I tend to keep my LEGO hobby fairly compartmentalized — with a handful of exceptions, I don’t write much about little plastic bricks here on Andrew-Becraft.com. Topics here on my personal/professional website tend more toward science (archaeology in particular), poetry, software design methodology, and occasionally the convergence of multiple interests after I have some kind of late-night epiphany.

But writing and LEGO have converged today with the release of my first book, Ultimate LEGO Star Wars. Written together with Chris Malloy, one of my team members from The Brothers Brick, Ultimate LEGO Star Wars is a coffee table reference book from British publisher Dorling Kindersley (DK). You can read more about the book itself and our experience writing it in an interview over on The Brothers Brick, but I thought I’d reflect here on my personal experience today as the book begins hitting store shelves.

First off, and this really does deserve all-caps, I WROTE A STAR WARS BOOK! As someone who still holds to some modicum of hope that I’ll get published again someday as a “serious poet,” I tend to minimize this achievement quite a bit. I tell myself things like, “It’s really just a LEGO book — nothing serious or artistic. And it’s only a reference book, the result of a collaboration among co-authors, the DK editorial team, and their designers.” But then I slap myself and realize again, it’s A FRICKIN’ STAR WARS BOOK! Put another way, Chris and I literally wrote the book on LEGO Star Wars, the most popular line from the best-selling toy company in the world. That’s some hardcore geek cred. But it’s not High Art.

Despite those self-deprecations about the pop-culture subject matter, the book represents a huge accomplishment for the whole team who worked on it, and I’m humbled to have been asked to write some of the book’s text. And there’s something intensely satisfying about going to my closest bookstore and seeing a book I wrote on the shelf, available for anybody to buy. Of course, the book is also available online, and it’s been fascinating to watch it climb Amazon.com’s rankings in a variety of categories, based on pre-orders. As of the day of release, it’s moving through the mid 2,000s for all books on Amazon.com, and already the #1 new release in Collectible Toys and Product Design.

I stopped by a big box book store while I was in downtown Seattle earlier today, but that particular location hadn’t received their shipment yet. After I got home, I called Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park to ask if they had the book in stock. The guy who answered the phone asked if I’d like him to set aside a copy for me, and I explained that I was one of the authors and just wanted to see it “in the wild” for myself. He laughed and asked if I’d like to come in and sign their copies for them, so I was there in under 15 minutes — would’ve been 5 but for rush hour traffic on Bothell Way.

The team at Third Place Books was very kind with this overly excited new author, and after I’d signed the store’s copies and they put “Autographed” stickers on their covers, they even offered to take a picture with the book on a neatly rearranged shelf, alongside my friend Rod Gillie’s own LEGO book. We talked about doing an event with both authors, and I told them that DK’s marketing team would be in touch to make the arrangements. My people would call their people. It was all rather surreal — certainly not something I would have expected to be experiencing a year ago, before we started working on the book.

Now, I’m off to hit Refresh on the Amazon.com page like the insecure, self-obsessed writer I’ve apparently become…