Author

Diane Duane

ScriptFrenzy

ScriptFrenzy 2011: "Dead & Breakfast" pages 1-6

by Diane Duane

This screenplay has been gestating for a good while — one of those stories that’s been niggling and niggling at me to be told.

Like all too many of my stories, it started out with a misreading that turned into a pun. Don’t ask me at what point I looked at (or heard) “bed and breakfast” and kicked it a couple of consonants along into “dead and breakfast”.

And then of course the conjectures began. What kind of place is a “dead and breakfast”? Who lives there? Why? And what’s the nature of the “broken bone” that for me is the heart of fantasy fiction — the painful interface where the fantastic element rubs up against reality and causes the drama? This script is my answer to those questions.

It’s been kind of a hectic weekend here, so I wasn’t able to start ScriptFrenzy along with everyone else: but this screenplay will be going up here, five pages or so per day, until it completes at the end of April. (Complete with fantasy casting… as you can see from the poster.)  🙂

 

 

DEAD AND BREAKFAST

[scrippet]FADE IN:

INT. ERICKSON COMPUTERS, LONDON, NIGHT — ESTABLISHING

A WHOLE FLOOR of a high-rise office building, HQ of a big high-tech company. Evening CITY LIGHTS show through floor-to-ceiling windows. The complex of private and open offices is occupied by late-working white-collar EMPLOYEES of both sexes. It’s after end-of-business. Staff are leaving.

CAMERA MOVES THROUGH the outer office as ND EMPLOYEES say their good-nights, EXIT. Beyond desks and filing systems is a big office built against the outer windows — a glossy, tech-rich private corporate control center. Its walls are made of OPAQUE black glass. A door in the glass SLIDES open; a SECRETARY comes out.

SECRETARY
Good night, Mr. Erickson.

She EXITS. After a moment, behind her, the black glass walls FADE TO TRANSPARENCY. A MAN, ROBERT ERICKSON, handsome, fresh-faced and young-looking, sits inside. His feet are up on the desk, his hands behind his head: he talks animatedly on a headpiece phone, watching the departing Secretary. After a moment, he waves at the windows: they DARKEN TO BLACK again.

Off to one side is the floor’s master computer area, GLASSED IN to control temperature and sound. All around it, office lights TURN OFF, the main room DARKENS. Only the computer area remains lit as CAMERA PUSHES IN on it. A last OFFICE WORKER moves around it, turning things off. Terminals GO DARK: telltales BLINK OUT on the big blocks of supercomputers and server farms. The Office Worker moves to the biggest server stack, TOUCHES a switch on its side. It GOES DARK. The man EXITS: the room lights DIM behind him.

CAMERA PUSHES IN on the computers: still, dark… until suddenly one SMALL LIGHT SOURCE is visible. Red letters GLOW on an LED display on one computer. They form a word; then another. The letters display slowly, as if with an effort.

HELP. ME. HELP ME. A beat, and then: PLEASE. PLEASE HELP ME. The words SCROLL horizontally across the tiny display. PLEASE SOMEBODY HELP ME. HELP ME OH GOD PLEASE HELP ME HELP HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…..

— until nothing remains but the constantly repeating EEEEEEE, a silent electronic scream….[/scrippet]

(Click on “read more” to continue…)

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Computer stuffebooksKindleYoung Wizards

Young Wizards "original editions" ebook error correction: some more news

by Diane Duane

I’ve been receiving some complaints about errors in the Young Wizards US/Canadian (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) edition ebooks over the last few months, primarily having to do with typos and scanning errors. See Chris Meadows’ posting here, for example, at Teleread. (Please note: this problem has nothing to do with either the new Young Wizards international editions that are coming out from Errantry Press, or with the upcoming revised Author’s Cut editions.)

So I  took this problem to my editor at HMH. She got in touch with their digital editions department, the head of which got back to us a day or so ago, saying:

As you may know all titles are put through extensive error checking but some do slip through especially in books we have had to scan rather than take from production files. [DD’s note: and this means at least my first four books at Harcourt, if not the first six.]

The type of error most likely to slip through is a replacement of one perfectly good word by another during optical character recognition — “die” for “the” is common.

We have now developed additional error checking that looks specifically for all of these incorrect substitutions that we know about.

What I would suggest to you and Diane is that before she does anything we run all of her books through this additional process.

Then in one way or another she can look at them and tell us if we missed anything. That would be very valuable information to me because we could add it to our error checking.

This correction would be done at the xml level, not the epub level. This is a more basic level and would ensure going forward that these errors would never occur again.

