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2019 Hugo Nomination Eligibility: the Tale of the Five Series

by Diane Duane January 16, 2019

(Above: the Five contemplate a Hugo Award, or at least something that looks like one)

So it’s that time of year when nominations open up for the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Awards, and it turns out that work of mine is eligible to be nominated for one in 2019. (I confess to being a little excited, since some of my earliest work is involved — not to mention my very earliest award-nominated work — in a universe for which I have something of a soft spot.)

The award in question is the one for Best Series. And the series in question is the Tale of the Five series (also known as the Middle Kingdoms series or “the Door Into…” books): The Door Into Fire, The Door Into Shadow, and The Door Into Sunset. Also involved here is the first of a bridging series of five novella-length works dealing with events occurring between the original trilogy and the main series’ upcoming completion in The Door Into Starlight.

The WSFS rules say:

To be eligible for nomination for a Hugo award for Best Series in a given year, a series must comprise at least three works totalling at least 240,000 words, and one work in the series must have been released during the previous year.

The first three works in the Tale of the Five series total approximately 330,000 words. The first bridging novella, Tales of the Five: The Levin-Gad, was published in August 2018. (The other four works in the bridging sequence will be published during 2019 and 2020.)

To make it easier for people to decide whether they’re interested in nominating the Tale of the Five for the 2019 Best Series award, all the nominatable (…’nominable?’ whatever…) works are available at a deep discount (75% off) at our store at Ebooks Direct. Please use this link so you’ll see the info on how to get the discount. (The trilogy is also available at Amazon, but not discounted. The first bridging novella is available exclusively at Ebooks Direct, and while it will become available at Amazon when the other four are complete, by then nominations will have closed.) The discount will last until Hugo nominations close on March 15th at 11:59 (US) PST.

…So there you go. Many thanks in advance for your interest and/or award consideration!

(Looking for more information about the series in general? Check out MiddleKingdoms.com.)

January 16, 2019

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2018 Hugo Award eligibility: for those who were asking

by Diane Duane February 12, 2018

So nominations for the 2018 awards associated with the World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, Worldcon 76, have opened up, and a lot of people have been posting and tweeting about what works they created in 2017 that are award-eligible this year.

I hadn’t bothered doing anything similar, since when the issue came up I couldn’t think offhand of anything I’d done last year that was eligible. Between injury (early in 2017) and illness (in the late summer and fall) I got a lot less done than was originally planned. Yet others have apparently been paying attention to this issue on my behalf. (For which I thank them!)

First of all: the 2017 e-publication* of Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal means that the Young Wizards series is once again eligible for Hugo consideration. In 2017 this would have been because of the 2016 publication of Games Wizards Play, which made the series eligible for the Best Series one-time “special” Hugo awarded by Worldcon 75 in Helsinki. That, however, was a different award from the new Best Series Hugo. (A distinction that apparently may make a difference for last year’s award finalists, if this year’s Hugo Administrator decides to rule out their nomination this year. But that’s hardly an issue for me.)

So — as confirmed here on the list of Best Series Hugo eligibles at File 770 — the Young Wizards series is eligible for nomination for the 2018 Best Series Hugo. Yay! …And if (as someone eligible to nominate) you feel inclined to nominate it, then I encourage you to do so.

Meanwhile, another question remains (it came up in a Twitter conversation with an old acquaintance last week, and as soon as I can find it again, I’ll link to it.) Is Interim Errantry: On Ordeal eligible this year for the not-yet-named Best Young Adult Novel (Not A Hugo) Award?

I have no idea, because despite an afternoon spent hunting (probably in the wrong places) I can’t find the rules. I’ll get back to everybody on this when I have a moment…

That said: on the off chance that the book is eligible for this (and because it’s definitely eligible for the other), if you’re interested in reading it as part of your pre-award consideration, then here’s a little help. If you go over to the Ebooks Direct store and put a copy of IE2: OO in your shopping basket (or use the widget at the bottom of this post) and enter the discount code FREEORDEAL on checkout, you can download the book gratis. The “how to purchase” walkthrough at the store will show you where to enter the code.

And I hope you enjoy the book!

*It’ll be out in paperback at Amazon during Spring 2018, if anybody was wondering.

