Category: Interviews

In part one of our latest interview with Star Wars dynamo author Jason Fry, we discussed his two recent Journey to The Force Awakens tie-in books, The Weapon of a Jedi and Moving Target (alongside Cecil Castellucci). Today we’ll move on to his most recent solo release, Servants of the Empire: The Secret Academy (expect us to have more on that next week as well), but first, we caught up on Jason’s own original series The Jupiter Pirates, whose third book, The Rise of Earth, comes out next year—and whose cover Jason was kind enough to share with us for its world premiere!

Man, that was a lot of titles for one paragraph.

So Jupiter Pirates is, in many ways, the age of sail in space. There are some family tensions in the second book, Curse of the Iris, and the tension mirrors the long-running argument over whether the Hashoones are pirates or privateers. The family has done and does some shady things in this book, and Tycho is sort of the audience surrogate in saying “hey wait, this isn’t right”—but his family doesn’t always see eye-to-eye about it. How do you romanticize age of sail in space without necessarily romanticizing the awful things that pirates do? And that’s leaving aside people like Mox who are just the worst, of course.

Hmm. Good question. I suppose this is a case where the built-in guardrails of writing kids’ fiction are a good thing – you’re not going to see pirates woolding someone (Google that with caution – it’s upsetting) or raping/slaughtering people. Bad things happen, but they’re mostly offscreen or implied. Which is honestly the way I prefer to work anyway.

Anyway, I think the more interesting debates in The Jupiter Pirates – for a reader of any age – are about other decisions to be made about right and wrong. What’s the right thing to do when you discover you don’t agree with a cherished family tradition? How about when you’re fighting for a larger cause that may or may not justify unsavory actions? (Which is the same question Cecil and I addressed in Moving Target, come to think of it.) Read More

Jason Fry, author of more than thirty books in the Star Wars franchise, has already been gracious enough to grant us biannual interviews since Eleven-ThirtyEight’s inception; but this time was a challenge all around—not only did I have to cover his two different Force Friday releases, The Weapon of a Jedi and Moving Target, last Tuesday’s Servants of the Empire finale The Secret Academy, the upcoming third book in his Jupiter Pirates series, and any potential future projects in fewer than a hundred questions, but Jason himself was double-booked this past weekend (with appearances within a couple hours of each other at both New York Comic-Con and Star Wars Reads Day in the Maplewood Memorial Library in New Jersey). Luckily, we pulled it off—I assume it’s because he’s extra-pumped about the Mets being in the playoffs. Below we’ll discuss his Luke and Leia books; stay tuned for the latest on Zare Leonis, and more, on Wednesday.

Might as well get the Force Awakens business out of the way. I’m always very interested in the mechanics of how they tease things from an upcoming film, and my original question was going to be how you ended up using Sarco Plank specifically in The Weapon of a Jedi. Then I read your recent piece on the Official Site, and you say that by the time you came aboard, not just Plank’s role but the general outline of the story was already in place. Is that typical in a situation like this, to be handed not just a character but a rough plot? The TFA elements of Moving Target, on the other hand, remain a little more mysterious; how much of that book was decided before you and Cecil Castellucci became involved?

Every project is different, but I knew from the beginning that Weapon of a Jedi, as part of Journey to The Force Awakens, would be really different. For Weapon of a Jedi the basic plot was set, so I focused on figuring out Luke’s character and his arc – the book flies or dies based on how drawn in you are by Luke’s Force training and what he learns about the Force and himself. Contrast that assignment with, say, Servants of the Empire – for those books I had one episode to incorporate, a cameo to feature, and some story threads to include, but otherwise I had a free hand with the plots and characters. Read More

On Monday, I presented Part One of my interview with Alexandra Bracken, where we discussed her relationship with Star Wars, her approach to writing, and her literary interests. Today brings part two of this interview, where we discuss her adaptation of Star Wars A New Hope — released yesterday — called The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy. The title of the novel signals its focus on the “Big Three” of Leia, Han, and Luke, so naturally I wanted to ask her about her approaches to characterizing the most iconic figures in Star Wars.

Not only has the novel itself come out since the publication of Part One of the interview, but StarWars.com posted a beautiful, heartfelt essay that Alex wrote about her late father. She discusses her experiences growing up with Star Wars and how she associates it with her loving family, and how the Star Wars fandom, too, is a family. It’s a very moving piece, and I highly encourage everyone to read it if you haven’t already… The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy itself reads like a love letter to family and fandom. Scenes where Leia confides that she copes with trying times by remembering the fun and hope she associates with her parents or where Luke imagines his departed loved ones as beams of sunlight have this emotional heft to them, especially read in context of where Alex was writing from. This book is something special — from the mythic grandeur to the funny little additions and observations (ever thought about who put down the Falcon‘s landing gear on the Death Star? She did!), a lot of love and thought went into this book and it shows.

But that’s enough from me! Let’s hear from Alex and get her insights on Leia, Han, and Luke! As before, my questions are in bold and Alex’s answers are in plaintext.

X. Okay so on to The Princess, The Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy at last. You were brought in to the project to adapt A New Hope–what are your thoughts on ANH and its place in the OT?

Oooh, this is an interesting question. I’m not sure I’ve ever really thought about this before…

Tomorrow sees the release of another three Star Wars novels, to add to the five released earlier this month on Force Friday. These three novels are special, written by three different authors with three wholly different adaptations of the Original Trilogy for a middle-grade (ages 8-12) audience. If you’ve read any of my reviews of middle-grade books on this site, you’ll know by now that I think that the Star Wars middle-grade novels are basically the best of the new canon and should be read by adults just as well as kids. A few months ago, I wrote a rave review of a three chapter sample of the A New Hope adaptation by Alexandra Bracken, The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy. I can’t wait to dig into the final book. The other two books in the series, which I hope to review in the near future, are So You Want to be a Jedi? by Adam Gidwitz and Beware the Power of the Dark Side! by Tom Angleburger, adapting Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi respectively.

Alex was kind enough to take the time to answer a bevy of questions about her love of Star Wars, her writing, and her stellar adaptation of A New Hope. Her book brought me back to a lot of what I really loved about Star Wars, so I had a lot to ask her! I’ll be running this interview in two parts: today’s piece is about Alex and her writing and Wednesday’s piece is about The Princess, The Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy itself. The book releases tomorrow, September 22. Please look into the book, I promise you won’t regret it — especially if you have kids or if you want to feel like a kid again (and don’t we all, when we watch Star Wars?).

My questions below are in bold, Alex’s responses are in plaintext.

I. What do you love about Star Wars? What drew you in initially, and what draws you back?

Honestly? The characters, forever and always. It’s why, when given the opportunity to retell ANH any way I’d like, I knew I wanted to play a bit with the characters themselves and really peel back their layers. I pitched this retelling to my editor as the “Star Wars Breakfast Club,” and the title is a little nod to that.

I also really appreciate how grand the scale of the story is while still maintaining that intimacy with the central characters. It carries you through the full range of emotions—it’s thrilling, heartbreaking, uplifting, romantic, funny. I guess the better question is, what’s not to love about Star Wars?
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