DuracellEnergizer said:

skyjedi2005 said:

Also if i am not mistaken Zahn, Veitch and Anderson tried to have some kind of overlapping continuity if not successful in execution they had the idea for the stories to intersect.

From what I read, the Thrawn Trilogy was supposed to take place after Dark Empire and have a bunch of references to that storyline. Zahn refused, though, so the chronological order was flipped around and no references to Dark Empire ever showed up in his trilogy.

I believe this is exactly true. In fact Dark Empire was supposed to follow right after the OT, but since Zahn refused to make references, they placed DE 6 years after ROTJ and included references to his trilogy