Interview with Cavan Scott

Cavan Scott is a best-selling author that has been one of the most prolific Star Wars authors in recent years, with several comics, novels and even the first original Star Wars radio drama. He was very gracious in providing us the opportunity for an interview.

Star Wars Veracruz: Can you please start by telling us something about yourself?

Cavan Scott: I’m a full-time comic book writer and author based in the West Country of the United Kingdom. These days I mainly write for Star Wars, but have also written for Doctor Who, Pacific Rim, Warhammer 40,000, Star Trek, Vikings and many, many more. 

SWV: How did you become a Star Wars fan?

Cavan: When I first picked up a copy of Marvel UK’s Star Wars Weekly in the late seventies. I think I was hooked by page three, and that was before I saw a single Star Wars movie. 

Star Wars books in the New York Times Best Seller List

On August 16, 2019, the Star Wars Books (@DelReyStarWars) created an impromptu AMA (Ask Me Anything), and I asked if there was a list of the Star Wars books that ever reached the New York Times Best Seller List. They answered:

Probably somewhere in the NYT archive. Or some enterprising fansite. We don't keep one of those.

— Star Wars Books (@DelReyStarWars) August 16, 2019

Well, this is now that enterprising fansite. After reviewing more than 4 decades of public NYT records, below is the compilation of all the Star Wars related books that have made the coveted Fiction Best Seller List.

Amazingly enough, the most successful book ever is not a novel, but the storybook for "The Return of the Jedi", written by Joan D. Vinge, which besides being also the first ever book to reach the list, peaked at #1 for 8 of the 32 weeks it was featured in the list.

The most successful year has been 2017, when seven books were featured at one point in the list: Catalyst, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Aftermath: Empire's End, Thrawn, Battlefront II: Inferno Squad, Phasma and From A Certain Point of View.

Interview with Chuck Wendig

Chuck Wendig is a writer who has worked in the film and game industry and is a successful novelist with titles such as Blackbirds, Mockingbird and many others. For Star Wars he was selected to write the definite continuation of the events in Return of the Jedi, with his Aftermath trilogy. He also wrote the comic adaptation for The Force Awakens. You can read more about his work in his great blog, Terrible Minds.

Chuck was kind enough to grant us an interview, proceed at your own risk. Minor spoilers for the Aftermath trilogy are marked below.

Star Wars Veracruz: Can you please start by telling us something about yourself?

Chuck Wendig: Sure! I’m a writer of all kinds of things. Comics, games, but mostly books.

I like books.

Interview with Landry Q. Walker

Landry Q. Walker is an accomplished writer who has worked on several properties, including DC and Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas, just to name a few. He wrote the excellent short stories about characters from The Force Awakens that have been compiled in Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Aliens, Vol. 1. You can follow him on Twitter.

He was gracious enough to give us an interview, please enjoy.
 

Star Wars Veracruz (SWV): Please tell us something about yourself. How did you become a Star Wars fan?

Landry Q. Walker: I was six years old when the first film came out, so I was kind of the perfect age to experience Star Wars. Everyone my age loved the film, boys and girls alike.

Interview with Liam Brazier

This interview was originally published in Korpil.net on March 10th, 2011.

Liam Brazier, a British illustrator, has taken the Internet by storm with his recent portraits of several Star Wars characters done in a particular polygon-shaped style. His previous work also meddles with science fiction and popular culture, you can buy prints and Apple-related skins and cases at Society6. I had the opportunity of securing an interview off him and here are the magnificent results.

Mario A. Escamilla: Thanks for accepting this interview, can you tell us something about yourself?

Liam: Aged 10 I drew an excellent recreation of the Ghostbusters logo during a rain-ridden school lunchtime, an obviously enamoured (or utterly bored) girl offered to finish colouring it in so I could watch the Transformers animated movie being shown in the hall. Although I was entirely polite about it at the time she did, in fact, ruin the picture despite her best efforts. 

I have never forgotten this and am still quite bitter about it. I need help.

MAE: How long have you been a Star Wars fan?

Liam: Ask anyone I know and they’ll attest to my distinctly non-existant long-term memory. My parents took me to see the entire trilogy upon the release of ‘..Jedi’ way back when. My youth was constructed of those films played endlessly on VHS, and every single toy I ever owned had to do battle with the Stormtroopers et al I had in abundance – I still have an x-wing on my desk today (although one of the 90′s ones unfortunately, all my original Star Wars toys disappeared over time).

