Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Del Rey was back today with a new preview of Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire annotations.
‘C’baoth,’ incidentally, is pronounced ‘SA-bay-oth,’ with the first vowel pronounced like the ‘a’ in ‘has.’ If I’d realized how hard it was going to be for everyone else to figure out, I would have changed the spelling.
Heir to the Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition will be out (hopefully) on September 6th.
No new books, no new comics, but you ought to be able to find Star Wars Insider #126 on stands today. This is the one with the Lando story by Timothy Zahn, so it may actually be worth picking up.
Checking in with the Zahns. Since the anniversary edition of Heir to the Empire is coming out too late for summer con season, Del Rey has made Tim Zahn some bookplates to sign. (He’ll be at SDCC and Dragon*Con this year, among others.) Don’t count on getting any through the mail yet, though.
And don’t forget there’s a new Lando short story in the latest Insider, which is apparently arriving to subscribers now. (I don’t have mine yet, though. Look for it to show up in bookstores in a week or so.)
Mini-excerpt. Star Wars Books gave Facebook fans a quick peek at Paul S. Kemp’s Riptide yesterday.
Interviews Sean Williams talks about The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance at Suvudu.
Podcasts. The new Jedi Journals is out. Chris and Jay talk reboots and more.
StarWars.com has released a PDF excerpt of Choices of One, the upcoming novel by Timothy Zahn. Set eight months after the Battle of Yavin, Luke, Leia and Han are headed to meet with a potential new ally, the governor of Candorus, who is also the target of Mara Jade for his treason to the Empire. Get set for some classic trilogy era adventures when it comes out on July 19 in hardcover and ebook.
Skip the blurb and jump straight to the excerpt in PDF format.
Fate of the Jedi. in lieu of of a Heir to the Empire annotation yesterday, The Del Rey folks presented us with a mini-excerpt from Golden’s Ascension. It is indeed very mini. (Also, apparently we’ll be getting a look at the Apocalypse cover today.)
Short stories. Tim Zahn’s story ‘Buyer’s Market’ will appear in the next issue of the Insider. It’s about Lando “on the hunt for some rather exotic hardware” and is set between Return of the Jedi and Heir. The artwork is by Brian Rood. Also coming up in the Insider is a story by Michael Reaves and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff.
Interviews. Del Rey’s Erich Schoeneweiss appears on the latest Fictional Frontiers.
Previews. StarWars.com has five pages from The Old Republic: The Lost Suns.
Lists. There are several facepalm moments for me in Geeks of Doom’s ten Star Wars novels worth checking out (Splinter of the Minds’ Eye? The New Rebellion?? Vector Prime???) but to each their own, I suppose.
After a week off, we get our tenth preview from the anniversary edition of Tim Zahn’s Heir to the Empire.
One of the parameters I wanted to set for the trilogy was that Luke would be entirely on his own as a Jedi, with no one he could call on for help or advice. And though I didn’t know it at the time, the line about ‘the first of the new Jedi’ nicely sets up Kevin J. Anderson’s Jedi Academy trilogy, as well as many other future books.
Heir to the Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition was is (at the moment_ scheduled for a September 6th release.
The man responsible for jump-started the Expanded Universe (and thus getting many of us in or back into fans) is now on Facebook! Believe it or not, it’s his first official page in… Ever! We’re happy to see him, so go forth and ‘Like!’
You can let him know who you’d like to see featured in a short story, provided Dark Force Rising and The Last Command get the annotation treatment…
In the comments, he reveals a little about the story that will be in the new Heir to the Empire: “The story in Heir (“Crisis of Faith”) does have Fel in it. The story also acts as a link between Choices of One and Heir to the Empire.” Also, “Pellaeon plays a major role” in Choices of One.
Del Rey has tweaked the release schedule again… This time, Zahn’s Choices of One moves back to the original date of July 19th, while the Heir to the Empire anniversary edition moves up slightly to September 6.
Drew Karpyshyn’s The Old Republic: Revan jumps back a month to November 15. Meanwhile, on his blog, Karpyshyn compares game Revan to book Revan.
As I post this, Del Rey editor Shelly Shapiro is chatting with fans on Facebook. I’ll be back later with another post on her comments when the dust has cleared.
Things go a bit random with our ninth look at Timothy Zahn’s annotations for the anniversary edition of Heir to the Empire.
“Someone asked me once what kind of modern-day car Karrde would drive. I told him that it would probably be a nice, simple, family-style sedan or minivan. A Toyota or Ford maybe … with a Lamborghini V-12 engine tucked away under the hood.”
Also on the Star Wars Books Facebook this week, a mockup of the new Heir covers.
The release of Heir to the Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition was recently pushed back to September 13.
Del Rey announced a few schedule tweaks on Facebook today. The changes are due to “an adjustment to the book schedule as dictated by our publisher.”
Moving up are Zahn’s Choices of One (from July 19th to July 12th – the same day as one of the year’s most anticipated fantasy) and Golden’s Fate of the Jedi: Ascension (From August 23 to August 9.)
The pushbacks are just a tad more dramatic, sadly. Heir to the Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition moves the most, from June 28 to September 13 — the same week as the Blu-Rays. Kemp’s Riptide goes almost a full month, from September 27 to October 25.
Our release schedule has been updated.