Star Wars Friday: Being Kerra Holt

By now, you should all know of Kerra Holt, the lead character in John Jackson Miller’s new comic/novel series Knight Errant. Kerra has become like a second identity for me since this summer. If you were at Star Wars Celebration V (or if you read the blog), you might have seen the “WANTED: Kerra Holt” flyers that the Dark Horse booth seemed to have an endless amount of. What you might not have known is that there was a real-life Kerra running around for people to take pictures of for the contest they were running. I am the Jedi you were looking for.

I was recruited by the Dark Horse crew to be the model for our newest Jedi at Celebration V. “We’re looking for a very special, and very specific, Star Wars fan…” read a note on the DH Facebook page. Before reading the details, I was determined to be that fan. I had my doubts at first, but as I continued reading, all I could think was “Holy Sith, that’s me!!”… So I emailed them a few pictures and (very impatiently) waited to hear back. A few emails exchanges later, I was told that I was their top pick. Needless to say, the fangirl in me was freaking out. I may or may not have squealed louder than an injured R2 unit. As I slowly started to get information about what I was going to be doing, I kept getting more and more excited. Dark Horse asked me if I was willing to make the Kerra Holt costume to wear at Celebration V. I very excitedly agreed and started working on it as soon as I got the pictures. (If you’ve read Issue 0 of Knight Errant, you’ve seen the pictures that I was given to work from.) I basically had 3 semi-detailed pictures and 3 weeks to do the costume. I finally finished everything about 3 days before CV. That same day, I got an email about the Twitter contest they were going to run. “Yay! People get to stalk me!”

Celebration V was my first Celebration, and being thrown right into the middle of it was AMAZING. When I walked in to the exhibit hall Friday morning (after already meeting Anthony Daniels!) I found a 30-foot banner of…well… me. I was only in the booth for about 3 minutes before we started taking pictures and people started noticing that I was, in fact, the person on the banner. By the end of the day, I got used to people yelling “Kerra! Can I get a picture?!” at me. Because I was constantly being referred to as “Kerra” or “Knight Errant” (plus the one guy who called me “the Knight Rider chick”…), my grandmother eventually started introducing herself as “Kerra’s Grandma” to everyone she saw. Eventually, the weekend unfortunately ended, and despite having 483458469306 pictures of me taken (approximate number, by the way) and signing countless copies of Issue #0, I was still ready for more. I met the most amazing people, the most… eccentric people and saw awe-inspiring costumes. Leaving that atmosphere was pretty depressing.

I made the trip home in full costume, and ended up sleeping in it that night. After some serious CV withdrawal, I finally stopped wearing my badge and Jedi boots around and accepted that my days of being strictly known as Kerra were over. (But I’m always willing to come back… remember that, Dark Horse!) So, thank you to everyone who made the experience for me so incredible and congratulations again to the Twitter contest winner! It was a pleasure being your Jedi.

May the Force be with you. Always.