The Heart of the Jedi was a canceled Star Wars novel written by Kenneth C. Flint. Commissioned and approved by Lucasfilm Ltd., it was meant to be the first book in a trilogy taking place immediately after the destruction of second Death Star, and was set to be released in 1993. By the end of 1992, Flint sent a draft, but his editor at Bantam Spectra went unresponsive for several months.
Eventually, Flint contacted an agent who, in turn, contacted Bantam Spectra. He then discovered that the editor had determined The Heart of the Jedi could not be published, arguing that it «no longer [fitted] into the sequence for the new series.» Flint was then told that his Spectra editor had supposedly promised another author of the group that her book would be placed in position one instead of The Heart of the Jedi.
Consequently, The Heart of the Jedi was never published. However, Flint was allowed to keep his ten thousand dollar advance and given the opportunity to write two Star Wars short stories (Doctor Death: The Tale of Dr. Evazan and Ponda Baba and Old Friends: Ephant Mon’s Tale). According to Flint, those events destroyed both his relationship with Bantam Spectra and his career as a writer.
In May 2015, Flint edited his long-lost novel to fit into the existing Expanded Universe and allowed its release on Joseph Bongiorno‘s website, The Star Wars Expanded Universe Timeline. It was released in paperback on Amazon.com on March 4, 2021 without the permission of Lucasfilm, with the seller promising they were not making any profit and asking Disney not to sue them.