The Return of Star Wars

The announcement of the sale of Lucasfilm and Star Wars to Disney intially had me thinking this -

swiftly followed by this -

The prospect was terrifying. But after I finished hyperventilating, not only at the news that George had actually sold Star Wars but who the buyer was, I started to think. Is this really going to be a bad thing? Say Disney to most people and the animated princess stories are probably the first thing to spring to mind. But it isn't the be all and end all of Disney. There's Pixar. Okay, more animation, but there's also Marvel. If the new Star Wars trilogy got The Avengers makeover, it could be good. I'm not a fan of the current new trilogy, or of the constant modifications made to the original three episodes. Could Disney actually come up with anything worse than Jar Jar Binks?!

So, I switched from blind panic to cautious optimism. Then a friend and fellow Star Wars fan tweeted the news that Luke Skywalker would play a major role in the new, new trilogy. *bounces up and down* I make no secret of the fact that I'm a devoted Luke fan. I couldn't imagine that Mark Hamill was actually going to reprise the role, but after going to read the article tweeted I did my happy dance. Not only is Hamill to feature as Luke, but much of the original cast are slated to be returning! You can read the full details here. While I'm still not ready to skip for joy, the knowledge that Disney appear set to try and keep the original Star Wars essence for the new films and yet allow Lucas to have a voice in the process (but note the comment about the fact that he'll have no creative control) make me hopeful that they can only be an improvement on episodes 1-3. I love that they're talking about maintaining the whole ethos of the original trilogy, something I felt was sadly lacking in the new one. The possible title for Episode Seven is A New Dawn. I really hope that's serendipity. See, we shall, hmmmm....

Pippa's Journal

I can't really put up the heading of Success because I don't have any right now to talk about. Just yesterday I received a revise and resubmit request for Keir's Fall, and I'm not going to make any further comment on that at this point. Terms & Conditions Apply is waiting for its final edit just now, and a slightly revised cover - it will only be a small colour change on the background male character but the other elements will remain the same. I'm still hoping to have that released before the end of November.

But in a moment of madness, I signed up for NaNoWriMo. Right up until the end of October I had no intention of doing nano. Having failed to finish the Campnanowrimo in August (no biggie - I have a 35K rough draft from it that will be a project for next year, so I wasn't unhappy about not making the word count) and really not looking to kickstart a new project, I saw no need. Unfortunately, waking up from a nightmare about being executed by an evil Overlord for not revealing the location of a secret weapon and posting the fact on Facebook got a demand 'Write it!' Once I'd started, muse wouldn't leave it alone. So NaNoWriMo seemed a good opportunity to get it out of my system and see if I could hit the 50K this time around. I'm at 11K with dark scifi romance The Overlord's Consort, and I've had to leave it for a few days due to real life stuff, but hope to get back to it tomorrow. I'm still ahead of schedule so a couple of lost days aren't going to hurt.

I'm also still working on a short story for the Science Fiction Romance Brigade's anthology. The first draft still isn't complete - another reason I really didn't need to get side-tracked by NaNoWriMo - but I've written the ending so it's just a case of going back to fill in the gaps. If it doesn't make the anthology, it will be another candidate for self-publishing in the future.

Happenings

I'm taking part in The Blog Ring of Power here sporting my latest crazy hairdo - you can check out my creative process, how it all started, and my tricks for working around writer's block. I also got tagged by Diane Dooley for The Next Big Thing here  and you can learn some previously unreleased facts about my upcoming scifi release Gethyon.
 
GHOST PLANET has launched! Sharon Lynn Fisher officially joins me as a published author on Spacefreighters Lounge, woo hoo! Check out the post below for the amazing launch party she hosted, joined by fellow bloggers Laurie and Donna. I'm absolutely gutted I couldn't be with them to celebrate but I'm sure it'll be a huge success. And my own pre-ordered print copy finally arrived last week. :)