How did your career in comics begin?
I’ve written my own stories and comics as long as I’ve been collecting comics, which takes me back to age six. Where my friends’ parents often threw their old comics away, my mother was a grade school librarian: she encouraged me to put my comics in order!

I continued to create my own fanzines and minicomics as I got older and my parents got a copy machine — and later on I went on to be editor of both my high school and college newspapers. That led to a move from Tennessee to Wisconsin in 1993 to edit the trade magazine of the comics industry for Krause Publications, which used to be headquartered in Iola.

After about a decade of that, I submitted my first comics story to Marvel, which ran it — and then hired me to write Iron Man for a year. That led me to approach the company that was publishing Star Wars comics at the time — and that began a long association that’s included everything from comics series to role-playing games to novels, like my New York Times bestseller, Star Wars: Kenobi. I’ve continued working in that sandbox and also for many other franchises.

What are you currently working on?
I can’t announce what projects I’m on now yet, but I can say what I have out this year. First, the big novel of the summer for me is Star Trek: Discovery – The Enterprise War, which releases on July 30 from Gallery Books. This tells the story of what Captain Pike and Lieutenant Spock and the U.S.S. Enterprise were doing during the first season of the Discovery TV show. They may have missed the Klingon War, but that’s because they were busy with a war of their own!

Also out this summer is Lion King: Wild Schemes and Catastrophes, an original graphic novel from Disney and Dark Horse Comics. It’s a new story tying in with the new version of the movie that’s out in theaters this month. It’s one of a number of kids’ comics I’ve done lately; Dumbo: Friends in High Places is another movie-inspired graphic novel that came out this spring, and this fall IDW releases Star Wars Adventures: Pomp and Circumstance, which features the first Star Wars story I’ve written that’s just for kids. And my Classic Battlestar Galactica comics series gets collected into a trade paperback edition later this fall as well.

Do you have a favorite project?
It’s impossible to name any one favorite. Certainly, my years on the Knights of the Old Republic comics series for Star Wars were very special, and I often hear from people who are fans of the Kenobi novel and my Star Trek: Prey trilogy. But I like some of the smaller stories, too: my novella in the Star Wars: Canto Bight book and my short story in the Planet of the Apes: Tales from the Forbidden Zone anthology are among the ones I’m very fond of.

People can find out more about my work at farawaypress.com and on Twitter at twitter.com/jjmfaraway.