EUbits: Take a Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell

Rebel Mission to Ord MantellAudio For you audio drama fans, Big Shiny Robot has unearthed Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell a ye olde (scripted by Brian Daley!) tale that takes place between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

The blogside. EUCantina debuts a new column, with a look at what they’d like to see in Kenobi (some Clone Wars spoilers.) Meanwhile, Bria’s Waru Express has pulled into Tosche Station with The Thrawn Trilogy.

Interviews. There’s a real surplus of them since we last checked in, with new writers (Martha Wells, Tim Siedell, Corinna Bechko & Gabriel Hardman) old writers (Kevin J. Anderson) and of course Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, co-writer of The Last Jedi, which came out yesterday.

Speaking of The Last Jedi The reviews! NJOE, EUC, Jedi News, Lightsaber Rattling, Roqoo Depot and Bry/Megan at Knights Archive are all fairly positive, while Bria at Tosche Station is unimpressed.

Comics. Preview Dark Horse’s Free Comic Book Day offering, and behold a Legacy variant cover. Also, James has his reviews of the most recent comics: this week’s Dawn of the Jedi: Prisoner of Bogan #3 and ,a href=”http://www.bigshinyrobot.com/reviews/archives/49301″>Agent of the Empire: Hard Targets #5 and Brian Wood’s Star Wars #2.

Congratulations to your publicist. Forbes, of all publications, profiles Dark Horse and their role in making licensed properties cool for comics. There’s some interesting stuff from a generalized viewpoint, but despite use of the term ‘expanded universe’ it’s more focused on video game tie-ins than things like Star Wars and Buffy.

Wells’ Leia novel gets an October release date; Miller’s Kenobi moves up to August

LeiaDel Rey’s Erich Schoeneweiss updated fans on Facebook today with a few release dates. Martha Wells’ untitled Leia novel is the first of the Rebels series to drop, with an October 29 release. (Erich mentions that it’s moving up a week, but I’m pretty sure this is the first time they’ve given us a date publically.)

Meanwhile, John Jackson Miller’s Kenobi moves up a whole month, from September 24 to August 27. As always, our book release schedule has been updated!

EUbits: Looking ahead to Rebels

Luke, Leia and HanRebels. Austin at Fandom Apocalypse takes a look at what we know about the forthcoming Rebels series that was announced last summer. He reached out the authors Martha Wells and Kevin Hearne, who are handling books on Leia and Luke.

The blogside. Tor’s Ryan Britt explores the differences between A New Hope and its novelization. What’s a duck? And Tosche Station’s Bria continues her EU retrospective after Endor with True at Bakura and Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor. And over at Big Shiny Robot, Bryan lets the darkness take hold wondering if The Clone Wars won’t be coming back at all.

Podcasting. After something of a hiatus, EUCantina’s EUCast is poised to make their return soon. In the meantime, here’s Episode 0. And if you’re interested in podcasting, Tosche Station host Brian wrote at length about the gear you’ll need and what he uses.

Frames gets cheap(er.) TheForce.net spotted an Amazon listing for a paperback edition of the fancy screenshot book Frames. At $150 retail it’s still not pocket change, but seeing as the original would set you back $3000… Amazon being Amazon, we’d wait for official details before pre-ordering, though.

Interviews. Paul S. Kemp talks about Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons and his non-franchise work with SF Signal. And Timothy Zahn chats Scoundrels on Fictional Frontiers.

EUbits: Read 50 pages of Scoundrels

ScoundrelsScoundrels. With only a few days until the book’s release in January 1, we’re seeing plenty of Scoundrels action. There’s 50 pages on Suvudu and a brief excerpt on io9 (which is also part of the larger chunk.) And Aaron Goins’ review is up over at Star Wars Report.

Interviews. For it being the holiday season, there sure are a lot of them popping up lately. Fangirl has Troy Denning, there’s Brian Wood at Newsarama, Randy Stradley at CBR and Steve Sansweet at GalacticHunter.

Rebels. Martha Wells is nearly done with the first draft of her Star Wars novel.

Another excerpt. Knights Archive was first to spot that there’s a chapter of Michael Reaves and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff’s The Last Jedi up at the Random House catalog.

EUbits: Is July 16th the Crucible release date?

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.

Celebration VI: Del Rey annouces Jaina Solo trilogy, new original trilogy series

We got news about two new projects this morning at Del Rey’s panel. The first is a new series, Rebels, featuring the classic characters, which launches with a Leia-centric tale by Martha Wells. The second, focusing on Luke, will be written by Kevin Hearns. These were just approved, so no art. It’s set between ANH and ESB, I believe.

The second is something we’ve all been waiting for and half-expecting: A Jaina trilogy, Sword of the Jedi, written by Christie Golden. Lots of cheers from the audience! It’s set not too long after Fate of the Jedi and does have some (temporary?) art. The Jaina fans are super-excited, and who can blame them?

But most of the panel was, as promised, given to Q&A. Some highlights and updates on other upcoming books, including Crucible, Scoundrels and more beneath the cut. In attendance were Pablo Hidalgo, Aaron Allston, James Luceno, Drew Karpyshyn, Jennifer Heddle, Shelly Shapiro and Timothy Zahn.

Continue reading “Celebration VI: Del Rey annouces Jaina Solo trilogy, new original trilogy series”