The Diamond shipping chart says this is the week for not one, not two, but three Star Wars comics — including Knights of the Old Republic #27, the third part of "Vector." Notes on the issue to come — after I recover a bit from New York. Well, maybe more than a bit!

4/28 Update: And now the notes are online. Enjoy!

Just back in from New York Comicon, and all I can say is — well, exactly nothing, because I lost my voice on the first day of the show and it never realy came back. I went from a sort of Sally Kellerman rasp to a Lionel Stander croak (Max from Hart to Hart) to nothing at all.

Not the sort of thing that makes it particularly easy to call a taxi, although I did meet one of the more interesting taxi drivers while heading to Times Square. Instead of simply swearing at the workmen in the road, he'd give them a personality review worthy of Babu from Seinfeld. "You are a very bad flag man! A bad flag man and a very bad human being!" I also got out to he touristy ESPN Zone, where I couldn't have heard myself speak anyway during the hockey game. Something about that experience suggested that New Yorkers may not exactly like Bostonians much, sportswise...

And film ads for Indiana Jones and Iron Man were everywhere. A big Indy ad is the first thing I saw on the island, and there were gigantic ads on buildings for Iron Man. Speaking of which, Andy Mangels' new book, Iron Man Beneath the Armor, was out — including a nice section on my time on the series. It's a book worth checking out — follow the link to more info.

I did a signing at the Dark Horse booth with Rob Williams, the writer of Star Wars: Rebellion and the upcoming Indiana Jones mini-series, Tomb of the Gods; that's him on the left and me on the right, below, flanking an Indy fan. (That's Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson in the background left.)

One of the interesting things was the Firaxis booth, where they were showing the new Civilization version for consoles, Revolution. This mural artist worked throughout the show...

Thanks to everyone there, especially Marc Patten, Chris Revekant and the Heroes in Action crew!

OK, it's not really — but evidently the folks at Wookieepedia have Jarael as their Featured Article for the week, and that should count.

Something to add to it — at a con, I had trouble naming a real person who I "hear" when writing her. I don't go in for a lot of the  dream-casting stuff, but I guess Catherine Zeta-Jones is a pretty good fit — and, of course, she did the whole Zorro thing. (Now, the creepy thing is that when I very first started writing Lucien, I was imagining a Michael Douglas voice... fortunately, that changed!)

That didn't take long: The Knights of the Old Republic short story "Labor Pains" is now online at the premium Star Wars Hyperspace service. Members can reach it by clicking the link above: To register, click here. Illustrations by Pablo Hidalgo!

The story takes place approximately 3,963 years before the battle of Yavin, and is set between issues #12 and #13 of the comics series. Or Volumes 2 and 3, if you're counting that way. Enjoy!

I am cleared to report that my first Star Wars prose fiction (if you don't count such prose-ish things as the Knights of the Old Republic Handbook or the KOTOR Campaign Guide for the RPG) will be appearing soon on StarWars.com's subscription service, Hyperspace.

It's a KOTOR story, set in continuity and featuring several of the comics characters in an untold story narrated by The Gryph, in his own... er, unique voice.

I'll post an alert when "Labor Pains" is online!

OK, there's a lot of stuff to talk about here — if I had any sense, I'd parcel it out over multiple blog entries, but these shouldn't wait.

First, solicitations have been released by Dark Horse for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Vol. 4: Daze of Hate, Knights of Suffering and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic #31. Pages are now online here for these as well. I have also fixed the navigation for Vol. 3, so that should now work. and

Second, I have posted to the upper left my tentative show schedule for the next couple of months. You'll see it includes New York Comicon, where Rob Williams and I will be signing together Friday afternoon at 4 at the Dark Horse booth. More details as I have them.

Now, going back in convention time, I have a meager few pix from Midsouthcon. I have to learn to set the camera right — and then to actually use it. I enjoyed the con as ever — and there were highlights including hanging out with Len Wein, this year's comics guest of honor, and with the local Star Wars Fanforce.

Below, a shot of the character-writing panel with me, Lin Workman, Len, and Mike Curtis...

...and then we've got Nicki and Traci, moderators at TheForce.net, wearing their home-brew Zayne/Jarael shirts featuring Zayne and Jarael (images composited from #13, I believe).

Not to say that they favor Jarael, but they said they considered wearing shirts showing a picture of Shel with her face crossed out. Poor Shel...

And then we have Traci in her Jedi guise, crossing sabers with her husband (and my fellow panelist) Qui-Gon Tim!

Thanks again to everyone — always enjoy Midsouthcon!