Deanna Dunham Garrity – Reign name: Ilithyia II. Also known as the Last Empress of Sintar. Empress Ilithyia II was the last Empress to rule the Sintaran Empire. In four short years on the throne, she reformed the law, the courts, the education system, the healthcare system, the patent system, and many other aspects of Imperial rule. The pace of change proved too fast for her opposition, however, and she was assassinated, which led to the accession to the throne of her brother, Robert Allen Dunham IV, the Emperor Trajan....
Amanda Peters – Empress Consort Amanda. Also known as the Barefoot Empress. Peters was the second wife of Robert Allen Dunham IV, the Emperor Trajan, and Empress throughout his reign. Little is known of her from official records, the Imperial family being traditionally kept out of the limelight, but contemporaneous accounts credit her with an insight into human affairs that illuminated much of Trajan’s reign....
Geoffrey Saaret – Long-time Imperial administrator, Imperial Council Chairman in the late Sintaran Empire, and Co-Consul for the first decade of the Emperor Trajan’s reign. Saaret is often credited with being the steady hand behind the scenes during the critical period of the formation and consolidation of the Galactic Empire, and setting the standard for the loyalty, skill, and finesse displayed by later Co-Consuls....
Jared Denny – Born Gerardo de Navarro on Sierra Buena in the Extremadura Province, Catalonia Sector. After several arrests for street crime, Denny was paroled to the custody of his grandmother, who emphasized schoolwork as a way of keeping him off the streets. He changed his name when he won an Imperial scholarship to the Imperial University Sintar (IUS) to study mechanical engineering. Denny founded design firm Sintar Specialty Services (SSS), which was reportedly the source of many of the technological innovations behind the renovation of the Imperial Navy that made possible the military accomplishments of the Emperor Trajan. While much of Denny’s work was classified, some of his accomplishments have since become public....
Otto Stauss – Entrepreneur and businessman in the Baden Sector. Through a series of insightful business moves during the early part of the reign of the Emperor Trajan, Stauss became the wealthiest man in the Galactic Empire. His name has entered the lexicon in that ‘to stauss’ means to see an opportunity others have missed and exploit it for maximum gain, as in ‘You really staussed that one.’ A self-made man, his career began in the merchant marine at age fifteen after he lied about his age to sit for the helmsman examination....
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Author’s Afterword
Every book or series of books starts with one big idea, one sentence that encapsulates the entire plot. The EMPIRE series is the story of a boy born into poverty who rises to unite all of humanity into one political unit, forming the Galactic Empire. That was the story from the moment I began writing EMPIRE: Reformer. In fact – big reveal! – EMPIRE in the titles refers not to the Sintaran Empire in which the story starts, but to the Galactic Empire in which it ultimately ends.
Deanna was necessary to put Bobby on the throne. There was no way Ilithyia I would put an Emperor on the throne, but putting Bobby on the throne as Emperor was a logical outgrowth of the Council crisis. And there was no way to ultimately overcome the Council and clean out the bureaucracy without Deanna’s assassination. I know some of you really liked the character, but she was who she was – who I wrote her to be – and she made the choices she made for the good of the Empire.
Bobby always was the overall hero of the series. He is the first person of his generation the reader meets, very early in EMPIRE: Reformer. His experiences – pushing Deanna six miles into town in a wheelbarrow, punching Matt Brummett after he manhandled Deanna at the dance, realizing his error in assigning members of his platoon to raise the flag pole, his actions in the battle on Wollaston, blocking the Imperial Police from the scene of Vasilisa Medved’s murder, dragging himself up off the floor of the elevator to, somehow, carry on after the deaths of Deanna, Cindy, and Sean – all served to illuminate or refine his character, preparing him for his role as Emperor.
So I always knew where the story was going, but not how it would get there except in very broad brush strokes. I am what writers call a ‘pantser’ – a seat-of-the-pants writer. I do not write character back stories, or outline my plots, or really have much if any idea of what is going to happen until I write it.
I did not know, for example, that Amanda Peters existed until she danced into the Imperial Gardens in EMPIRE: Tyrant. I did not know Dee and Sean were going to get married until he asked her. I did not know the Empress would see Dee’s thank you note until she did. I had no clue who Jared Denny was until he appeared on the scene. I had no idea he would become as important as he did. And I had no idea he came from Catalonia Sector until Maria della Espinoza heard it in his voice. I had no idea Otto Stauss would reappear to propose the burial and salvage operation in EMPIRE: Warlord until I wrote it, or that he would reappear again in EMPIRE: Conqueror.
I did not know Gertrude Winger had a husband and kids at home when I started writing her. I did not know King James was going to fire Schmitt-deVries until he did it, or that Schmitt-deVries would take that as an opportunity to bug out of Flower. And I certainly did not know Winger’s husband Dick would recognize Schmitt-deVries on the streets of Rock Falls until it happened. All of which led to Winger’s insane plunge to the surface of Garland, Schmitt-deVries’s epiphany just before his rise to power, and the annexation of Garland.
I didn’t even know Bobby’s reign name until Saaret asked him on the balcony after the destruction of the Imperial Council at the beginning of EMPIRE: Tyrant.
How can I not know what are in hindsight such huge plot points? I don’t know. I just write the story as it comes to me.
Along the way I explored my major themes. The nature of love, honor, duty, and loyalty. The proper wielding of authority, even vast authority, as well as its abuse. Government corruption writ both large and small, and its effect on its citizens. How large central governments, whether autocratic or democratic, can go off the rails. How people can blunder their way into a major war, even when nobody wants it. How one person can make a difference – not just Bobby and his military commanders, but Dee, and Sean, and Cindy, and Amanda, and Jared Denny, and Otto Stauss, and Andrew Forsythe, and Vasilisa Medved, and Gertrude Winger – by doing the very best they can with the skills they have. It’s a story about old-fashioned values, because I’m an old-fashioned guy.
It was always going to be a big story. I did not write every scene, every minor interaction, every character’s progress throughout the story. Instead, I dipped into the action here, there, this other place, giving the reader both the broad view and the impact of larger forces on select individuals. It meant that even a story this big could fit into half a million words. I could have told this story in three million words, but I don’t think that would necessarily have been an improvement.
As it is, EMPIRE was a year-long project. That’s about the limit of my attention span for writing a single story arc, averaging over 1300 words a day, seven days a week, day in and day out, while also doing all the proofreading, editing, formatting, cover work, and publishing myself.
I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.
Rich Weyand
Bloomington, Indiana
September 30, 2019
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