A present to him from Gracie Allen…
[tags]George Burns, Gracie Allen, eBay, Hermes[/tags]
Okay, now I’m rolling my eyes really hard. Not yet completely freaked…until this happens twice.
Via the excellent kerithwyn:
Unfortunately, I need to report an “oops” regarding the lulu.com printing of Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South. I ordered it and received the shipment very quickly…only to find that while the cover was correct, the interior text was that of another book entirely, some sort of evangelical text: http://www.lulu.com/content/387049
And goodness, just look at the blurb on this:
Written from a completely Christian perspective, Steve Aiken has just released his fourth book: There Will Be No Rescue. As a former police officer, bodyguard, D.C. lobbyist, and radio talk show host, Steve tells the story of his fascinating life with a self-help approach that will certainly encourage the reader. From the pinnacle of success to absolute ruin and public scorn; from breaking his neck to coming back years later and winning a state racquetball championship; From running one of the most heated congressional campaigns in the country to losing almost everything in his life again, Steve holds nothing back in sharing the life lessons he has learned.
Um, well, neither do I. Is it too much to hope that Lulu will reverse the compliment and publish the contents of A Wind from the South inside that guy’s covers?
…Oh, well, okay, I guess it is. Never mind. But back to —
Life Lessons DD Has Learned and Holds Nothing Back in Sharing:
*Never tug on Syndrome’s cape.
*Never play cards with a woman called Doc.
*Never get into a land war in Chryse Planitia.
*And the best of the rest of them are here.
[tags]Diane Duane, A Wind from the South, Raetian Tales, fantasy, science fiction, Lulu.com, whoops[/tags]
Before going to the Discworld convention in Leicestershire the week before last, Peter and I had to stop by the storage where we keep various books, authors’ copies and other stuff that there’s no room for in our house (we were hunting for a specific Terry Pratchett book for the charity auction at the convention). While going through the boxes, I came across a whole lot of manuscripts, galleys, proofs, and other things associated with my novel work.
We really don’t need all that paperwork lying around — we’re trying to get rid of some of the storage contents so that we can downgrade to a smaller unit — so I’m going to start cleaning a lot of these items out over the next month by offering them on eBay for whatever the market will bear. The first of item on offer, which I just listed on eBay, is the only extant version of the original manuscript of So You Want to Be a Wizard, complete with author edits and notes from my then-editor at Dell, Olga Litowinsky. (And it’ll be autographed to the buyer, of course. Click on the link above for more info.)
If this kind of thing interests you, you should keep an eye on my eBay bookstore over the next couple/few weeks for the material that will be going up.
Thanks!
[tags]Diane Duane, manuscript, So You Want to Be a Wizard, Young Wizards[/tags]
So, something like a return to normal procedures around here…but not for long.
First thing: Peter’s mum is OK. But she’s about to turn 90: and when her health suddenly goes weird, our place is near her, not at Worldcon. We were intensely sorry not to be there, but there are times when family takes priority.
Now we’re back home for just a day or so, preparatory to heading off to Phoenix for CopperCon. There’s a lot to do and to get caught up on while we’re here, so don’t expect to see much in the way of posting until the weekend.
Re Chapter 5 of “The Big Meow”: it too got caught up in the delays, alarums and excursions of the past week. I’m getting caught up now and am intending to post it on August 31st.
Onward…
Friends,
The manuscript on auction as eBay item 120021469694 is The Door into SHADOW.
NOT The Door into Fire, which got typed in somehow.
If necessary, I’ll restart the auction. But I will be contacting all bidders to make sure they know what’s going on.
My apologies for the confusion. This is the last time I list anything before I go off on a convention trip. (headclutch)
We have friends coming over to house-sit for us during the Worldcon convention period, and while I was helping Peter tidy up the house, I stumbled upon something unusual, which I’m now offering at auction at eBay.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the only extant copy of the manuscript of The Door into Shadow. (I believe the original to have been lost when moving house some years ago.) It features handwritten notes and edits by me, by my then-editor at Bluejay Books, Jim Frenkel, and by my literary agent, Don Maass. This MS is a Xerox of the original.
The manuscript contains excised material that never made it into the original book, as well as added material that did not appear in the original manuscript. (Click on the image below for a much enlarged version of a typical edited page. You can also click here for an Adobe Reader / PDF version of the page.)
A side note: Bidders familiar with my “Young Wizards” series but unfamiliar with the “Door Into…” novels should be aware that these novels contain adult themes and situations.
I’ll sign and personalize this manuscript for the winning bidder. I will also do my best to get both Don Maass’s and Jim Frenkel’s signatures for it.
