Having read the Han Solo Trilogy by AC Crispin when it came out, I started with that. I honor the first book in the series, The Paradise Snare, and all the background on Han established in there. My text picks up roughly around the same time as the second book in the series, The Hutt Gambit, and reuses many of the same characters and plot elements. Book 2 of my series takes place after the events of the Han Solo Adventures by Brian Daley, and covers the time period between that and A New Hope (roughly when Han is 28/29).
Anyone who wanted to preserve the original trilogy could stop after finishing Book 2. Anyone curious at moving forward may be happy to know I preserve A New Hope in its entirety; the third book picks up immediately after the destruction of the Death Star and much of it covers that interim period between ANH and Empire. I also do honor the beginning of Empire; the text will pop in and out of events established in the film, but after the arrival in Cloud City, I rewrite part of Empire and eventually all of ROTJ (recycling characters and events as I did with the HST).
Since that scene is already in the film, I do not retell it, but I do write Han as the kind of person who would shoot first and ask questions later. There are many instances of Han shooting from the hip, mouthing off, and generally making messes and then being forced to clean them up later. He is brash, selfish, aggressive, self-preserving. I spend a lot of time showing the audience who he is, exploring (as much as he'll let us) why he is the way he is, and then documenting the very long, circuitous journey of his redemption arc.
After reading the Han Solo Trilogy, I went back to the films and was really unsatisfied with the ending Han got. I saw him as a much more complex character and felt cheated that more of his journey did not get explored or properly resolved.
Then, after years of writing in my own stories, writing nonfiction, reading every bit of classical literature I could get my hands on, studying film, analyzing storytelling, I came back to the Han Solo Trilogy and also found it underwhelming. It was palatable for the intended audience--I fault AC Crispin nothing--but I wished for something much heavier. I wanted to write a story that honored the way a man in his twenties would feel about living a life where he had learned the hard way he did not belong, and the eventual journey towards a space--physical as much as mental--where he could look around and say he was proud of himself.
I did not see it and continue to have zero intention to. With very rare exception, what Disney has produced since buying out the franchise has been the exact type of rushed and shallow character development and ridiculous, showy plot that I'm trying to rectify.
I played around with some of the story through my teens, but never wrote anything as I had my own novel I was working on. I purposefully put down creative writing when I left for college, reasoning I would pick it up back afterward, and then, one day in grad school...it came for me.
I worked on it for roughly two and a half years in my twenties, then put it aside to develop a television show based on the narrative. I dropped the tv show while at grad school for my second Master's, since what I was learning totally threw off the ending to the show, and it never recovered.
I picked up writing this Han Solo Series again about three years ago, and much of the work has been rewriting and re-envisioning exactly how to tell this story.
With all six books? God, who knows.
With this first one? I can't say, either. I don't produce regularly. Because of work and life, things come in stops and starts, and additionally, I have often thus far gone back and rewritten or remapped stuff I thought I was done with! So sometimes it's two steps forward, one step back. None of it feels like a waste, though; every bit of tinkering I do feels like bringing this story to a fuller, more gratifying expression of what it's supposed to be.