Interview with Michael Kogge

Michael Kogge is the author of the Star Wars Rebels series books and most recently the junior novelization for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. On October 2015, he was kind enough to send us a message to children for our Star Wars Reads Day event, and this time we sat down (virtually of course) with him and talked a bit about the port of Veracruz,  the Mexican editions of Star Wars novels and other things before we started the interview.

Star Wars Veracruz (SWV): I would like to ask if you can tell us something about yourself.

Interview with Adam Bray

We had the amazing opportunity to speak to Adam Bray, multitalented writer and photographer, contributor to the BBC, NatGeo and CNN, author of over 40 travel books, turned Star Wars author, who has written "Star Wars: Rebels Visual Guide", "LEGO Star Wars: Into Battle" and many others.

Si estás buscando la versión en español, se encuentra aquí.

Star Wars Veracruz (SWV): Hi Adam! Thank you so much for this interview. Please, tell us something about yourself.

Adam Bray: I have a degree in Biology, so after college I worked with chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans. I worked in laboratories, nature centers and zoos—anywhere I could be around animals. But I wanted to do some traveling and after a few years I transitioned to guidebook writing. I also wrote freelance for a variety of outlets like CNN, BBC and National Geographic. I lived in Southeast Asia and also spent a lot of time in New Zealand, where I was around a lot of the filming for the Hobbit movies. That probably got my focus pointed back toward movies and pop culture as much as anything, besides the great work that Dave Filoni and his team were doing on The Clone Wars at the time. 

SWV: How did you became a Star Wars fan?

Adam: I’ve been a Star Wars fan my whole life. I saw the first movie when I was only three or four years old at a drive-in movie theater. So my earliest memories are about Star Wars, and collecting Star Wars action figures and Topps trading cards.

Interview with Jason Fry

Jason Fry, long time writer for Star Wars reference books and novels, granted us in Star Wars Veracruz an interview due to his books "The Weapon of a Jedi" and "The Force Awakens Incredible Cross-Sections" being published soon in Mexico. Enjoy this great and rich conversation we had.

Si buscas la traducción al español, se encuentra aquí.

Star Wars Veracruz (SWV): When did you become a Star Wars fan and how did you receive the opportunity to write in an official manner?

Jason Fry: I saw A New Hope when I was eight years old in Lake Grove, N.Y., and by the time I glimpsed the engines of Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer I knew my life had changed. I was a big fan throughout my childhood and kept up with the books, comics, etc. as a teenager and into my twenties. 

In the mid-1990s I met Dan Wallace on an America Online discussion board dedicated to Star Wars. We both loved Star Wars geography, and Dan had landed a gig writing The Essential Guide to Planets and Moons for Del Rey. I had a database of Star Wars planets that I’d created, and wanted to send it to him but hesitated because I was worried he’d think I was trying to step on his turf. When I finally did send it Dan was basically done with the book, and he was like, “Man, this would have been really helpful – why didn’t you send it before?” Whoops.

Interview with Pablo Hidalgo

This interview was originally published in Korpil.net on November, 24th, 2010.

Pablo Hidalgo, archetype of the Star Wars fan has kindly answered an interview. He is currently an Internet Content Developer for StarWars. Born in Chile and raised in Canada, he created one of the most complete fan pages ever, the Star Wars Index, now deactivated. He had the fortune to publish cartoons in official magazines, such as the Star Wars Adventure Journal, a periodical by West End Games, creators of the first ever Star Wars role playing game. He later moved to San Francisco when hired by Lucasfilm, and was instrumental in the creation of StarWars.com as the main source of information for fans. He co-autherd Star Wars: Chronicles and the second edition of the Star Wars: Encyclopaedia, both along Steve Sansweet. After publishing G.I. Joe vs Cobra: The Essential Guide on his own, there are several books he has authored or co-authored that have recently been published or that will be in the near future.

Hello Pablo!

Thanks for accepting this interview!

1. Could you tell us something about you? Where are you from?

I was born in Santiago, Chile, and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. I moved down to Northern California over 10 years ago to take this job with Lucasfilm.

Interview with Joe Schreiber

This interview was originally published on Korpil.net in April 27th, 2010.




Joe Schreiber is a horror writer, who has published “Chasing the dead”, “Eat the dark” and recently the excellent “No doors, no windows”. With a fluid style, easy to devour, he creates realistic worlds that begin to fall apart little by little. Another novel is due soon, “Supernatural: The Unholy Cause”, based on the popular television show. Schreiber is known to Star Wars fans for penning the first ever horror novel, “Death Troopers”.

Hello Joe, thanks for accepting this interview.

No problem!

Could you tell us something about you? When and how did you became a Star Wars fan?

Been a fan since I was seven. Saw the first one on the big screen and loved it.