At his Star Wars: Scoundrels signing in San Diego on January 12, Timothy Zahn gave a talk on how the novel came to be and then held a Q&A session. He discussed the real world publication timeline he worked with, his initial idea to make it a heist using a who’s who of the main characters and top smugglers in the GFFA (Luke, Han, Leia, Mara, Lando, Corran, Mirax, Talon and more) just before the New Jedi Order, and how even the cover art influenced the final story.
With Scoundrels just released in hardcover, author Timothy Zahn has been on a book tour of the West Coast. I was able to spend a few minutes with him before his signing at San Diego’s Mysterious Galaxy bookstore on Saturday to chat about Scoundrels and what else he’s got in the pipeline. Stay tuned later this week for more video from the signing, including Tim discussing how Scoundrels came to be, and audience Q & A.
As you may recall – or not, depending on how much partying was done last night, today is the release of Timothy Zahn’s Scoundrels. You know, that book some of us wouldn’t shut up about for most of 2012?
Comic fans won’t be left out in the cold this week, either. Look for Purge: The Tyrant’s Fist #2 in the shops on Wednesday. There actually was a release last week at well: the third Clone Wars omnibus, The Republic Falls.
What else do we have coming up this month? Well, Brian Wood’s Star Wars #1 ought to debut next week, and the final Fate of the Jedi book, Troy Denning’s Apocalypse, will be out in paperback on the 29th.
Scoundrels. 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.
As James pointed out in our earlier Scoundrels post, it seems like every year lately there’s been a Star Wars book that comes out almost directly after the holiday. Many of us has been wondering about that in light of Scoundrels, but there is a solid reason, according to LFL’s Jennifer Heddle:
Pubtip: Sometimes certain books come out right after the holidays on purpose, so they don’t get lost in the holiday avalanche of gift books.
I guess someone threw the Scoundrels switch yesterday, because there’s been a minor flood of coverage for Timothy Zahn’s book.
MTV Geek has a book trailer which I can’t bring myself to watch. (Sorry, I Have Issues with the entire concept. Blame Vector Prime.)
Perhaps paying homage to one of our fandom’s oldest traditions, Suvudu has a “holiday card insert” so you can gift the book ahead of the official release date. And it looks like they’re ‘introducing’ the individual scoundrels one-by-one, starting with Lando.
As someone who’s generally pretty well informed on what’s going on with the franchise, I go back and forth on the Star Wars Insider.
I let my subscription lapse more than a year ago and pick up the issues at Barnes & Noble… And often forget to read them anyway. (Yes, it’s available digitally, and I’m not really much of a collector, but I think I have them all since issue #24.)
The magazine is hobbled by the same general issues as most of print media – it’s always, always going to be a day (actually a month, or several months) late when it comes to breaking news. That’s just the nature of the beast, but I figure the Insider isn’t really meant for folks like me, the fans who read dozens of news sites daily. It’s for the casual fans. There’s a fine line to walk to attract the hardcores without alienating the core audience – the short stories being perhaps the latest (successful?) attempt.
But with new movies coming up (and hopefully, an end to the parade of generic Clone Wars covers) it’s perhaps time to renew. The new issue features an interview with George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy about the new movies. Will it contain anything we haven’t heard yet? (Also, a Tim Zahn interview and short story.) Well, we’ll find out on the 11th.
What are your thoughts on the Insider? If they lost you, what would it take to bring you back?
Kids. Chronicle Books has revealed the cover for Vader’s Little Princess, Jeffrey Brown’s followup to Darth Vader and Son. In the spirit of the season, Chronicle is also offering printable holiday gift tags.
Vader’s Little Princess is due out in April.
Audio. The live performance of Kyle Newman’s Smuggler’s Gambit from Celebration VI is now available to download. The cast includes David Collins as Han Solo, plus Sam Witwer, Tom Kane, Ashley Eckstein, Matt Lanter, Dee Bradley Baker, Matthew Wood, Clare Grant, and Daniel Logan.
Oh my, look at the time. 
Out now is 
