USA Today interviewed Alan Dean Foster about his book The Approaching Storm. This story takes place immediately before Episode II:

As a starting point, Foster, a frequent best seller on the USA TODAY Best-Selling Books list, was asked to build on the fact that as Clones begins, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker have just returned to the Galactic Republic's capital of Coruscant after resolving a border dispute on the planet Ansion.

At the end of Menace, Obi-Wan Kenobi had helped prevent the Trade Federation's takeover of the planet Naboo. But the Republic will eventually erode to be replaced by the Empire.

"(Lucas) wanted something that would deal with the politics of the Republic," he says. "When I turned in the manuscript, one of the changes they wanted was even more of the political situation delineated, which makes sense because that's what you cannot spend a lot of time on in a movie."

He credits Lucas for attempting to finish the Star Wars saga. "Writing prequels or filming prequels is absolutely the hardest kind of work an artist can do, because everybody knows everything that is supposed to happen. We know Anakin Skywalker is going to become Darth Vader, so you have to give people something else to chew on, because the end of the story is a given."

In The Approaching Storm, Foster delves into the internal conflict of Anakin Skywalker and the psyche of the Jedi.

Visit the link above for more including a new photo of Luminari Unduli. Thanks to Shawn Farrell who first alerted us.