Interview: Jon Klassen

Posted on June 17, 2016 by Shoshana

This past April I attended the first Alaska Robotics Mini-Con and had the opportunity to interview award-winning children’s book author and illustrator Jon Klassen, creator of I Want My Hat Back and This is Not My Hat and illustrator of Lemony Snickett’s The Dark, among many others. Listen to us talk about his time working in animation, visual storytelling, turtles, hats, and Star Wars as a series of moments!

Jon Klassen’s art can be seen at his website here and he can be found on twitter as @burstofbeaden. You can e-mail him at info@jonklassen.com. His upcoming book, We Found A Hat, in which two turtles in a desert find one hat, will be available this October and his other books are available now, wherever fine books are sold.

Interview: Raina Telgemeier

Posted on June 17, 2016 by Shoshana

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I got the chance to record a quick interview with Raina Telgemeier, Eisner award-winning creator of the all-ages graphic novels Smile, Sisters, and Drama, as well as the the Babysitters Club graphic novel adaptations, at the Alaska Robotics Mini-Con in Juneau this April. Listen to us discuss webcomics, birds, and the wonderfulness of Rey.

You can find Raina Telgemeier at her website here and on twitter as @goraina. Her next graphic novel, Ghosts, will be available for purchase September 13 wherever fine books are sold.

Interview: Pat Race

Posted on June 17, 2016 by Shoshana

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When I was at the Alaska Robotics Mini-Con this past April I got the chance to sit down and interview Pat Race, the organizer of the con and one of the people behind Alaska Robotics (note: there are no robots are involved in Alaska Robotics. OR ARE THERE???). Listen to us discuss Alaska, conventions, robots, Alaskan conventions as robots, the feeling of neglect that comes with not being from the Core Worl–er, the largest community in the area, the Alaska Robotics artist camp, Kowakian monkey-lizards, and more!

You can find Pat Race at the Alaska Robotics website or on twitter as @alaskarobotics.

Baltimore Comic Con 2015: Interview with Mark Waid

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Bria

Given what a fan I am of Mark Waid’s Marvel work, briefly chatting with him about his work on the Princess Leia series was one of the highlights of my Baltimore Comic Con this year. I loved the heck out of those five issues and was excited to have the chance to ask him all the questions the book left me with and to talk Star Wars in general. And hey! It’s not every day that you get to interview someone who just won the Harvey for Best Writer the night before.

Bria: The first question we always ask everyone is how did you become a Star Wars fan?

Mark Waid: I’m old enough to say I was there on opening day. I was there… all right, I have a story. This is a horrible, horrible story that makes me look like an idiot. So… it’s not true. I was not there on opening day. My friends and I got together that weekend and there were six or seven of us and we were having the same argument that you always have when you get six or seven people together on a Saturday night in a car with no direction. They go “Okay, we need to see a movie.” Okay, well there’s a couple of movies opening up this weekend. What do we see? Everyone wanted to see this one movie and I fought really hard to see this other movie because I said, “Look, this is going to be amazing. It’s going to be awesome. It’s going to change your life.” So because I fought for it, we went to see… You Light Up My Life. And I never lived it down. The next weekend, we all saw Star Wars and they were all like, “You idiot! What is wrong with you?” Then that was it. Like everyone else, I saw it a dozen times that summer and it was amazing.

Which is your favorite film?

The second one by far. It just… to manage to take all the stuff that made the first one cool and then add some gravitas was really awesome.

Favorite character? (I know that’s a hard one.)

It is a hard one! I really do think it is Leia.

Mine too! So did you pitch Marvel to do Star Wars? From what I hear, everyone and their mother were calling the editors and saying “I really want to write it!” or did they come to you?

They actually came to me and they said, “We want a Princess Leia series. Are you interested?” While I love the character, I didn’t have a story. I didn’t know where we wanted to go with it and I was on the verge of saying, “Look I appreciate this but this is not for me.” And then I started thinking about… if you let me do it the day after A New Hope ends; if you let me do it the day after and you get a chance to really delve into what it’s like for her to have lost everything? Then I’m in and they totally bought that. That’s really where it stood; the idea that in first movie, there’s no time for it to sink in for her. Continue reading →

Tosche Station Radio #122: Dark Disciple with Christie Golden

Posted on July 15, 2015 by admin

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This week on Tosche Station Radio, we’re joined by author Christie Golden to discuss Dark Disciple, Star Wars, and even a bit of Warcraft!

The discussion will contain spoilers, so if you haven’t finished Dark Disciple, proceed at your own risk!

Tosche Station Radio is the official podcast of Tosche-Station.net and a part of Majestic Giraffe Productions. If you like what you hear, please leave a review on the iTunes Music Store. We can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Nanci and Brian are the co-founders and writers of Tosche-Station.net. You can find Nanci on Twitter with the handle @Nancipants and you can find Brian with @LaneWinree.

This podcast has been brought to you in part by Her Universe and Audible.com.

Celebration Anaheim: Interview with Jason Fry

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Nanci

During the first day of Celebration Anaheim, Brian and I were fortunate enough to run into author Jason Fry and he graciously allowed us to shove a microphone in his face. Unfortunately the recording quality was too poor to upload as its own podcast, but you can read a transcription of the interview under the cut. We chatted about Servants of the Empire and writing in the Star Wars universe, his original Jupiter Pirates series, and, of course, the new The Force Awakens teaser.

