How'd I Get Here? (I'm supposed to journal for ten minutes today.)

 As you might've saw on the other blog (no one reads this.) I'm doing a mental health calendar that work put out this month. Today is journaling. I've never been a big journaler in the traditional sense, I don't really think whatever random stuff I'm thinking or feeling that day is worth writing down and remembering. But, I've been doing these blog every day for almost a year and a half now, so jokes on me, I guess.

Star Wars Classics began as a way to read something a little more relaxing in between the classics I was doing for the other blog. If you've followed along. It is, honestly, not really all that relaxing right now. The 1994-1995 class of  Star Wars novels aren't very good. The Jedi Academy Trilogy is hamfisted, Courtship of Princess Leia is vaguely offensive and nonsensical, Crystal Star is just awkward, and Children of the Jedi will hopefully be on my top 5 worst books for as long as I live.

But I am looking forward to next year, The X-Wing books series are great and Tales of the Bounty Hunters is probably the best of that set. I'm also looking forward to covering some of the video games coming up whenever I get around to doing that update. Dark Forces is fabulous.

I also decided to read the Star Wars novels as part of a larger project to go back to stories (mostly books, but some movies, comics, etc.) that I enjoyed when I was younger. After picking up 1.5 English degrees, I'm kind of burnt out on reading whatever crap that I hated was assigned. You hear a lot about English majors who don't read anything for a decade after graduating, or creative writing majors who never pick up a pen again after their degree. I never got quite that bad, but I definitely needed a detox afterwards. Or a retox, as I'm sure most of the people I was in college with would probably call it, since it'd involve reading anything older than 5 minutes that wasn't assigned.

I'm sure I'll wind up telling this story next month, or whenever I get around to X-Wing, but it's weird to look at how entwined those books (and Michael Stackpole) are with my journal as a writer.

Picture it: Pennsylvania, 1994. The... ummm... let's just say real mixed bag! Battletech cartoon came out. Little 5 year old ClassicsGuy loved it. And, the next year, my dad comes back by the car one night (I think from Barnes & Noble of all places) with a copy of Mechwarrior 2. Without a doubt, the game I sank the most hours into as a kid. And, as one did back in 1995 or so, I had to go get the strategy guide. This was back in the glory days of weird strategy guides. You'd get a big door stopper of a book with strategies (duh), but also interviews with the developers, and background information. At that time, the Battletech universe was sitting on something like three dozen novels, and the author (Joe Grant Bell) included some commentary on how he'd read some of them as research to write the guide. In particular, he called out Stackpole's Warrior Trilogy as some of his favorites (he's right, they're great! If I ever finish all the Star Wars classics I'd totally reread all Battletech Classics next).

That piece of information rattled around in my brain for however long, until I was at... probably Borders (the sticker is probably still on the book on my shelf, but I'm not home right now) and I decided to look at the Star Wars books. And what do I find but, The Krytos Trap, vague memories of dad getting the audio book for us to listen to on a road trip one time roll back into my head. Yeah, that book was pretty good. And there's a whole series of them, written by that Michael Stackpole guy! Perfect!

They're really good. I don't know how many times I rearead those dog eared old copies. My parents bought the same books again on audio book for me for Christmas. And, years later, I did track down the Warrior Trilogy, and a ton of other Battletech books (thanks, library book sale!) 

I've read however many books over the years (mostly sci-fi and fantasy), but that's my zone. Battletech, X-Wing (and Animorphs). That's how I got here today. That's why I'm a writer. (Wedge Antilles would be a great Animorph.)