If this is agreeable to her and to you that’s what we’ll do.

And it’s definitely agreeable, so that’s what I’ll be doing. My editor tells me that this process will take about two months to complete. I’ll report back then on how things look. (The publisher is also sending me a complete set of the ebooks so that I can see what US / Canadian buyers have been seeing.)

And a side note to those interested: I gather from the interchange of emails on which I was “copied-in” that customer feedback is one of the factors that has been driving the development of these extra layers of error-checking. So, those of you who have been writing directly to publishers about these issues — keep doing it! It’s having an effect.

More on this as the business goes forward.

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AstronomyComputer stuffGraphic and plastic artsYoung Wizards

A couple more snapshots from the "A Wizard of Mars" book trailer

by Diane Duane

Here are two more wallpapers for those who might be interested in DL’ing them. Once again, these were produced in the wonderful Terragen 2.2.

The location is in Syrtis Major, and that shiny object is the “superegg” that the wizards find buried in a dune by an outcropping  there. (I have removed the sand in these shots because I like seeing the whole superegg shape: I find it very cool.)

This first one is a late afternoon shot —

Small Syrtis Superegg image

The second is a reverse angle on the same position, and you can see a proper Martian “blue sunset” in the b.g. The superegg is plainly about to start misbehaving in this one.

Small sunset outcropping image

Both of these are 1920×1200 pixels. The images are hosted at Box.net, so that’s where clicking on the images will take you for your download.

Enjoy!

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EuropeFood, restaurants and cooking

I want a salad

by Diane Duane

But I can’t have one until I make some of this.

Swiss “French Dressing”

  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • Grind or two of fresh black pepper
  • 1 tablespoon mustard (ideally a smooth brown one, but sharp yellow is OK too)
  • 10 fluid ounces / sort of 275ml  olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 3 1/2 fluid ounces  / sort of 100ml vinegar
  • 1 egg or 2 tablespoons cream
  • Small amount of stock or water

Blend together all the ingredients except the stock or water in a blender or food processor (or use a stick mixer in a narrow mixing vessel) until quite smooth. Add enough stock or water to give a lightly coating consistency.

Put in an airtight bottle or screwtop jar — something you can shake before using. Keep in the fridge. Use within three to four days.

(from Sue Style’s A Taste of Switzerland)

Yum.  And now to find a harmless iceberg lettuce to behead.

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EuropeOnline lifeTravel

Some interesting carnival stuff

by Diane Duane

Just going through the blogroll and revisiting some old favorites preparatory to cleaning the present list up.

One I’ve always liked is “Rubber Slippers in Italy”. Here Rowena posts about the Carnivale in Schignano and its traditions about the Bei and the Brut — “the Beautiful and the Ugly.”

Peter read this over my shoulder and said, “Isn’t it interesting how cultural stereotypes shift over time. Once if you had a big belly, or were pale from not having to work outside in the fields, it was a sign you were wealthy and successful. Now it’s all tans and abs…”

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Current events

Diana Wynne Jones

by Diane Duane

For those of us who work with wizards, the world is a little shadowier today.

I can’t say that I knew Diana well — except in the way that any Constant Reader of a favorite Constant Writer may, when after much reading you begin to suspect that you know some of what’s going on “behind” the written word. (And you may still be pretty wrong about this: an occupational hazard).  As a migrant to this side of the Bitter Water who started attending British conventions in the late 80’s, naturally I knew Diana to sit down and have a drink with in the convention bar. Mostly I knew her through her connection to Peter: he had known her far longer than I (and he’s blogged about that here).

When we first met I was far too junior in the field to do much except Sit in Awe of her. (No one in a British convention bar does much Standing in Awe unless there are just no seats to be had in the place.) She was always funny and kind, in a very particularly dry-Diana kind of way, and a lot more interested in the business — and joy — of writing than in having anyone be in awe of her.

Everybody is going to be talking, for the next while, about the Chrestomanci books and Howl’s Moving Castle and all the rest of it. And with good reason. Diana was, and will remain, one of the definitive voices in YA fantasy — a craftswoman who was doing what she bloody well wanted to do long before YA fantasy became Cool. (And she remains one of the great proofs of the axiom: Don’t follow the market: do what you love to do. If you do it well enough, and long enough, the market will start following you.)

