It's Lit: Somehow, John Jackson Miller Has Returned
A preview of my upcoming interview with John Jackson Miller and more!
It’s been a week filled with book delays, giveaways, and new releases. My recording schedule is a little overfilled at the moment since I’m trying to get ahead on scheduling out the rest of the show’s second season, but that’s mostly because I’m caught up on Canon Star Wars reading (books, specifically) and have more time than I know what to do with at the moment.
Here’s a quick rundown of everything I’ve been working on — including details about the giveaway mentioned above, a preview of next week’s interview with author John Jackson Miller, and more.
A New Star Wars Book Giveaway Is Live!
It’s been a while since I did a giveaway on any of my socials, and my respective audiences have grown a lot since the last one. The world is a mess, life is hard, and I think you all deserve the chance to win something nice.
How about a hardcover edition of Bloodline by Claudia Gray — including the Vote Leia poster?
Click on the Instagram post above to learn more about the giveaway and how to enter! I’ll be doing more of these over the next several months, so if you don’t get lucky this time, there will be plenty more chances to win a hardcover you might not be able to find easily in the wild anymore.
May the Force be with you!
Welcoming John Jackson Miller Back to Now This Is Lit
It was August 2023, and I had John Jackson Miller’s email address saved from a previous podcast I worked on years ago. The 10th anniversary of the Kenobi novel was approaching. No one was talking about it. So I figured, why couldn’t we?
At the time, John knew there was a Star Wars book in progress called The Living Force. But I did not know what he knew, and at the end of that interview I said something to the effect of, “Well, when you write another Star Wars book, we’ll talk again.”
Fast forward to March 2024. John Jackson Miller has entered my Zoom room once again, and while I am not nearly as nervous this time as I was before, the thrill has not dulled. I am sitting in front of a truly great creator. My office is kind of a mess, but I am only one person, and I am talking to John Jackson Miller for the third time in six months.
I am a mess, but I am a lucky mess.
The more times you’re granted the privilege to speak with someone you admire, the better your conversations. Even the pre-recording small talk flows. When we do begin the interview, it’s sort of magical. Listening back later during the edit, I hear myself genuinely laugh — you don’t get my real laugh during interviews a lot because I take my work very seriously. Maybe too seriously?
Not many things are going well for me at the moment, but this interview is near perfect. John Jackson Miller is so deeply knowledgeable about storytelling, about Star Wars and the Jedi and how smaller stories fit into the larger universe. It’s watching a master perform their craft. This interview is about The Living Force, but it’s also about all the John Jackson Miller stories that have led up to this one. It’s about how wonderful it is to do something so well that you get invited to do it again, and you actually have the bandwidth to say yes.
The full interview will be up Tuesday, release day, along with my spoiler-free review. But wait, there’s more? Sort of. Later. Stick around, and you’ll figure it out soon enough.
Earlier This Week: Embracing The Gold Legends Banner
It’s not uncommon for a certain demographic of Star Wars fans to scoff at any photos I post of books with the gold Legends banner printed on them. Books without the banner are somehow superior, apparently. As a collector, and someone who owns quite a few Star Wars books purchased before the EU became Legends, I can’t say I completely disagree from an aesthetic perspective.
However, it’s the “no banner better” attitude that doesn’t completely sell the aesthetic for me. I like to think of the gold Legends banner as a badge of honor. The idea that Star Wars publishing “erased” Legends in favor of a new set of stories is silly and, honestly, a little old and boring at this point.
So I jotted down some thoughts earlier this week about what the gold Legends banner on newly printed books can mean, in a more positive light, if you’re willing to look at it from a different perspective.
You can read the entire post here.
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.