Fun Day Sunday – Yoda, Space Travel and X-wings

This Sunday started out as a beautiful morning and ended just as fine. I have a few things I wanted to share before the week kicks into high gear.

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After a couple weeks of practicing my “do or do not” Yoda-technique on Ganner the horse, our Master-Padawan relationship seems to have hit its stride. For a horse that can often be nervous experiencing new trails, we had a nice confident trailride and at every potential obstacle I was able to draw upon the mental image of a little green alien Jedi Master. Yoda’s confidence and wisdom is of course fictional, but who can argue with the notion that it’s something tangible we all wish to see in our mentors and peers.

However we achieve confidence, even if it’s from a story such as Star Wars, that’s a good thing.

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In the afternoon, I got to join a friend for lunch to discuss the first act of my manuscript, which she enjoyed, and then we headed over to the theater to see Thor. Loved it; I definitely recommend it. For the fangirls, there is a hero’s journey and a love story. (Not to mention some great eye-candy with Chris Hemsworth.) All I’m saying is that they should let more Shakespearian actors direct comic book movies. And holy cow, based on all the previews, we scifi and fantasy fans have a lot to look forward to!

• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
• Super 8
• Green Lantern
• X-Men: First Class
• Captain America

I promise a review of Thor soon. If you haven’t seen it yet, I hope to convince you that you should, and not just because Queen Amid– I mean Natalie Portman is in it.

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While waiting for the movie to start I happened to check Twitter and see Michael Stackpole’s blog post today. Hidden in the middle of a very interesting discussion of the upcoming war in the publishing industry was this interesting mention of Star Wars –

So, in the eyes of some folks within publishing, I’m a house slave gone feral, a back-biting ingrate who is bitter because Random House hasn’t tapped him for a Star Wars® novel in over a decade, and because they dropped him from their non-media publishing program after The New World came out.

Stackpole is a pretty slick guy where wordsmithing is concerned. Notice how he uses point of view even in the blog, phrasing the comment as the impressions of some rather than an omniscient truth. So it’s unclear if he’s meaning to imply that someone on the Star Wars books side has kept him off the novel-writing roster, or if his own personal decisions have kept him from the team. It’s kind of sad, though, because either way it’s the fans who end up on the losing end of the standoff. Considering the state of Star Wars books, it’s remarkable to note that Del Rey didn’t bring another author into the stable to pen a new X-wing book when they are by far some of the fan-favorites. I’ve got a whole lot more to say on the Star Wars EU stable of authors and choices of stories, but I’ll save that for another day.

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With Sunday drawing to a close I’m excited for another big day. I’m driving to Cape Canaveral in the morning to see the Space Shuttle Endeavor take her last flight into outer space. My summer intern job in college included work on behalf of the Space Shuttle program; it was an ideal introduction for a young, enthusiastic engineer, even if I didn’t get to do any actual engineering. Simply being part of the process can inspire dreams.

For coverage of the shuttle launch, which at this time is scheduled for 8:56AM ET, check out the NASA website.

While I’m waiting for the launch, I’ll be writing a new blog about the end of an era, but those thoughts will be posted in a day or two. Tomorrow, as promised I will be offering my own notion of a big event – what it will take to fix the Star Wars EU.