Greg Weisman, one of the executive producers of the upcoming Rebels animated series, is also an author for the young adult audience with his series-starting Rain of the Ghosts, featuring a young teenager in the Caribbean who can see dead people. I had the opportunity to chat with Greg this past weekend at the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore’s 21st Birthday Bash, and in this interview we discuss Rain of the Ghosts, the writing process for both print and animation, as well as his work on animated shows such as Young Justice, Gargoyles, and The Spectacular Spider-Man, including some of his own objectives and challenges for hitting a wider audience when creating a show and including diversity. While we couldn’t talk much about Rebels directly, he does provide some perspective for the show.

With Maul: Lockdown on sale this week, I had a chance to have author Joe Schreiber answer a few questions about his new novel. Joe was gracious enough to discuss the character of Maul and other aspects of Lockdown, including his collaboration with Jim Luceno to have it connect with Darth Plagueis. Having previously brought the living dead to Star Wars in Death Troopers and its prequel, Red Harvest, Schreiber is no stranger to the darker side of the galaxy far, far away.

Ryder Windham has written over fifty Star Wars books, across the spectrum from comics to junior books to hefty reference books. His latest book, the Death Star Owner’s Technical Manual, came out this week as a Haynes manual, and focuses on the saga’s favorite armored space station. Windham spoke with me about the new book, illustrated by Chris Reiff and Chris Trevas, who had worked previously with Windham on the Haynes Millennium Falcon Owner’s Technical Guide which came out in 2011. Here’s the interview with Ryder Windham about the new Death Star reference book:

With the second episode of LEGO Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles coming up on Cartoon Network on Wednesday, I had a chance to chat with Michael Price, the writer of the fun LEGO Star Wars specials, and see what’s in store for the audience this time. Mike’s a great guy, always willing to talk Star Wars and comedy, and this time, we’ve got some secrets for latest installment of LEGO Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles: “Menace of the Sith”. As announced in August, the new episode premieres on Cartoon Network on Wednesday, September 4 at 8 PM (ET/PT). Continue reading →

And you thought my con coverage was over! Here’s Randy Stradley, writer of Star Wars: Dark Times, and Douglas Wheatley, artist of Dark Times, discussing the start of the current arc, ‘A Spark Remains’. If you haven’t checked it out yet, Issue #1 came out in July, just before Comic-Con, and the second issue comes out today. While setting the stage for the activity in the first issue of ‘A Spark Remains’ (check out my review of #1 on Big Shiny Robot), the pair kept mum about the future of Jedi Dass Jennir and his friends, as well as other projects being worked on. Bonus: we get photobombed at the very end by a certain Sith voice actor.

Kevin Hearne is the author of the upcoming Empire and Rebellion novel that centers on Luke Skywalker, which will be released after Martha Wells’ Razor’s Edge and James S. A. Corey’s Honor Among Thieves. At the end of July, Hearne joined his pal, first-time novelist Jason M. Hough, for the launch party for Hough’s book. I had a chance to chat with Hearne about Star Wars, his current series, The Iron Druid Chronicles, an urban fantasy series, and other stuff. Here’s the transcript of our interview:

On Saturday at Comic-Con, I had a chance to sit down with Lucasfilm’s J. W. Rinzler to discuss his upcoming works: The Making of Return of the Jedi, The Making of … ebooks with enhanced content, and The Star Wars, the eight-issue comic portraying the original draft screenplay of George Lucas for Star Wars. Big thanks to Mr. Rinzler for the interview, and Del Rey for their secret press room.

While at Comic-Con in San Diego, I got the chance to sit down with Star Wars author John Jackson Miller to discuss his upcoming novel Kenobi, his recently published sci-fi work Overdraft: The Orion Offensive, and his other upcoming projects, and a Kenobi giveaway from Del Rey at Comic-Con.

And below, Miller gets a surprise visit from Lisa Curtis (dressed as Miller’s character Zayne Carrick from Knights of the Old Republic comics), who presents him with an honorary membership in Rebel Legion

With today being the release date of the fifth and final issue of the Fire Carrier story arc for the Star Wars: Dark Times comic, I wanted to highlight this fantastic comics storyline, so I got the chance to discuss the story with Randy Stradley, the writer of Dark Times as well as senior Star Wars editor and VP of Publishing at Dark Horse Comics.

Let’s hear what Randy has to say about writing the latest adventures of the Whiphid Jedi, Master K’Kruhk and a group of younglings under his care, posing as refugees on an Imperial backwater world. We won’t spoil the final issue, but if you want to learn more about the story so far, you can check out my reviews of all individual issues at Big Shiny Robot: #1#2#3#4#5.Continue reading →