My apologies if this has been linked in here already. As a non-Lucas Star Wars fan and huge Zahn nerd, my very first thought when they made the announcement was "They have to get Bryce Dallas Howard to play Mara". ;-)

Most of us (and the rest of fandom) have been wondering what this means for the suddenly announced future films, the theatrical originals, why Lucas did this, etc, etc, and rightly so.

That said; I had to laugh when I logged on to Facebook yesterday and there was a post by Zahn saying Disney hasn't contacted him about the Thrawn Trilogy, but he would hop on a plane immediately if they wanted to talk. Said he'd charter one personally if he had to. ;-)

Nice to know I'm not the only one who would love to see EU, non-Lucas Star Wars. This goes back to what Alex and I touched on several pages back. Some people see this as a bad thing, some see it as a good thing. Either way, one thing is certain. Star Wars the entity just got a whole lot more interesting.