Accidental Star Wars Journalism
But Clayton Sandell has no Star Wars-related regrets.
On Now This Is Lit, I’ve had the privilege of speaking with over a dozen Star Wars writers, a few editors, and an audiobook narrator. There are many more exciting interviews to come, and I’m so excited to share a new one with you to close out our May episode lineup.
This week’s interview is with award-winning broadcast journalist and Star Wars writer Clayton Sandell. A Journalists on Journalists-esque conversation, if you will. I love talking with people who understand the highs and lows of my day job (and those who share my dream of one day writing a Star War—even cooler if they’ve actually done it).
Clayton, as you can imagine, is an absolute joy to speak with. What I didn’t know going into this conversation was that it was never technically his intention to start covering Star Wars professionally — it sort of happened on accident. Isn’t that the best way to combine your job and your fandom — by falling into it and never looking back? It’s had me thinking a lot about my own path, and I realized I never told the story of how I became the host of a Star Wars podcast about books. I’ll get into that a little in this newsletter.
You can listen to our full conversation below.
I don’t know if anyone is actually interested in my story, but I suppose there’s no harm in telling it anyway.
I began my professional career as a health science journalist, freelancing full-time to cover graduate school costs until I secured my first full-time job as a health writer for a growing online media company. It was my intention to remain in this niche for the entirety of my career. I went to school for it. I liked it. Maybe I was even good at it.
Then the Google algorithm changed the game for science writers and the websites that covered its many subject areas. Long story short, unless you had an advanced degree or you worked for a site that already had established itself as an authority on a science topic (or you yourself were a credible authority figure in another way), science was out. Especially anything pertaining to health information, life-or-death facts and advice.
The only sustainable pivot, at least for the media company I worked for at the time, was a hard switch to entertainment journalism. So I had two options: forfeit a steady paycheck and continue covering the topics I knew a lot about and enjoyed covering, or become an entertainment journalist full-time. I chose to keep my paycheck. A new era of my career began.
I had no experience covering celebrities, movies, or TV. I needed to gain as much experience as possible, as quickly as possible. A few opportunities to write about Star Wars arose, and I dove into them full-force.
That’s how I came to write for — and eventually run — Dork Side of the Force, a site I stayed with until December 2023. I also started writing more and more about Star Wars books. I launched my Instagram account, reviewed books as I read them, joined a few related podcasts, and kept doing that until the powers that be stuck a quote from one of my book reviews on the back of Into the Dark. Then I just kept going.
In the spring of 2022, I was working full-time as a Senior Editor for a different company covering entertainment and decided it was time to turn my knowledge and love of Star Wars books into my own show. I wanted to speak to more authors, reveal more behind-the-scenes nuggets about publishing, and have fun making the exact podcast I had always wanted to listen to but could never find.
Now This Is Lit released its first episode in July 2022, and it’s now in its second (going on third) season. I will never get to make this show full-time, but I love it too much to consider stopping anytime soon.
I may never have landed here if I’d kept on my previous career path. Professionally, I’m still trying to find my footing. But I’ve accidentally stumbled into something that makes me — and hopefully others — extremely happy.
Here’s to many more seasons of celebrating Star Wars books with all of you.
Now This Is Lit is a podcast (and newsletter!) about Star Wars books, the people who make them, and the readers who just can’t get enough of them. You can find the show wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe to the Substack for more deep dives, guides, interview transcripts, and book love.