always my passion and my goal in life. I started countless novels while finishing only a few, but everything I wrote was part of my education as a writer. Four years after Return of the Jedi, Carrie Fisher published her first novel, Postcards from the Edge. I remember picking it up in the bookstore and looking at the author photo, realizing that the person who had played Princess Leia was so much more than that character, and that that person had some of the same dreams that I had. That she had persevered long enough to finish a novel and see its publication while also continuing an acting career was a great inspiration to me.
I saw Carrie Fisher last year at a Comic Con in Dallas. The line to get her autograph was ridiculously long, and we had already spent way too much money at the event. So we didn’t wait in that line. Now, after her passing, I wish we had. So long Carrie. May the force be with you…
