The Return of Third Age Posts!

"The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. It failed. But, in the Year of the Shadow War, it became something greater: our last, best hope... for victory. The year is 2260. The place: Babylon 5." -- Susan Ivanova

Well - THAT break was longer than I ever wanted it to be! "Third Age Thursday" was supposed to be a weekly post about Babylon 5, and particularly about the progress being made on Dreams Given Form, the companion guide to the show I'm co-authoring with Ensley F. Guffey. We tag-teamed on Wanna Cook?, a similar guide to Breaking Bad which was released in 2014 (available at fine booksellers everywhere!) and enjoyed the experience enough to look around for another project that would let us work together and settled on this one. And all was wonderful.

Until . . .

I won't say the Shadows ambushed us, but I had a health scare that put the entire project back a year while I recovered and poor Ensley did his best to soldier on until I could take up my share of the load. But we're both back and in fine fighting form!

In fact, we just turned in the draft manuscript for Season 3. (Wow - I just love that season!) Seasons 1 and 2 have already had their first turn through the Great Machine of Editing, so we're back on schedule. Well, we're back on our new schedule, at any rate. ECW Press (our publisher) has been exceptionally kind to us and we're looking forward to moving forward with this sizable project.

Keep in mind Dreams Given Form isn't limited to the five seasons of Babylon 5. No, sirree! We're covering that, sure, but we're also providing material on the official novels, movies, comics, and other canonical sources. It's a big project and one of our biggest challenges is figuring out how to do the universe of Babylon 5 justice without the book becoming a multi-volume set.

At any rate, today is a rare day off from watching, annotating, drafting, and screaming (that often accompanies the drafting stage for me) but I'm back at it tomorrow and I realized that I hadn't posted about the project in far - FAR - too long.

We're here. We're fans. And we're writing!

<*>

Walter White Wednesday 110

Well, Breaking Bad did just fine with last week's Emmy nominations and is in the running for thirteen of the golden girls. In addition to seven nominations in more technical categories (such as sound editing and makeup), Bryan Cranston (who's having an amazing year!), Anna Gunn, and Aaron Paul are all nominated in the acting categories, the show is in the Outstanding Drama category, Moira Walley-Beckett is nominated for Outstanding Writing for the absolutely blow-your-socks-off episode "Ozymandias," and Vince Gilligan his own bad self is nominated for Outstanding Directing for the final episode "Felina."  A special shout-out to Michael Slovis, who is nominated in the Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series category for the episode "Granite State" - Mr. Slovis kindly agreed to be interviewed for Wanna Cook? and we were so pleased with how that interview turned out - it's a gem in the book, seriously.  (That's him checking light levels for the episode "Peekaboo" [2.06] at the top of the post, by the way.)

Ensley mentioned the upcoming book signing over on his blog (you read both of our blogs, right?), so I'll just briefly remind you - we'll be at the Gastonia, NC location of Books-A-Million on Saturday, July 26 beginning at 2 pm (that's a change from the original 5 pm start time, so make a note!) to discuss Breaking Bad, sign copies of Wanna Cook? and generally pontificate and speculate on all things Gilligan-related. The store is located at 3710 East Franklin Blvd. in Gastonia and you can call them at (704) 824-0221 for more information - hope to see you there!

In other exciting news, a group of dedicated BrBa fans decided that Duke City needed its own convention to celebrate Breaking Bad and they're making it happen!  On November 8, the Albuquerque Convention Center will be home to the first annual Breaking Bad Fest and it's looking sweet!  While we won't be able to attend this year, we certainly hope you will if you're nearby.  Check out their site here, buy tickets here, and remember that you can also follow the latest con news on Twitter or Facebook.