Wizard! My new interview is now up at Lightsabre!

It's fascinating how different interviewers can bring out different personalities in the interviewee. Earlier this year, I did a marathon chat over at JediNet with so many questions flying at me I felt like a rock star. Mark Newbold, by contrast, brought out a particularly snarky side of me (see below). Cruise over to Lightsabre homepage and click on my mug, or else go directly to the interview. Go ahead and comeback here afterward and feel free to snap off any extra questions about Star Wars, writing, or why those Brits keep misspelling lightsaber.

Here's a peek at the interview:

Tell us something of your career. Where did you begin in writing and what led you to your many varied projects?

I've been writing stories since I was at least five or six; what drove me to, who knows. That's not very unique, of course, but I do know that even at that early age my writing had an atypical gravity: my stories often ended with the hero dying or martyring himself, or the bad guy winning. I attribute this at least in part to the resonance I felt as a kid with Darth Vader's death in Return of the Jedi. I've always been particularly moved by tragedy and irony, themes that skulk around my Star Wars work today, from the grim background I created for General Grievous to the misguided hatred of Boba Fett's daughter, Ailyn Vel, for her father.

Unpredictability is the other driving force behind my writing. Again, that seems like a vacuous thing to say, but what I mean is that when you jump in the Abelmobile and we get where the story's going, you should say, "Oh... we're going here? Holy $#@!" There's a certain satisfaction and also a distinct horror to the rencontre. This feeling becomes more difficult to induce the more you write, obviously, because our brains tend to think in certain patterns. So I try to branch out. The recent "Underworld" projects I co-wrote with Ryan Kaufman for Star Wars Insider and StarWars.com are a good example of expanding my noodle.

What is it like to be a part of the Star Wars phenomenon?

Hard to fathom, really. Here I am watching Star Wars as a kid, awed by the Force, lasers, and aliens, and a few decades later, I'm writing about the Force, lasers, and aliens. It really doesn't register most of the time.

I do think Star Wars is really the modern day myth. I know that if I never do anything else, my Star Wars writing has the best chance of outlasting me.

Read the rest here! ~ Abel G. Peņa

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P.S. Also check out Mark Newbold's Star Wars blog Smugglers Rants and his new (and first) article in Star Wars Insider #90, now on newsstands!

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