But I want to head off in a slightly different direction. From the time I met her until now, the most perfect encapsulization for me of that “tone of mind” of hers was and is in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, possibly the most excellent early-cliche-warning and trope-squashing device that the young working fantasy writer could desire. It is a pitch-perfect freeform deconstruction of the Elf Opera in particular, and of all the ways that epic fantasy can go wrong (mostly through laziness or inattention to what’s been done before) in general. Diana had seen it all in her time — the pioneers, the amateurs (in the original correct sense of the word) and those who took up fantasy writing to make a fast quid or buck.  As a serious and thoughtful practitioner of the art, she was in a perfect position to comment, at length and in trenchant mode, on how to screw up fantasy… while (in her comments) being hilarious at the same time.

Our copy lives up in the bathroom off Peter’s office. (I think he commandeered it because she clearly nods at him in its pages.) I can see that over the days to come I am going to be spending break time up there, snickering: the kind of tribute I’m sure Diana would prefer. Over entries like this:

Turncoats are people who change to the side of the DARK LORD in mid-Tour. This can happen to anyone except CHILDREN, Gods and the TALENTED GIRL. Turncoats are particularly dangerous because they have no REEK OF WRONGNESS. You will have got to know them as a friendly COMPANION, GOOD KING, TOUR MENTOR, etc., and you will trust them with your life / QUEST OBJECT / SECRET without suspecting that they now operate on behalf of EVIL. Such people will have been taken aside during the Tour and been blackmailed, threatened, put to the TORTURE, fed POISON, hypnotized, enchanted by a MAGIC OBJECT or simply been made an offer they couldn’t refuse. After this they will be working very seriously for your downfall. But take heart. The Rule is that only one person becomes a Turncoat at a time. The Management does not allow everyone in Fantasyland to turn against you at once.

Note that the term Turncoat is never used to describe a person who leaves the cause of the Dark Lord to join yours. This is reasonable. Your side is in the right. People who join you are merely becoming converted.

See also BETRAYAL, MINIONS OF THE DARK LORD, SPIES and UNPLEASANT STRANGER.

(Snicker.)

Godspeed, Diana. You’ll be missed.

(And one word to the rest of you still breathing: LAY OFF THE SMOKING. First Dave Gemmell, and Auntie Gytha, and now Diana too? How many more writers and other valuable human beings and friends of ours is this pestilent weed going to kill? ALL OF YOU CUT IT OUT RIGHT NOW.)

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Home lifeWritingYoung Wizards

"A Wizard of Mars" paperback edition now available for preorder at Amazon.com

by Diane Duane

 

For those who’re interested: the release of the AWoM paperback is scheduled for May 2, 2011, and you can preorder it now.

In the hotly anticipated ninth installment of the Young Wizards series, Kit and Nita become part of an elite team investigating the mysterious “message in a bottle” that holds the first clues to the secrets of the long-lost inhabitants of Mars. But not even wizardry can help them cope with the strange events that unfold when the “bottle” is uncorked and a life form from another era emerges.

Though the Martians seem friendly, they have a plan that could change the shape of more than one world. As the shadow of interplanetary war stretches over both worlds, Kit and Nita must fight to master the strange and ancient synergy binding them to Mars and its last inhabitants. If they don’t succeed, the history that left Mars lifeless will repeat itself on Earth…

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Uncategorized

Young Wizards in Canada, Part 2: Thank you, Kobo!

by Diane Duane
Kobo logo

After the posting that went up yesterday on the unavailability of digital versions of the Young Wizards books in Canada, we had a really interesting response in the comments…

Hi there,

When we saw this blog post we contacted HMH directly to inquire about where Canadian rights for the Young Wizards series stand. They confirmed that the titles do have Canadian rights, so as of a few hours ago they’ve been available to readers in Canada: (use this link.)

Nathan Maharaj
Manager, Merchandising
Kobo

You folks are stars. Thank you, Nathan! We’ll update all the web pages at YoungWizards.com and DianeDuane.com to reflect this.

I also note this response to Nathan from”Jc”:

And are the errors fixed?

I’d say it’s a fair bet that they won’t be, and indeed can’t be, considering that the distributors of ebooks — like Kobo and Smashwords and B&N and Amazon —  are specifically enjoined by the publishers against changing the content of ebooks. Errors or other production issues in an ebook have to be addressed by the publisher in question itself.

Seriously — and it seems I have to keep saying this, since there are a surprising number of people who’ve been writing me in a “tone of voice” that suggests they expect me to fix these problems personally — my influence in these matters is minimal. Maybe that’s annoying, but it’s the way things are. While I personally supervise the quality of ebooks that come out of Badfort Press and Errantry Press, I have no direct quality control over ebooks produced inside Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. As consumers, if you find that the presentation of the product you’re being sold falls below your expectations of quality, you need to be contacting the publisher yourselves and making your opinions known. If enough people do this, there’s a chance of something happening.

