Books Thrawn Alliances Book - Summer 2018

I meant to say: and I'll whisper...Zahn

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Yeah, Ben. WTH!

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More like you mean whatever the hell we did so many minutes ago.

 

All of the Star Wars authors were kidnapped to clone a giant Snoke to send to New York.

 

So is this really coming out next July? And yet it's already written now in October? Any ideas on why the long gap between completion and release?

 

Because although it's "done," there are still edits and revisions. It's likely that the draft is not the final one.

 

He's a fast writer, but I have to wonder if he wasn't given the go-ahead for multiple books well in advance. The man has one of the best poker faces, so you'd never know what he's holding back.

 

Also publishing is glacially slow.

 

I hope this book will be much more Thrawn content than Thrawn (novel) had. I didn't enjoy reading about Pryce as much compared to Thrawn. I was just waiting to get done with those chapters and get back to the good stuff.

 

I'd like to see Rae Sloane pop up in here as well.

 

I think that you have a valid point. I just want Vader to be shown as Thrawn's equal, as opposed to a force-wielding brute. Vader and Thrawn are probably my two favourite Star Wars characters and I really want this novel to do justice to both characters.

 

Books are always written WELL in advance of publication. For non-tie in books (pick any of your favorite authors) most books will actually be done and ready around 1 year before they publish. Seriously, I'm looking right now at a completely finished, 100% clean, 100% done manuscript (NOT STAR WARS RELATED) that could be published tomorrow. But, it isn't coming until 2018.

Why?

Because publishing takes a lot of time. Books need to be "sold" to bookstores - ie book publishers need to essentially convince booksellers to buy the book, and buy in (hopefully) big quantities. And much like other goods (clothes, shoes, etc) these things are sold in cycles MONTHS before the actual moment that product will hit shelves. Those great new summer clothes you're going to find next year? Retailers are probably already setting their stock orders for that now, or soon will be. All of the great holiday merchandise/deals you're going to start seeing crop up? Yeah, all of that was done in April/May.

So...AFTER all of that, then books need to have marketing pushes, and publicity moments to create awareness and excitement. And this is a slow inexorable process. It takes time to build momentum. Especially for a debut book, or a smaller author trying to gain a wider audience.

And then finally, it takes some time to actually print, bind and ship books. So there's time built in for that.

Now, like I said, tie-in books, and SW are different. Timelines can sometimes be truncated, but the same general principles apply. Read everything I just wrote above and ask can we really do all of that in 2-3 months? (The answer actually is yes, but it's a bad idea to do that too often. Otherwise you end up like Quint in Jaws....running the engines in the red and eventually the engine explodes and the shark eats you.)

***sorry for derailing, back to Thrawn: Alliances***

 

This is apparently going to have Anakin flashbacks, which will require Zahn to get into Anakin's headspace. I get the feeling that will result in a very nuanced portrayal of Vader (or, worst case scenario, Anakin as a force wielding brute lol)


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This is what it feels like to be Zahn getting into Anakin's head forever.

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I bet the people doing it feel differently


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I haven't finished reading Thrawn yet, but there are several mentions of some kind of "extra-galactic threat" throughout the book. Could Alliances be about the Empire fighting some Yuuzhan Vong-type alien threat outside the known Galaxy?

 

Unknown Regions threat? Probably. Vong? Who knows?

 

. . . and turns out that's where Thrawn's been for the last 40 years, in the Unknown regions fighting a secret war

damn that would be awesome. Highly unlikely, but awesome.

 

I've wondered about that ever since we found out he knew Anakin during the Clone Wars.

 

I suppose I'll be the lone nut who spitballs the idea that maybe Thrawn and Vader encounter something Snoke related, and that's how Snoke becomes aware of the Skywalker Bloodline.