The preferred method of payment for this item is PayPal (which will also support credit card payments made via PayPal) or wire transfer.
Due to upcoming business travel, I will not ship this manuscript to the winning bidder until I return home during the first week in September. However, I will be in touch with the winner immediately after the end of the auction to sort out what kind of shipping they prefer. Due to the unique value of the item, Federal Express or a similar courier is probably going to be the wisest choice: I’ll determine the cost of shipping to the bidder’s location after the auction. Also, if the winning bidder is located in North America and prefers not to incur transatlantic courier charges, I will hand-carry the MS to the USA during the month of October — I have another convention commitment in the US then — and FedEx it to him or her from inside the US.
If you’re interested and have any questions, leave a message in this thread, or email me here. Thanks!
[tags]Diane Duane, Door into Shadow, manuscript, eBay[/tags]
Via the inimitable Paul Dini: the Cow Cow Boogie.
Here’s the roundup at BoingBoing. Succinctly titled: “Not guilty, just inconveniently brown.”
[tags]cellphones, security[/tags]
— was my response when I woke up this morning to hear our old buddy David Moore from Astronomy Ireland on RTÉ’s morning news show, talking about a story that the tapes of the Apollo 11 moon landing had been mislaid.
Needless to say, the story’s all over Google News at the moment, in many permutations and levels of detail. This one, though, lays in some additional useful info.
Citing a letter to the Herald, a member of the team involved in the search for the missing tapes, Bill Wood, described their article as “great disservice to a group of Australian and US Apollo tracking station veterans involved in a new search for better Apollo 11 EVA images.”.
Mr. Wood pointed out that one of the tracking stations that these tapes had been recorded at was hosting a detailed description of the process Earth-side. Written by John Sarkissian of the CSIRO Parkes Observatory it gave a fascinating glimpse into what was done to show the world Neil Armstong stepping onto the Moon’s surface.
What Bill Wood, John Sarkissian, and their other former Apollo 11 colleagues are trying to track down are the recording of what was broadcast from the Moon, referred to as Slow-Scan TV (SSTV). This raw data was recorded onto 1″ wide magnetic tapes at the same time as it was converted for terrestrial TV broadcast. As far as the paper trail goes, there are about 700 boxes that might contain the these coveted tapes. They are mixed in with recordings from the entire Apollo era, meaning there is a lot of footage that, with modern techiques, could offer far clearer pictures of man’s first visits to another celestial body.
(Here’s the full article at Space.com that the quote above is referencing. It makes it clearer that the tapes being sought are archived backup data.)
[tags]moon landing, Apollo 11, tapes[/tags]
Just (via Blog of a Bookslut: thanks, Jessa — ) came across this Telegraph article about — let’s call it what it is — signing envy. An ugly thing, especially if you catch yourself at it.
Never having been at this end of the whole book-festival process, it hadn’t occurred to me that book-signing is a competitive sport.
Like penalty shoot-outs, only longer, more boring and with added hate.
…But will anyone bother writing about what it’s like for the person at the other end of the table at these double acts? — when you’re the one signing book after book after book after book after book after book, without a pause, hardly having time to breathe, while the whole time you’re sharing the table with another writer, who is not approached by a single human being, and who sits there desperately trying to make cheerful conversation to cover up how increasingly miserable they’re feeling? When the poor soul next to you might as well have tumbleweed blowing past them, through the aching empty expanse in which no one even glances in their direction?
— and you, sitting there, signing away for all you’re worth and smiling at the signees until you think your face is going to crack, are practically expiring with embarrassment and pity for the brave and wretched person sitting next to you. If you get a few minutes to do so, you usually find yourself driven to tell them all your horror stories — the time the same thing that’s happening to them now, happened to you: the even worse time that, not only did no one show up at the signing, but even the bookstore had forgotten it — but it doesn’t really help. The other person suffers. You suffer. And you’re so glad to escape when it’s over. It’s so, so terrible.
The experience is only a shade less horrible for you at a “gang bang”, where you’re sitting with about six other writers. But the more writers there are at that table, the more unbearable it gets for the lone soul whose presence at the signing wasn’t properly advertised, or whatever, and who sits there playing with their pen and attempting to be brightly interested in everything else that’s going on around them. Argh, anguish…
At least the only signing space I’ve got this time out is at the kaffeeklatsch. I fall at the feet of LACon IV programming in gratitude.
But, people, if you see one, be kind to that poor person at the lonely other end of the table…
[tags]Worldcon, World Science Fiction Convention, autograph session, signing session[/tags]
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What Justice League Member (Male) Would You Marry?
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[tags]Green Lantern, Justice League, quiz[/tags]
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