Well almost. While we're still noodling a few pages and the cover, I've just about finished work on the Making of Star Wars book. And, no, there's never been a making of Star Wars book before. We're talking about the first or "original" film--the 1977 Star Wars. There have been dozens if not hundreds of magazine articles, a few documentaries, and several books that have pretended to chronicle its creation, but Lucasfilm has never published a making of book about the original movie.

They were going to. Many many interviews were conducted--the details of which will be revealed later by starwars.com--with George Lucas, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Gary Kurtz, John Barry, Dennis Muren, John Dykstra, and lots of others--but the book was never completed. It was never even started. And that may be a good thing in so far as making of books circa 1977 were paperback knockoffs, generally, with a few black and white photos. The marketplace in 2007 for books on film is completely different, and, fortunately, very competitive--which means the publisher, Del Rey, is sparing nothing in producing a 300-plus page book with over 500 color images and a 150,000 word manuscript (courtesy of myself). That's more than many novels.

So now the book, I feel (none too objectively), really tells the story of how George Lucas and company made a film that no studio wanted made. And that story is amply complemented by a host of never-before-seen photos. It comes out in April 2007 just in time for Celebration IV.

Let's see...what else is happening bookwise: Ryder Windham is hard at work on two books for us; we've wrapped up work on the Complete Cross-Section book from DK, which has a few new vehicles in it. I've been working with George Lucas on a book he wants to see, which is coming along nicely and is always an adventure. There's also a very good scrapbook in the works as well as an amazing pop-up book. Yes, I said pop-up.

That's about it for my titles. More in March, I'm guessing.