EUbits: Deathtroopers format upgrade; Interviews with Stradley, Stover, & Hale

Updates from Sue Rostoni: Deathtroopers is becoming a hardcover, and the release date has been moved up to October 13th – all the better for Halloween sales, no doubt. Also moving is the newly-titled Fate of the Jedi: Backlash, back a week to January 26. Our book release schedule has been updated.

  • Comics: Dark Horse’s Randy Stradley talks Star Wars with Newsarama. The big news here is that Invasion, like Rebellion, will alternate with Dark Times: “five months on, five months off.”
  • More interviews! In podcast form! Author Matthew Stover on the Dragon Page; The EUCast has voice actress Jennifer Hale.

Coldplay, Beck, and Johnny Cash on a Star Wars EU soundtrack?

As first reported a few days back, Del Rey was promoting Joe Schreiber’s upcoming Deathtroopers novel with a free soundtrack CD at the New York Comic Con. Now, Schreiber goes over the soundtrack playlist on his blog. With some of the aforementioned musicians, the soundtrack also included some Pixies, Allison Krauss, Tool, and Rob Zombie — and starts off with the 20th Century Fox fanfare. Not since “Christmas in the Stars” have some lucky fans gotten a Star Wars album so eclectic.

EUbits: Deathtroopers, comics, new short story

The hype continues. Joe Schreiber reports that that the first look at Deathtroopers got over 50,000 page views. It’s officially big on the internet! (Plus he’ll be at NYCC this weekend with some extremely unofficial swag – the book’s soundtrack.)

Meanwhile, we have another sighting: Literary agent Colleen Lindsay, with nothing but praise.

The internet hype is strong with Deathtroopers

The cover for Joe Schreiber’s Deathtroopers was revealed on Monday, and since then it’s spread through the internet at large like wildfire: Pretty unusual for your standard Star Wars novel, which usually only surface among us obsessives and maybe a SF/F book blog or two. Whereas Deathtroopers has showed up at horror staple Fangoria and sizable movie blogs /Film, Cinematical and Film School Rejects. It even inspired a list of film franchises that need a genre change.

If blog hype is anything to go by, it seems that the publishing program’s foray into genre crossovers may finally have a bona fida hit outside of the usual audience… Or at the very least, they might be able to sell some posters to the Saw-loving masses.

And perhaps most tellingly, Deathtroopers has been the week’s top search keyword leading people to CJ… You can read all our coverage, including comments from Schreiber, by clicking on the ‘deathtroopers’ tag below.

Deathtroopers are coming…

Joe Schreiber’s Star Wars horror novel now has a title and a time period… Deathtroopers, set just before A New Hope. It’s due out in November. (Thanks, Zee Zee!) Here’s what Schreiber had to say on his blog:

I had the time of my life on this one, I have to say. I’m doing the final edits now, and I’ve tried to make it into exactly the kind of book you’d want to read if you were a child of the 70s who grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy and really digs horror in the vein of The Shining and Alien, with a little dose of William Gibson mixed in.

Infodrop: Sue Rostoni on the new contract

Sue posts furthur details about the upcoming books on her blog. The relevant (new!) information…

  • Fate of the Jedi #1: “Luke and Ben attempt to follow Jacen’s previous journey in the hopes of discovering what and how various Force-using groups influenced him to accept and use dark side powers.”
  • The Clone Wars: Wild Space: Stars Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa! (Did we already know this?)
  • Blood Oath: Takes place just after we last see Zekk, Dave Seeley is doing the cover!
  • Joe Schreiber’s horror novel: Set between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back.
  • Paul S. Kemp’s Jaden Korr book: Takes place during the… Great Hyperspace War? Well, I’m confused. UPDATE: Kemp clarifies.
  • Alex Irvine’s novel will star Nomi Sunrider!
  • The paperback by Michael Reaves and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff features “a promising holostar – a rags to riches story set against the backdrop of the early days of the Rebellion.” (Fan speculation/wishful thinking is pegging the holostar as Wynssa Starflare.)