Michael Northrop

You just know Vader would work the inside half. Pretty nasty breaking stuff too… (And, all right, yes: All of his outs are Force-outs.)

* This cartoon is meant in good fun (and bad pun). I salute all those dealing with diabetes, just as, in another galaxy, I would salute all jedi knights.

Why you need to readDeath Troopersby Joe Schreiber right now, a mathematical proof:

Star Wars + (zombies) x (writing like this: “jammed together with a pressing, eager confederacy they’d lacked in life…”) + Han and Chewie – ((got something better to do?) / (that’s lame)) = read it now

Man oh man oh man: I am really excited this morning. I’m going to try to settle down and put this in sentences: My friendJoe Schreiberjust sent me the advance readers copy ofDeath Troopers,the first official Star Wars horror novel. Joe’s first two horror novels, Chasing the Dead and Eating the Dark, were both amazing, but let’s be honest: They didn’t have a single (eviscerated) Imperial Storm Trooper between them. And glowing reviews aside, it doesn’t sound like the new one (No Doors, No Windows) does either. WTF, Joe?

Seriously, the idea of his brand of suspenseful, adrenalized horror playing out in a galaxy far far away is thrilling. Joe grew up with the same quasi-religious devotion to the original Star Wars movies that a lot of us had, so I know the material is in good hands. Need more proof that this is going to be awesome? The title of Chapter 2 is “Meat Nest.”

I would like to start reading this right now, but I’ll have to wait a bit. First of all, I am two-thirds of the way through The Knife of Never Letting Go, which is excellent (and, OK, I have to read it for book club). Second, I am dyslexic and my brain starts making grinding noises when I read two books at once. And finally, Joe’s books are best read at night, or maybe on stormy afternoons, but not partly cloudy mornings. (Unless you’ve been up all night, and they’ll do that to you.)

Anyway, Death Troopers officially comes out October 13, and by then, I will have greedily devoured it—just as some malevolent force is devouring the crew of the Imperial prison barge Purge . . .

So, you have a scar on your left wrist?
Yes, and I know what you’re thinking, but I got it by accident, because I’m a dumbass.

How’d it happen?
I was, let’s see, a sophomore in high school. I was 6′1″ and 125 pounds and in my first season as the placekicker for the Housatonic Valley Regional High School football team. I was cutting extra notches in the bottom of my left cleat with an X-acto knife. I was holding the cleat in my left hand and really pressing down hard. I thought the extra notches would give me more grip when I went to kick. I did not think the knife would slip through the plastic and stab me in the wrist. And yet there it was, sticking straight out of my skin like a little flagpole.

Could you put all of the gruesome stuff in this one response, so people can skip over it if they want to?
Sure, that sounds like a good idea. The skin is really taut on the wrist, and the cut pulled open on both sides forming something like a circle. I could look in and see things moving when I moved my fingers. It was sort of like that scene at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, when Luke is getting used to his artificial hand. Except not artificial.

The knife was just a few centimeters from a vein (or maybe an artery, which one is blue?). I pulled the knife out. X-acto knives are so sharp. It didn’t hurt as much as ache. Then I held my wrist (it really wasn’t bleeding much; what a difference a few centimeters make) and went to tell my mom. Zoom, off to the emergency room! My mom only drove fast when she was driving either my brother or me to the hospital.

You don’t really talk about suicide in Gentlemen. Why not? Lord knows you hit every other hot-button teen topic.
Because I was not suicidal at that age, just a dumbass. The thing about having a scar on your wrist is that it’s sort of impossible to fully convince some people of that. They might believe you 99.9 percent, but there’s still that little shadow of a doubt. I understand that: I am kind of weird. I’m just too egotistical for self-destruction; self-deprecation is all I can manage.

Anyway, I was not suicidal. There are just so many issues involved in an act that extreme, and it would be extremely daunting to try to access or recreate that mindset. It’s also something I would not want to get wrong.

Why is the scar so wide?
Because the stitches tore open before my wrist was fully healed. The assistant football coach at my high school was a real tough guy. He didn’t like me much, because I was a puny little placekicker, and I don’t think he understood why I didn’t want to HIT SOMEONE more.

Anyway, I was in the weight room, with four stitches hidden under a royal blue wristband. I figured I could just do the leg weights (again, placekicker). He was like, “If you can practice, you can LIFT!!!!” And so I tore the stitches open doing deadlifts. Bad, bad moment.

Archival footage of me doing deadlifts. Man, I loved those shorts.

Is the scar on your wrist the worst one you have?
It is not as long as the one on my palm or the one on the top of my head, but it’s wider and, you know, on my wrist, so I’d say yeah. Also, it’s not covered by hair, as opposed to the one on, say, my palm.

You have a scar on the top of your head? Don’t head wounds bleed like crazy?
Yes and yes. But that’s another story.