Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Things are getting back to normal in tweet roundup… Today, we have action figure snark, Star Wars day at the ballpark, tagging George Lucas and aliens with(out) genitals on their heads. Plus our standard selection of Expanded Universe, Star Wars life, and even a little bit of lingering #StarWarsCVI.
Continue reading “…And Murray from Accounting: Last week’s best #StarWars and #SWEU tweets”
There’s nothing new in the bookstores this week (unless you haven’t picked up the new Insider yet) but there’s plenty coming to your local comic shop on Wednesday.
For ongoing fans, there’s Knight Errant: Escape #4 and Lost Tribe of the Sith: Spiral #2. Or, pick your collected poison with Crimson Empire III: Empire Lost in trade paperback, or The Crimson Empire Saga – all three installments – in hardcover.
Beyond that, you can look forward to the paperback of Drew Karpyshyn’s The Old Republic: Revan on the 24th, and Pablo Hidalgo’s Essential Reader’s Companion on October 2.
Tosche Station wraps up their DragonCon coverage with a recap of Aaron Allston’s Mercy Kill panel on Monday.
In other Tosche Station news, Brian and Nanci have posted their Celebration VI special. I’m on it somewhere, but I haven’t listened to it yet out of fear of embarrassment squick by self…
It’s time to start keeping an eye out for Star Wars insider #136. It contains interviews with Carrie Fisher and the folks behind the new Star Wars comic, as well as a short story by new-to-the-EU author Ari Marmell.
The newstand edition has a Boba Fett cover. Of course.
Our next book release comes on the 24th, with the paperback reprint of Drew Karpyshyn’s The Old Republic: Revan. Our next actual new release comes first thing in October, with Pablo Hidalgo’s Essential Reader’s Companion.
I’m a little behind on this, mostly because, oh, that huge convention a week or so past. In any case, here are some of the best tweets out of Celebration and DragonCon and whatever else was going around from August 20th to September 2nd.
Random House Audio continued their convention tour, bringing some of their audio book production team to Star Wars Celebration VI as well as having a show floor presence. I caught the Star Wars University: Audio Books panel with staff from Random House Audio, producer Aaron Blank, narrator Marc Thompson (check out my interview with Marc), and director Kevin Thomsen. Crashing the panel was Leland Chee, keeper of the Holocron. Key points from the panel: Continue reading “Celebration VI: Audio books panel highlights”
Another recap from the Tosche Station folks in Atlanta: Timothy Zahn, Aaron Allston, Michael Stackpole, Kevin J. Anderson and Doctor Carol White discuss Masculinity in Star Wars.
Hot on the heels and six hours north of Celebration, Dragon*Con is being held in Atlanta. Tosche Station is there now, and Brian has recapped the Star Wars author panel held there yesterday. Attending were Aaron Allston, Timothy Zahn, Mike Stackpole and Kevin J. Anderson.
Also coming up Monday will be a Mercy Kill discussion with Allston.
Knights Archive also spotted 2 sets of (presumably eBook) bundles on the Random House online catalog: The Essential Novels: Star Wars 10-Book Bundle and The Essential Novels: Star Wars Reads Day Special Edition: 4-Book Bundle. Could this why Del Rey’s Darth Internous was asking about EU books for newbies last month?
UPDATED! Well, it didn’t take long for us to find out! Del Rey has revealed the contents of the bundles, and they’re all over the map.
The Old Republic: Deceived
Republic Commando: Hard Contact
Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader
Death Troopers
Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor
X-Wing: Rogue Squadron
Heir to the Empire
New Jedi Order: Vector Prime
Legacy of the Force: Betrayal
Crosscurrent
That’s quite the sampler plate. I definitely agree with the inclusion of Heir to the Empire, Rogue Squadron and Shadows of Mindor, but some of these are just puzzling.
Here’s the 4-book bundle:
X-Wing: Rogue Squadron
Heir to the Empire
New Jedi Order: Vector Prime
Legacy of the Force: Betrayal
For instance, I wouldn’t wish Vector Prime on my worst enemy. Yes, the New Jedi Order is a gigantic chunk of the backlist, and there are worse Star Wars books, (though not that many,) but it’s definitely the series starter that flopped the worst for me. (And no, I’m not talking about the Chewbacca thing, stand down: I just find it horribly written.) Legacy of the Force may not be everyone’s favorite, but Betrayal is at least a solid book.
With absolutely nothing to go on aside from the titles, I’m a little intrigued at what they’ll consider ‘Essential,’ aside from the Thrawn trilogy. If you could only pick 10 Star Wars books what would make your cut? And what about the 4-book bundle?
Street dates. Knights Archive spotted this release date for Troy Denning’s Crucible on the Random House Smart Archive. As it is put there by the publisher this could be the real release date… At the moment, anyway. The farther we are out from a release date, the more the things move around, but it might be worth penciling in.
Meet the new folks. Rebels authors Martha Wells and Kevin Hearne both spoke out publicly for the first time after the announcement of their new Star Wars project.
Star Wars Reads. Start planning for October 6th now, as StarWars.com has posted a location map for events through the U.S. A few authors have posted where they’ll be appearing already: Troy Denning, Dan Wallace and John Jackson Miller will be in Roseville, MN, while Pablo Hidalgo and Haden Blackman will appear in Corte Madera, CA, along with Aaron Allston, Drew Karpyshyn and Alexander Freed in Austin, TX. I suspect we’ll be hearing about more of these as the date approaches!
Comics. Skuldren from Roqoo Depot taped the ‘One Writer’s Approach to Star Wars’ panel at Celebration.
Detectiving! In all the hussle and bussle of live-tweeting Celebration, there’s not always time go back and find your sources. Thankfully, Pete did a little digging to find Paul Kemp’s tweet about his mystery duology.
