I haven't written a blog in a long time for one reason: Indiana Jones. We've been hard at it, preparing several titles for the launch of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on May 22. I've only just been able to come up for air (and now Clone Wars is going strong; yikes).

First up, at least from my perspective, is DK's Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide by Jim Luceno with a foreword by Shia LaBeouf. As far as I know this is the first book to cover ALL of Jones's adventures, from Young Indy to the movies, to the comic books and novels-and even throws in some pretty cool maps and temple interiors, as only DK can. Also on the horizon is a dense and clever Lost Journal of Indiana Jones-his writings, mementos, tickets, personal diagrams and sketches, thoughts on his adventures, and so on, from his early life with dad and dog (Indiana) up to the films (created by the braintrust at Becker and Mayer).

Also coming down the pike are adult and jr novels-and The Complete Making of Indiana Jones. This is a book unlike any we've ever done before as it's three parts archival-Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, and Last Crusade-and one big part live making-of: Crystal Skull. It was such a huge undertaking that while I wrote it, Laurent Bouzereau (who wrote many years ago Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays) did many key interviews: Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchett, key department heads, et al. So I was able to spend hours and hours and hours in our several archives, uncovering never-before-seen images, storyboards, notes, and even marketing material mockups (which are strangely interesting). The result is 300 pages, roughly 100,000 words, and several hundred images (must be close to 600 or 700), which were painstakingly laid out.

p.s. Looking back on previous blogs I see I previewed Star Wars: A Popup Guide to the Galaxy by Matthew Reinhart-well, it's out and hit #1 on the NY Times bestseller list-and has stayed on the list for something like 17 weeks! I'm also still working with George Lucas on his still-unannounced book; we met last week-and all systems are go! Only one more meeting. We should be able to give out more details in the months to come...