S. Lee Benedict's Blog

It probably comes as no shock to most people who might read this blog that I’m a massive Star Wars fan. A New Hope is the film responsible for turning me into a cinephile to begin with. As a five-year-old, watching it in the theater with my father back in 1977, it blew me away. Star Wars and George Lucas are partly responsible for me wanting to be a storyteller. So I was pretty excited to learn, with the transition of Lucasfilm to Disney control, more Star Wars films would be forthcoming, st...

I’m happy to announce the release of my new book, The Undead Realm, Book 2 of The Rhapp’s Barren Triptych. For a very limited time, the Kindle version of the new book is $0.99 on Amazon. Not only that, Book 1, The Heart Thief, will be $0.99 for a whole week. Two books for less than $2. That’s a pretty good deal. To celebrate this announcement, I thought I’d write a post about who I’d cast if The Rhapp’s Barren Triptych was turned into a movie today. Of course, that’s never going to happen, b...

The time has come. With the approaching release of Book 2 of The Rhapp’s Barren Triptych (somewhere around the end of the month), I wanted to reveal the book’s cover. Check it out after the jump.

Without further ado, here it is:

I really dig this cover and think it will attract positive attention to the series. What do you think?

So, what’s the book about? Take a look at the current draft of the product description (more or less a work in progress) below. WARNING: the description may be sli...

I have some exciting news! My YA urban fantasy novel, The Heart Thief, is now available in audiobook form. And what’s even more exciting is that I’m giving away two copies for FREE. Just use the Rafflecopter entry form below to enter. If for some reason you’re not seeing the entry widget, click on the link and enter there.

DISCLAIMER: The redemption codes for the free audiobook are unfortunately only available to users of the U.S. site. Sorry for any inconvenience. Not my doing; that’s just...

When I watch a movie (or read a book), I generally try to find something I liked about it, even if it wasn’t all that great overall. There are tons of movies, broadly panned by critics and the public, that I’m still able to get a lot of enjoyment out of. The Star Wars prequels are an obvious example that comes to mind. Despite some of the problems in those movies, I still like watching them and have come to have no problem (for the most part) with them as part of the overall Star Wars canon....

I’ve had the pleasure, in my life, of being surrounded by wonderful musicians. Instrumentalists, vocalists, songwriters—I’ve known a bunch. One of my very best friends is an electronic music genius who goes by the name Travelogue. Another good friend of mine and former roommate is singer/songwriter Tyrone Wells. He’s amazingly talented. And that’s just a couple of examples. When I think of the people I know who make amazing music just in their spare time (I’m looking at you, Erick), it boggl...

Oh, how I wish I could be at San Diego Comic-Con. This year more than ever. Why? Because this is the first year we’ll see a new Star Wars movie since 2008. One of the coolest things to come out of the Star Wars panel yesterday at SDCC was this behind-the-scenes video from The Force Awakens. So, I thought I’d write a blog post, pulling out some of the things I found most interesting in the video, things that just mightreveal some of what we couldbe seeing in the upcoming film. If anyone had do...

I know I haven’t posted here in over a month, and that’s because I’m feverishly working on revising my next book so I can get it into my beta readers’ hands very, very soon. But I decided to take a break from that to bust out a quick post about writing. A post about writing! How about that? I was thinking today about popular conventions in teen fiction and how my YA urban fantasy series, The Rhapp’s Barren Triptych, pretty much breaks many of those conventions. What can I say, I’m a rule bre...

I tend to get attached to shows I really like. Sometimes I get really, really attached and think I would be happy if the show never, ever ended. But that’s not realistic. All things come to an end, especially the good things. Yesterday, Yahoo! Screen aired the final episode in the sixth season of Community, and it was very likely the series finale. And it was brilliant.

The show’s future is up in the air. Fans have rallied behind the beleaguered property for years, pushing NBC to keep it goi...

When Disney bought Lucasfilm, some people started talking about how Princess Leia was now technically a Disney princess. There was evena barely amusing video where the other princesses welcome Leia to the family. Back around that time, there was also some speculation about whether that meant Star Wars characters might make appearances in ABC’s alt-Disney universe adventure show, Once Upon a Time. I think most people just brushed this talk off as non-serious speculation. After all, how could...