Here I am again

Okay, fuck it anyway.

You can all blame gabe chouinard for this. Gabe is my press agent, in the same sense as that guy in the Wendy's commercials is Wendy's official spokesman. He's what, in Yiddish, one would call a nudzh (sometimes spelled nudj). Look it up.

Anyway, he's good at it, like he is at a number of other things which I am not going to go on about, since I am not HIS press agent. You can find out for yourself at HIS blog, and sites, and god knows what all else.

Let me start with my usual disclaimer: Everything on this site is intended to persuade you to buy my books (or at least to impress you with how honest/insightful/sensitive/machocool I am). If that's a problem for you, then fuck off.

But it's all also true, because to deal in less than truth (MY truth, anyway) just isn't worth my time.

So here is some recent truth: I finished reading James Luceno's Star Wars bridge novel just the other day. Right now, it's called LABYRINTH OF EVIL. (Those of you looking for spoilers are insulting me. You can find voluminous commentary on my spoiler attitude over at theforce.net. Check it out, then come back here only if you have some passing interest in what I have to say.)

Do I sound a little hostile?

There's a good reason for this.

Jim is really, really good at this Star Wars stuff.

His book is, in fact, exemplary: it shows how an author can capture the headlong adventure of the OT without sacrificing the gathering darkness of the PT. And, as I said to my wife when I finished reading it, comparing his book to mine makes me sound like a pompous, over-writing asshole.

Which, sadly, doesn't mean I'm going to change anything. I am what I am, and Ep III is what Ep III is, and I still think I'm the right writer for the job.

It's just that every once in a while, the universe (or another writer) weighs in with an edifying humility-smack.

But I don't have to like it.







Hence the hostility.