You'll be seeing the BLOOD OATH cover very soon.

The best bit of that novel concept, in my opinion, was the idea of parallel quests, which made it into Millennium Falcon instead. All is good.

Sue, a question regarding the lack of possibility of a Whills novel, is that because there's no intention at the moment of doing one, or because it, like yoda's background is off limits for the time being?

Secondly, will we be seeing Outcast or other cover art soon?

Any Darth Plagueis novel would have to address whether or not Anakin was conceived with the help of the Sith, and which one was able to manipulate the midichlorians to that degree. That by itself is (I believe) better left ambiguous. There's a lot about the whole business that's better left a mystery.

Again, though, missing the point. It could have featured Jar Jar (okay, maybe not). It was the +concept +that I found fascinating, not the character.

With regard to Karen Traviss' "Order 66." Traviss has apparently said in the past that Lucasfilm gave the thumbs up to her basically rewriting the Fenn Shysa and Mandalorian backstory for the time right around Revenge of the Sith, which had already been established by "The History of the Mandalorians" by Abel Pena.

When she placed Order 66 on Day 1089 after Geonosis, was this another instance where she was allowed to overwrite previous continuity information?

I ask because 1089 days / 3 years would mean a 363 day year, rather than 368, if ROTS is 3 years after AOTC (roughly). We have seen dates for AOTC and ROTS in HoloNet News and on Leland Chee's blog, which put AOTC around 13:5:16 - 13:5:21 and ROTS at 16:5:23. Not to get all technical, but the best case scenario there would leave Traviss' "Day 1,089" mark at least two weeks earlier than it would need to be to match those previous numbers.

Was she allowed to essentially rewrite the date for when ROTS takes place?

(Posting to the Clone Wars continuity thread as well, as I'm not sure where it's most appropriate.)

With regard to the Plagueis novel and "outrageous stupidity . . . "

Isn't there something to be said for leaving some mystery, some stone left unturned? We have stories for what seems like every minor character seen (and not named) in the Classic Trilogy, it seems. We have detailed life histories of most of the major and semi-major characters at this point, and few characters since the Bantam days have been one-novel wonders. Most continue to add to the growing sprawl of the saga. (Uhm, except Lt. Pallin from my "Equals and Opposites." Bring back Pallin! heh)

Frankly, I never found the Plagueis concept all that interesting. I felt that it was more likely to spoil some of the sinister atmosphere behind Palpatine. How many great villains in fiction have been eventually turned into watered down quasi-baddies by far too much exposition on their backstory? Oddly enough, I think the decision was probably a good one. Granted, it would've been less jarring if we hadn't been told there'd be a Plagueis novel, then had it disappear on us, but if we held to that standard, then we should be calling Lucas "outrageously stupid" for giving interviews that spoke of sagas of twelve then nine then six films.

Regarding the "Journal of the Whills" novel that's not possible: I'm assuming this is again because there are no details about such a thing, and the decision has been to allow this particular Holy Grail to remain a mystery. Is that correct?

The closest we got to that was cancelled due to outrageous stupidity.

Wow. I never realized my co-workers and I are outrageously stupid.

The closest we got to that was cancelled due to outrageous stupidity. James Luceno had a brilliant idea of a parallel quest for immortality sought for by Plagueis and Qui-Gon Jinn. They would each find their own answer, though obviously different and opposite in nature. We could have had a truly original and interesting work.

Instead, we have countless books about (gasp!) another Jedi going to the Dark Side.

Thanks a lot, Del Rey.

Especially since it happens to be an amazingly good 'opus'
I like that word, thanks!
Any new news on covers of upcoming novels that might be released soon?