Editor’s Note: Long-time readers of this blog will be familiar with Pablo Hidalgo, who spent several years as the Managing Editor of StarWars.com, is an ongoing contributor to Star Wars Insider, and is also one of Lucasfilm’s most authoritative experts on all things Star Wars. In addition, Pablo is the author of several Star Wars books and guides, the next of which – The Essential Reader’s Companion: Star Wars – is due out this October. And now, despite his best efforts to escape the internet’s gravitational pull, he’s back here, blogging. Read on for his thoughts on how that happened, and for details on what you can expect from his posts.

Here We Go Again…

More than 12 years ago in a prairie province far, far away….

I applied for a job at Lucasfilm and got it. There aren’t that many jobs in the world where being a Star Wars expert results in a reliable paycheck, but I was fortunate enough to land one of them. Back in 2000, I moved from Canada to California to start at LFL. It quickly became evident that what my business card said (“Internet Content Developer”) wouldn’t even begin to cover some of the things I ended up doing.

I’ve moved around in that time. My business cards now say “Brand Communication Manager,” which is a suitably opaque title for someone like me who prefers to dodge the question “so what do you do?” But, since I’m now on the spot, it’s basically this: it’s my job to know Star Wars (and Indy, and Willow, and everything else LFL), and to communicate that knowledge to those that need it.

My day is filled with answering a wide variety of questions, sorting out misconceptions, making recommendations and getting to the bottom of all sorts of odd Star Wars mysteries. I write text that I forget about until it surfaces on the side of a Happy Meal cup, in a press release, or on the back of a DVD package. I grouse if someone spells Wookiee, C-3PO, Millennium Falcon or Stormtrooper wrong (yeah, turns out it’s capitalized. Well, this week anyway). This year, I’ve been one of the editors that helps shape and review each issue of Star Wars Insider magazine. My nights are often filled with writing Star Wars books (including this year’s doozy, The Essential Reader’s Companion coming out in October from Del Rey).

This, they tell me, is resumé enough to land a slot among StarWars.com’s new roster of bloggers. Writing for the site now brings me back to where I started with the company. This blog will likely become an outlet for some of the stories I’ve gathered from the years of being a Star Wars scholar, and I hope to keep you up to date on some of what Star Wars Insider has cooking, as well as talk about book projects I’m involved in. This summer, I’ll be stage-hosting and running panels at San Diego Comic-Con and Celebration VI, so expect posts about that.

Much like a certain archaeologist, I’ll be making this up as I go along. If you have any preferences to what you’d want to read here, let me know. And, check back tomorrow for a hint of things to come at Comic-Con this weekend, where I’ll be hosting several Star Wars panels.

Tags: Authors, Contributors

This entry was posted on July 11, 2012 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Books and Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.