Note: This interview contains spoilers for the Servants of the Empire series.

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Tosche Station Radio at Celebration: Interview with Ashley Eckstein

Posted on April 17, 2015 by admin

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We were fortunate to be able to sit down with Ashley Eckstein at Celebration Day One! This interview contains questions from multiple blog/podcast outlets discussing The Clone Wars, Rebels, and Her Universe.

Tosche Station Radio #95: A New Dawn with John Jackson Miller

Posted on October 17, 2014 by admin

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On this all-new Tosche Station Radio, author John Jackson Miller joins us to discuss A New Dawn!

Kicking off the show, the hosts highlight what’s New on the Blog. Welcome Ryorin, our new staff writer. She’ll be handling news and occasional columns. She wrote about some possible directions for diversity in the Sequel Trilogy. We hope to have her on the podcast sometime soon! Bria wrote about what Sabine Wren means for Star Wars. There’s loose ends in the old Expanded Universe, so we’re Lighting the Legends Fanfiction Signal. Nanci started her Thrawn Trilogy retrospective. Bria pleaded for everyone to stop being mean to Del Rey. We roundtable reviewed of Spark of Rebellion. Bria also reviewed Droids in Distress. Nanci wrote about why Wedge Antilles needs to be in Rebels.

In Fixer’s Flash, Nanci’s been keeping busy re-reading Heir to the Empire and is about to crack open Tarkin.

Deak’s Dirt starts with Random House releasing a 50 page excerpt of Tarkin. They also revealed the full blurb for Heir to the Jedi. The Ventress/Vos novel gets a title, Dark Disciple. It’ll be released in July 2015. Clone Wars story reels- Crystal Crisis on Utapau, online now. The Lost Missions DVD/Blu Ray will be released on November 11. Rebels gets an order for a second season. Also lots of new clips, including one featuring Hera and Sabine. ABC will air Spark of Rebellion on October 26, featuring a new Vader scene. The Star Wars: Battle Pod arcade game was unveiled at NYCC. Not a lot of other news out of NYCC, but a big comic announcement: Kanan by Greg Weisman

This week on Camie’s Concerns, author John Jackson Miller comes on to discuss A New Dawn. There are major spoilers in this discussion, so if you have not read the book yet, come back to this episode later! You can find John Jackson Miller at Faraway Press and on Twitter at @jjmfaraway.

Wrapping up the show, the hosts discuss news that Warwick Davis will be appearing in Episode VII.

Nanci and Brian are the co-founders and writers of Tosche-Station.net. You can find Nanci on Twitter with the handle @Nancipants and you can find Brian with @LaneWinree.

This podcast has been brought to you in part by Her Universe and Audible.com.

Tosche Station Radio interviewing author Jason Fry this Wednesday

Posted on June 3, 2013 by admin

So what are you up to Wednesday? Nothing? Great! This Wednesday at 5PM PDT, we’ll be interviewing Essential Atlas and Essential Guide to Warfare author Jason Fry on the podcast.

As always, we’ll be livestreaming the recording so you’ll be able to listen in and join the livestream chat. In addition, if you have questions for Fry, you can tweet them to us, leave us a message on Facebook, or just leave a comment on this post. We’ll compile them and ask them during the course of the interview.

Timothy Zahn Talks ‘Scoundrels’ and Episode VII with Hollywood.com

Posted on December 18, 2012 by admin

Hollywood.com put up a great interview with Expanded Universe author Timothy Zahn today as part of the promotional blitz for his upcoming novel Scoundrels. One question posed to Zahn was how best to deal with the daunting size of the EU and what authors and editors can do to address that problem:

HW: It’s a departure for you as well, because it feels more like a one-off, standalone adventure. It doesn’t feature some of the characters that recur in your work like Thrawn or Mara Jade.
TZ: Actually, that was part of the goal with this. Shelly Shapiro, the Del Rey editor, and Sue Rostoni, who was handling these things for Lucas Licensing at the time, were looking for a story that could appeal to Star Wars fans who weren’t necessarily Star Wars readers. There are 150+ Star Wars novels out there and for someone who isn’t already familiar with them the whole thing can look a little intimidating. So my goal was to do a story that could draw in fans who don’t know anything about the Expanded Universe. What kind of story could do that? That story is Scoundrels. If you’ve seen the Original Trilogy, you’re good to go.

And of course, what are Zahn’s thoughts on Episode VII?

HW: What do you, as a Star Wars fan par excellence, want to see from the new trilogy?
TZ: You got a couple of hours here? First of all, I think they need to skip a generation and have either Luke, Han, and Leia’s kids, or even grandkids, and have the Original Trilogy characters be the older, wiser mentor types. But one of the things I’d really like to see, and this would fit very nicely with Disney, as far as I can remember we’ve never seen a really good family relationship in Star Wars. We’ve had neurotic relationships and even outright antagonism with Luke and Vader. But I’d like to see Luke and his son or grandson have a true bond, a functional family relationship. And of course I want a really good storyline and space battles. I’d like to see something different than a Skywalker turning to the Dark Side. The Star Wars universe is so rich with storytelling possibilities that you don’t need to repeat the “turning to the Dark Side” concept of the previous films. I don’t want to see the same stuff over and over.

There’s other great questions and answers in there as well tackling everything from continuity to whether or not major characters should die in future books and movies. For more, head to the link above and read the three-page interview.