Anyway, congratulations to Kobo! I didn’t even know you folks existed until very recently. I’m impressed by your proactiveness.  🙂  Canadian YW fans, if you would check the Kobo search link above and make sure that it produces results for you, I’d appreciate it. Also: please leave me individual URLs in the comments so I can have our web lady add direct links to our pages? Thanks, all.

ETA: The excellent Nathan Maharaj has provided us with a complete set of links to the ePub editions of the YW series available at Kobo. These are available to Canadian .ePub readers:

So You Want To Be A Wizard (eISBN 9780547545110)  |  Deep Wizardry (eISBN 9780547538662)

High Wizardry (eISBN 9780547540306) |  A Wizard Abroad (eISBN 9780547546797)

The Wizard’s Dilemma (eISBN 9780547546827) |  A Wizard Alone (eISBN 9780547546803)

Wizard’s Holiday (eISBN  9780547546834)  |  Wizards at War (eISBN  9780547546810)

A Wizard of Mars (eISBN 9780547487953)

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Computer stuffWritingYoung Wizards

In the ebook department: O Canada

by Diane Duane

23/24 Mar 2011: ETA: There’s been an important change in the situation described below. Please read the posting and then check this one for news on recent developments.

I love Canada. A lot. Peter and I pass through there as often as we can. I have done book tours there: have assisted in the business of helping Peter’s Mum (God rest her) hook up with her fandom, which often appeared to be larger than either or both of ours: have been marooned in Ottawa due to fog and found myself still awake at 2 AM and sitting on some hotel room’s floor singing 50s sad-dead-teenager songs in company with Dave Hartwell and Stephen King; have eaten the cassoulet in La Rapiere in Montreal (apparently shut now, O woe), have explored the Salt Beef havens in that city and in Toronto the Good, and (in merely transitory mode)  have taken the train from Toronto to London ON a bunch of times before crossing the world’s busiest land border. (Though is it really? Has anyone done numbers at the crossing at Basel Bad in the middle of Fasnacht?  I wonder.) I have in that fair land taken pics of the only salmon stream I’ve ever seen inside an airport. And I still remember passing through Canada Immigration and being asked “What’s the purpose of your visit today?” and being able to say, honestly, “Lunch.” (The CI inspector looked at me and grinned and said, “That must be some lunch.” “It will be,” I said. And it was.

Yet Canada and I are seemingly at odds, because it appears that no one can buy the Young Wizards ebooks there from their North American publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. And this just seems wrong.

Before I go to the publisher, who definitely do own the Canadian publication rights, and start shaking their IT department’s tree to get this problem solved, I need data from the book-buying base. Canadian readers especially — for the hardcover and paperback YW books are distributed in Canada via Raincoast — your kind assistance is requested.

The problem comes in two pieces. I get reports that:

(a) Canadian would-be purchasers of the YW books from Amazon.com cannot purchase Kindle / .mobi versions of the books from either Amazon.com or Amazon.ca. Is this the case?

(24 Mar 2011, ETA: My editor at HMH tells me that this problem has now been fixed. Can Canadian readers please confirm? Just search for one of the books and let me know if the upper-right-hand-corner block that says “This book is not available in your area: CANADA” fails to come up. …25 March 2011: thanks to those who checked! This problem seems to have been solved. Now we can go on to address quality control issues. )

(b) B&N.com (which is apparently the only seller of .epub versions of the books)  will not sell Young Wizards .epub books to readers with Canadian addresses. The question I need answered is: does B&N sell any ebooks to readers with addresses outside the USA? If they don’t, fine. HMH needs to find another distributor for ePubs. But if they do, why won’t they sell YW books?

I would be seriously grateful if the Canadian contingent of YW fans would attempt such purchases (don’t complete them, just proceed until they fail — or alternately are about to succeed) and report back in the comments under this message, telling me what happens, so that I have data to take to HMH when I talk to them about this. Please feel free to send screengrabs to verify your experiences. You can send these to our Web lady at lee.enfield.burke@googlemail.com :  please put CANADA in the subject line.

The links to the Amazon.com US-and-theoretically-Canadian Young Wizards ebooks are here:  http://www.dianeduane.com/ebooks-by-Diane-Duane#youngwizards

The Amazon.com / Kindle  and B&N / .epub editions are broken out into separate blocks. Amazon comes first, and then B&N.

Those of you who hear about this issue via Twitter, please retweet to other Canadians at your leisure / pleasure and spread the word. The more data I have, the better.

Thanks for your help, everybody!

