Two news items this morning from HBO focus on Eric Nylund's Halo prequel novel, The Fall of Reach . First, there's an eBook version from which Random House has posted an excerpt. The eBook version goes for $6.99.

Second, Louis Wu at HBO conducted a seven question interview with Nylund. On interesting item: Wu asks if the Cortana letters from long ago impact the story in any way, to which Nylund responded, yes .