Win A Copy of the Essential Guide to Warfare

To celebrate the official launch of Tosche Station, we’re giving away two copies of Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Warfare. How can you claim one for yourself? Simple!

Opportunity the First: Follow the Tosche Station Twitter account and retweet this message

Opportunity the Second: Give us a Like on Facebook.

We will randomly select one winner from each pool to receive a copy, so enter in both places to increase your odds of winning a book that I really enjoyed.

The contest will run through Thursday with a winner announced Friday. Good luck!

Karen Miller ‘Star Wars Insider’ Short Story Features Antilles Spawn

Hit it, @DelReyStarWars

That high-pitched sound your dog just picked up on was probably me. Between this short story and Mercy Kill, it’s going to be a good year for the Antilles sisters in EU literature.

Facebook Chat With Jason Fry, Paul Urquhart, and Erich Schoeneweiss

Yesterday the writers behind the Essential Guide to Warfare stopped by Star Wars Books official Facebook page to answer questions from fans. Among the hard hitting questions: was there a classic Disney influence on the book?

Johann Mitzscherlich: It may seem obviously, but is the name “Skere Kaan” (where you first introduced his forename) to the tiger Shere Khan from The Jungle Book.

Jason Fry: Yep, Skere Kaan is a Jungle Book nod. That was Paul. Made me smile.

I’m always game for clever little nods to things outside of the Star Wars universe. Reading over a Han Solo profile, I spotted an Animal House reference. Austin over at EUCantina noticed a Kent Brockman reference in the book.

For a lengthy recap of the chat, head on over to Club Jade.

Jason Fry Releases Second Batch of ‘Essential Guide to Warfare’ End Notes

Yesterday, Jason Fry posted a series of end notes from EG to Warfare. Today he drops more!

Blasters: The mechanics of blasters have been explained rather differently in a couple of Star Wars sources, and Paul Urquhart did a lot of heavy lifting helping me sort through the differences. My question about how a stun setting would work led to some breathtakingly geeky emails between myself, Leland Chee, Pablo Hidalgo, Dave Filoni, Tony Rowe and Robert Clarke. Yes, my job kicks ass.

For even more bits of awesomeness, check out the rest of the notes he’s posted on his Tumblr.

The Han Solo Adventures – Fanwork in Video Game Format

Back in the ’90s, Lucasarts was one of the kings of the video game playground. Among their best titles were their adventure games: Tales of Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Sam and Max Hit the Road, The Dig, Loom. Nearly twenty years after they were published, these games are still regarded as masterpieces. What they all had in common was the engine powering them, Lucasarts’ SCUMM.

Fast forward to 2012. The SCUMM engine is now in the hands of fans who can create homages to the great games of the past. One such in-progress fan creation? The Han Solo Adventures.

I certainly hope Stacy Davidson can finish this game. Just watching that video brings me back to some of the first games I played growing up. For now, I’ll have to go dust off my old copy of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. 

Via Kotaku

Jason Fry to Talk ‘Essential Guide to Warfare’ on Facebook Today

Don’t forget, at 3PM EDT/12PM PST, author Star Wars Books will be holding a Facebook chat with Jason Fry to talk about the Essential Guide to Warfare. Want to know what went into the various character profiles and warship writeups? You can ask him yourself.

Just remember, this isn’t the chat to ask what’s coming after Fate of the Jedi or when Karen Traviss will come back to the Expanded Universe (she won’t). Your EG to Warfare questions are fair game, though!

19 Things You Might Not Have Known About Star Wars

You see these kinds of things crop up every now and again, but generally you already know a lot of these little factoids that they present. For instance, most of the time you see something like ‘Warwick Davis was a last minute casting change for Wicket the Ewok.’ This list actually does have some things I didn’t know, some I did, some of which are my favorite SW facts.

Image and more after the break

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Trope Tuesday: Buffy Speak

I need to go put the sharp pointy thing in the thing with the sharp pointy fangs now.

Introducing Trope Tuesday!

What’s Trope Tuesday? It’s a weekly sojourn into the land of fiction and literature to learn more about the devices and themes that resonates with its audience.*

*It’s a thinly veiled excuse for me to destroy your productivity by linking you to that great time-sink in the cloud: TV Tropes.

Every Tuesday we’ll feature one new trope. This week we’re highlighting one of my favorites: Buffy Speak

Buffy Speak is that thing where they say that a guy is saying things too fast, or can’t figure out what the thing they want to say is, or doesn’t have enough learning and stuff to say what the thing they mean is.

A thing you see a lot with this is when they don’t know the right words and stuff, so sometimes you see noun and verb things combined like in “shooty-gun thing”, and stuff that goes in a cycle thing in frustration: “That idea went over like… like… like a thing that doesn’t go over very well.” That thing where you go on and on and forget the stuff you were trying to say comes up a lot. Sometimes it uses that verb-noun-ing dealie thing, and sometimes that name thing where it’s like, descriptive, but not really their name, because you don’t really know their name? Or are trying to make a point? I dunno, just click on the link.

The Trope Namer is, obviously, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Ever find yourself doing this when trying to explain Star Wars to someone who hasn’t seen it? “No, no. You see Hyperspace is this wibbly-wobbly … thing … that lets other things go from one place to another place all quick like. You know. Like a thing that goes really fast.”

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get back to surfing … that thing. With all the links. And pictures of cats.