ETA:   The excellent Nathan Maharaj has provided us with a complete set of links to the ePub editions of the YW series now available at KoboBooks.com. These are available to Canadian .ePub readers:

So You Want To Be A Wizard (eISBN 9780547545110)  |  Deep Wizardry (eISBN 9780547538662)

High Wizardry (eISBN 9780547540306) |  A Wizard Abroad (eISBN 9780547546797)

The Wizard’s Dilemma (eISBN 9780547546827) |  A Wizard Alone (eISBN 9780547546803)

Wizard’s Holiday (eISBN  9780547546834)  |  Wizards at War (eISBN  9780547546810)

A Wizard of Mars (eISBN 9780547487953)

(…Still remembering the version of The Anthem that Peter wrote on the plane on our way in, last time. “O Canada! We’re just here for the beer: O Canada! The Beer is clear near here!” … There was more, but perhaps mercifully, I’ve forgotten.)

(And one other thing: does anyone else remember who got the American Embassy staff out of Tehran, all that while ago, at the risk of their own lives? “Oh, CANADA!” 🙂   I have a former roommate and very good friend who works for State — she’s in Yemen at the moment, not exactly the quietest place on the planet… and it could have been her, all those years ago. So when I wear the Maple Leaf on a jacket… I have subtext. Thank you, cousins.)

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Film and TVMediaNewsWriting

CSI Ankh-Morpork

by Diane Duane

Sort of. Maybe.

I don’t care: I’m really excited about this. With reason, I think.

Sir Terry Pratchett and Rod Brown, Managing Director of Prime Focus Productions, announce that they have come to an agreement for the unprecedented and exclusive worldwide television rights to create brand new storylines for the iconic characters of Pratchett’s phenomenally successful Discworld series.

Terry’s universal success has seen him create one of the leading fantasy fiction franchises of all time, with 70 million worldwide sales of his 38 book Discworld titles (with a 39th being published in October 2011). Whilst there have been three successful mini series adaptations of his Discworld books made for television in the UK, this is the first time that Pratchett has granted a production company the international rights to his characters and world, for the creation of new stories exclusively for a television audience.

The main focus of the series will be set in the bustling, highly mercantile, largely untrustworthy and always vibrant city of Ankh-Morpork and will follow the day-to-day activities of the men, women, trolls, dwarves, vampires and several other species who daily pound its ancient cobbles (and, of course, Igor in the forensics department).

Terry commonly refers to the City Watch police force series as “the jewels in the Discworld Crown.” These richly developed and highly compelling characters will feature in a ‘crime of the week’ episodic storyline. As each weekly adventure unfolds, viewers will be taken on a ride through Pratchett’s genius imagination, with the author overseeing the creation of the series, where wild and exciting encounters with werewolves, dragons, dwarfs, trolls and golems and the classic heroes and villains, are an everyday occurrence…and where many of these characters even make outstanding crime fighters!

I think all fellow longstanding Discworld fans will forgive me a straightforward [swoon]SWOON[/swoon] here. 🙂

BRING IT.

And now we start Fantasy Casting… Alas that Pete Postlethwaite (or a younger version of him…) is no longer with us.

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Current eventsHumorNews

A Chicken of Benghazi

by Diane Duane

Just one of those strange moments.

Watching Sky News as the situation in Libya continues to unfold. Some video from this morning, from outside Benghazi, runs.

A bright sunny day. Something explodes in the background, sending up a black-streaked fireball. People run in various directions. Small-arms fire rattles. In the far background, a burning truck full of exploding ammo sends tracer and other rounds spitting and spraying into the air as they catch fire and explode. “Look at that cookin’ ’em off,” says the ex-RAF type in the next room, watching with mild interest as nearby humans dive for cover.

In the foreground, a burning car. White once, now smoking and sooted black, the paint blistered. And standing next to it in the road, looking at it in great bemusement…

[flv:https://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/media/Chicken_480.flv https://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/media/Chicken_Poster.jpg 480 320]

…a chicken. Kind of pale-beige looking. Probably a hen. She stands there on long thin legs, seemingly unflustered, and regards the burning car. Tilts her head. Looks at the car some more. If a chicken could have a thought balloon over her head that said “WTF?!”, this chicken would have it.

She is a credit to all chickenkind. However chickens without their heads might run around, she’s having no truck with such behavior. In the face of loud noises, stuff blowing up, and the world media, she stands her ground, while the camera crew reacts to the most recent  explosion by diving behind the burning car to hide.

Today the phrase “playing chicken” acquires a newer and prouder meaning.

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