Karen Traviss

Karen Traviss is the author of multiple Star Wars novels, including Republic Commando: Hard Contact and its sequels, Republic Commando: Triple Zero, Republic Commando: True Colors and Republic Commando: Order 66 as well as Legacy of the Force novels Bloodlines, Sacrifice and Revelation She is also one of the two authors of the two The Clone Wars novels which are based on the the Clone Wars movie and the following Clone Wars TV series (the second author being Karen Miller). She wrote the first book in the series entitled Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the third book entitled The Clone Wars: No Prisoners. In the future she will write two other Star Wars books, the continuation of the Republic Commando series entitled Imperial Commando: 501st and its sequel, that will conclude her Star Wars franchise writing. She also wrote for the defense in the book Star Wars on Trial, arguing that her work on Star Wars novels improved her non-Star Wars writing.

She has been among the most active authors in the community, posting regularly on the StarWars.com forums, 501st Legion forums, and elsewhere. She is also an honorary member of the 501st Legion, inducted on July 22, 2006 and has her own set of Republic Commando Omega Squad armor, donated by the members of Clonetroopers.net.

Life
Traviss is from the Portsmouth area in England. Before becoming a full-time novelist, she held various jobs, including defense correspondant, advertising copywriter, journalism lecturer, media liaison officer, and public relations manager, but for the most part she has worked as a journalist. She has also served in the Territorial Army as well as the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service.

Karen Traviss is known to give plenty of attention to her fans, going through the trouble of answering most of the messages she receives.

Today, Karen Traviss lives in Wiltshire, England.

Writing
Her novelist career began in 2000 when she attended the Clarion Workshop at Michigan State University. On her official website, Traviss acknowledges that it was very helpful in starting her career, but warns that it now focuses exclusively on short fiction, which is unlikely to be a workable career.

Traviss published her first Star Wars novel, Republic Commando: Hard Contact, in 2004. Her work for Star Wars usually involves clone troopers, Mandalorians, or related characters such as Boba Fett. She is amongst other things known for developing the Mandalorian language, Mando'a, into a working language.

On August 8, 2009, she announced that the second Imperial Commando novel would be her last Star Wars novel, as recent changes in Clone Wars continuity related to the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series would make it impossible to continue her ongoing storylines as planned.

Controversies
Several of Karen Traviss' works have stirred considerable controversy, namely, the "3 Million Clones" debate (books by her give the Grand Army of the Republic's numbers at 3 million clones, this was seen as both impossibly low numbers to protect the Republics membership of just under 1.3 million planets, at 2.3 clones per planet as well as less than the hundred million men, 16 million men used by the United States of America alone, required to fight World War II on a single planet) and, later, the similar "Odds" short story as well. There are others as well, but none as noteworthy as these two. These debates broke out between Karen Traviss (sometimes alongside fellow Fandalorians) and the opposed fans she often referred to as "Talifans". The debates were usually held on online forums, eventually including StarWars.com. It is not entirely clear what exactly happened in all of these debates, particularly on StarWars.com, since many posts were deleted by moderators, and Traviss herself deleted the entire contents of her StarWars.com blog. Many of the posts were screen-shotted before their removal, but these screen-shots, while providing new insight into the incidents that occurred, may be showing aspects of the debates out of proper context.

Other

 * Wess'Har Series
 * Other stories

Notes and references
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