Thursday afternoon? It’s time for our third excerpt from Aaron Allston’s Mercy Kill!
Face’s approach was so silent that neither noticed until he was almost at the table. Both turned to look at him and, seeing the expression on his face, fell silent.
He turned to Dia. “I promise I will never make you so mad that you borrow an X-wing, take it up, and use it to burn me to a cinder.”
“Smart of you.” She gestured at the third chair. “Whose turn is it to cook?”
“Yours.”
“We’ll order something.”
He sat and turned to his daughter. “And you, young lady . . . Beware of older military officers who chase you when you’re a teenager. They’ll just dump you when you turn thirty.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Dad, I hate it when you bring work home.”
Yes, Face and Dia have reproduced. I can’t wait to see the message boards threads discussing that one. Mercy Kill is (still!) slated for an August 7 release.
Convention swag. Star Wars Books has revealed some of the summer freebies on their Facebook. There’s a nifty 84-page sample books with excerpts and the Insider short stories, a Mercy Killiron-on and Scoundrels bookmarks. The catch: There are 7, but they won’t all be available at the same con, so unless you’re going to be at SDCC, CVI and NYCC, prepare to swap with some pals to get them all.
Because Twitter embeds have been being so difficult lately, I’ve turned to our old pal Storify to serve up the last batch of weekly tweets. And yes, I may have gone overboard on the #NerdDrinks hashtag, but how could I not… Head beneath the cut for the goods!
If you’ve been waiting for the paperback to pick up Timothy Zahn’s Choices of One, Tuesday is your lucky day. And you get that spiffy new cover to boot!
Comic fans will have something in the shops this week, too: Blood Ties: Boba Fett Is Dead #3 is on the shipping list for Wednesday.
Our next book release, John Jackson Miller’s Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories, is coming up in about a month.
I just thought I should inform anyone who knows Racheal online, that she passed away this evening in a car accident at the fault of another.
Racheal did attend Origins for a few days, but we never really got the chance to talk, sadly. Still, I enjoyed her blog and thought she was a fresh new voice in the blogging community.
Interview. EUCantina interviews Lucas Books Art Director Scott Biel about creating covers for Star Wars books. He talks about the process, why the Mercy Kill cover got a makeover, and Mara Jade’s Choices of One jumpsuit.
Conventions. The Del Rey folks will have a double-sided poster that they’ll be giving out during summer con season. It features the cover art from The Essential Reader’s Companion and The Old Republic: Annihilation. Look for Del Rey at San Diego Comic Con, Star Wars Celebration VI, and New York Comic Con.
It’s Thursday afternoon, and thus we are treated to our second mini-excerpt from Aaron Allston’s X-Wing: Mercy Kill.
A young human woman in clothes styled to resemble a starfighter pilot’s jumpsuit and jacket but made of crinkly gold cloth, her hair a more striking and unnatural red than Face’s, bumped into Face, made a vague noise of apology, and hurried past, continuing onward toward the exit.
Voort scowled at Face. “I saw that.”
“Of course you did.”
“What did she slip you?”
Face reached into a suit coat pocket and drew out a datapad. It was small, its once-gleaming surface scratched and dull. “This. It’s wired to overheat and ignite in about three minutes.”
Tor’s Liz Bourke has a great interview today with author Karen Miller, where she addresses some of the harsh realities of writing licensed fiction and, in particular, Star Wars and the differences with a female-dominated fandom like Stargate.
The Stargate fan audience is small, compared to the Star Wars audience. The Stargate fan audience is also, overwhelmingly, female—which means that it is far, far more accepting of a female writer and a female writer’s particular POV (and I think there is one). The Star Wars fan audience, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly male. At least as far as I can tell. The vast majority of writers who do the tie-in novels are also male. There is a definite predominance of male voices and male POVs in Star Wars novels. And that makes a huge difference in the reception of the material.
Everything I write is grounded in character. Everything. It’s the people that make a story for me. So my Star Wars work is as much a character study or exploration as it is an action adventure romp. For some readers, that was brilliant. For others, it wasn’t. For a lot of Star Wars fans—the guys in particular—the story is about fighting and space battles and stuff like that. For them, that’s the whole point. For them, the intricacies of psychological investigation are boring and unwelcome. And I completely accept that. But it’s not what floats my starship—and I felt strongly that I can’t be the only one who is in love with the story because of the characters, not despite them. Or who wants to take a breath and spend some time with them as human beings, who wants to explore what makes them tick, the relationships between them, the strengths and fragilities they contain and share.
She goes on to defend Karen Traviss, among other things, though I really must disagree that gender was the only aspect which garnered Traviss venom from fandom. (Though I’m sure some of it was, I’d hesitate to call it the main issue. The lesson one should take away from Traviss’ tumultuous time in this fandom? Don’t feed the trolls, and be respectful of your audience.)
But that quibble aside, it’s so refreshing to hear a Star Wars author actually be in it for the characters. There is nothing else here I have any issues with – it all needs to be said. Though not so much to label it as a niche, even though it’s probably true. Club Jade has been fighting that fight for so long…
Plastikitty spotted what looks like a finished version of Kotobukiya’s Bishoujo Jaina Solo on Big Bad Toy Store, and it certainly looks ready. The statue is 9 inches tall and is on pre-order for $54.99 – not all that bad a price, considering how much collector stuff usually goes for.
Thursday afternoon? It’s time for our third excerpt from Aaron Allston’s Mercy Kill! 
If you’ve been waiting for the paperback to pick up Timothy Zahn’s 
It is with great sadness that we found out that night that blogger Racheal Ambrose has passed away. 
Interview. EUCantina interviews 
Tor’s Liz Bourke has 
