EUbits: Cover art for Allston’s Mercy Kill gets a makeover

Okay… The Mercy Kill cover has been tweaked. The ships appear the same, but the background has been tweaked – the ‘gray’ background will be silver when printed. It seems a bit overdone to me: you know Coco Chanel’s old axiom about always removing one accessory before you leave the house? I think it applies here. Maybe it’ll look better in actual silver? Still, I don’t think it’ll hurt Aaron Allston’s sales figures, and we’ve certainly seen worse.

Nonfiction. Knights Archive spotted Steve Sansweet’s next book, Star Wars: The Ultimate Action Figure Collection: 35 Years of Characters, on Amazon. Rancho Obi-wan publicist Consetta Parker confirms, as well as giving us a look at the production. Amazon gives an October 17 release date.

Essential Guides. With The Essential Guide To Warfare just a week away, there’s already a brief review from Knight’s Archive and an interview with Jason Fry at EU Cantina.

Fate of the Jedi. Roqoo Depot’s Skuldren takes a look at the series as a whole. Meanwhile, as you may have heard, Apocalypse made the New York Times’ bestseller list.

Hey, librarians! You can contact DK to hold a “Summer of Star Wars” day in June or July. By the by, we don’t recommend handing kids Fate of the Jedi.

Out this week: Vortex paperback, Dawn of the Jedi reprint

If you’ve been following the Fate of the Jedi series in paperback, today is the day to go to the book store – the sixth book, Troy Denning’s Vortex, is out in mass market. Don’t forget, Erika reviewed it last year.

Meanwhile, Wednesday will bring those Dawn of the Jedi #1 reprints.

The only actual new thing you’ll find out there this week is the latest Star Wars Insider, which features an interview with Aaron Allston, Christie Golden, and Troy Denning on Fate of the Jedi and a short story by Jason Fry.

Our next book release will be The Essential Guide to Warfare on April 3.

Star Wars art auction to raise money to help one-year-old Princess Leah

A number of Star Wars artists and fans have pitched in their talents to help raise money to defray the health care costs of little Princess Leah Esquenazi. As we reported last year, when Leah was just two-months old, she came down with a mysterious illness that kept her mostly hospitalized, and the Star Wars fan community rallied to help her parents offset the costs of her medical bills. Now Leah is over a year old, and continues to require hospitalized ventilator support with the diagnosis of a mitochondrial illness. An ebay auction started on May 25th with over 100 unique and rare Star Wars art pieces and craft items to raise money for Leah’s care. Right now, there are items donated by Matt Busch, Randy Martinez, Amanda Howard, Michael Ramirez, and Joe Corroney.

My friend Lesley, of the 501st Legion’s Southern California Garrison, has been busy organizing the auction, and has a photo album of the donated art pieces. Follow the auction news on Facebook at facebook.com/ArtForLeah. After only 24 hours, there’s already over $1,000 in bids for items. A second group of auction items will going up for bid in a few days. You can also follow Leah and her family via their blog. Check out the auction and find a piece of your own to bid on!

EUbits: Karen Miller returning with Insider short story, inside Del Rey and more

Is Miller writing a post-ROTJ story? On her Livejournal, Karen Miller wrote that she is “getting ready to put together a short story for Star Wars Insider magazine.” She also shares/gloats that she got to read Aaron Allston’s Mercy Kill for “preliminary research.” All three of Miller’s Star Wars novels were Clone Wars tie-ins, so if Mercy Kill is any indication, this may be her first foray into post-ROTJ – or even post-Fate of the Jedi, since that’s when Mercy Kill is set. Or, she’s just writing about fighter pilots. We’ll see, I suppose.

Inside the beast. A new feature on Del Rey’s Star Wars Books Facebook page offers a few hints, including an “an author who is new to the GFFA.” And they liked our (also your) snark!

Speculation. It may be a moot point since Zahn said most of the Scoundrels scoundrels will be new folks, but EU Cantina has some theories on who might appear.

Excerpts. A little Scourge and a big Scourge. (via)

Review. James seems really excited about Dawn of the Jedi #2. Someone has to be, I suppose.

Randomly… io9 has some art from a Willow cartoon that never came to be. It’s not quite EU – unless you count that StarWars.com April Fools joke a few years back – but where else am I going to put it?

Things to Do With Dengar When You’re Dead: Best #StarWars and #SWEU tweets for the past week

Welcome to a new feature! As fannish pros and fans alike are so active on Twitter, I thought we’d expose our readers to a little bit of what goes on there. This week: Some tidbits on The Essential Guide to Warfare, a few Fate of the Jedi snarks, and, of course, #ZahnSolo!

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Hunger Games has the third biggest debut of all time

The Hunger Games is more than living up to box office speculation: With $155 million, now the third-highest domestic debt of all time, and the first that’s not a sequel. (It came in behind only The Dark Knight and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.)

The film is, not surprisingly, drawing in more men than Twilight, with women compromising 61% of the opening weekend crowd. (The audience of the last Twilight film was 80% female.) It’s also doing well across the country – a Utah theater had the weekend’s highest gross.

Have you seen it yet? What did you think? Vote in our poll beneath the cut!

Continue readingHunger Games has the third biggest debut of all time”