February 12, 2018

Paperback wraparound cover for A WIND FROM THE SOUTH

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RAETIAN TALES: A WIND FROM THE SOUTH now in paperback!

by Diane Duane December 29, 2016

For those of you who’ve been waiting for a dead-tree version: A Wind From The South is available online at last! You can get it here from Amazon.com.

(A Kindle ebook version is available from Amazon too. But you can get it less expensively over here at Ebooks Direct at the moment, as our Winter Holiday Sale is on. And our ebook is available in multiple formats, and is DRM-free.)

There’s also an audiobook version available from Audible, for those who prefer a spoken-word edition.

In case you have no idea what any of this is about: here’s the blurb.

A goddess in the making… or a demon reborn?

In the remote mountain village where she was born, Mariarta dil Alicg lives the untroubled life of a peasant girl…until, soon after a mysterious stranger’s arrival, she starts to hear voices in the wind. The voices whisper strange secrets in Mariarta’s ears — promising her the power to command the stormwind, hinting at an unknown, magical heritage, and prophesying a fate marvelous past all Mariarta’s imaginings.

Then a curse falls on Mariarta’s village, shattering the lives of her family and friends. Mariarta must journey across the mountain realm of Raetia in search of a way to break the curse — while also hunting for the truth about the beautiful and terrible being who is trying to possess her soul.

Mariarta’s search will lead her into hidden domains of sorcery both dreadful and wondrous, and will finally embroil the young woman in the growing rebellion against her land’s cruel Austriac oppressors. But not before Mariarta comes face to face at last with the immortal Lady of the Storms, and challenges her to one final battle for control of her life, her soul, and her destiny…

“Duane is tops in the high adventure business.” — Publishers Weekly

“One of the finest current writers of speculative fiction.” — Kirkus Reviews

December 29, 2016

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Reissuing RAETIAN TALES: A WIND FROM THE SOUTH

by Diane Duane November 26, 2016

I’ve been getting this ready for paperback* for a couple/few months now, and the only thing holding back the release has been the lack of a decent new cover.

I think we’ve got that sorted now — at least until I get the urge to start tweaking it again — so there’s no point in delaying the ebook re-release any further. Here, therefore, is v2.00 of Raetian Tales: A Wind From The South.

There’ve been a few minor corrections in the text, but nothing serious. Most of the changes have been in the internal format — now done in Scrivener instead of (as in the previous 2011 release) in Sigil. The book looks better overall, I think.

If you’ve already purchased a copy, the Ebooks Direct store will be pushing out links to the new version for you over the course of the next few hours. I just thought I’d post a note about it here so that people who read the blog will know.

Additionally, new versions in other formats (especially for the various Kindles) will be available early (UK/Irish time) tomorrow: check the dropdown menu at the product page to see what’s available.

And as the nice men used to say, “Thank you for your continued support.”

(Also please note that we’re having a Black Friday / Small Business Saturday / Cyber Monday sale at the Ebooks Direct store right now, in case you feel like picking something up at a bargain price…)

Meanwhile, here’s the full-size cover.

*Meaning a replacement for the old trade-size paperback that was on sale at Lulu.com for a while, and has been withdrawn.

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November 26, 2016

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Black Friday and Cyber Monday at Ebooks Direct

by Diane Duane November 24, 2016

So it’s Thanksgiving, and I’m more busy concentrating on cooking, and on what I have to be thankful for, than I want to be on the Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales period. So I’ve thrown the switch early, and everything in the Ebooks Direct store is now 60% off. This includes our most popular products, such as the Young Wizards New Millennium Edition 9-volume box sets. (At around $2 per book, not at all a bad deal.) As always, everything in our store is DRM-free and can be moved from device to device as you please: some items come with multi-format bundles usable across more than once kind of device. And as always, we’ll happily replace your downloads free of charge if you lose them due to device failure or change of platform.

But there’s more!* On Cyber Monday, the newest volume of interstitial Young Wizards writing — Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal — will appear at the store. IE2 contains some 90,000 words of new storytelling, for the first time sharing the details of how three of the Young Wizards universe’s favorite wizards came through their Ordeals to their power. (Presubscribers to the project: please note that the completed version will be pushed out to you automatically by the ebook store’s fulfillment system on Monday.)

But if you’re not a presubscriber and you want to pick up a copy of the new book at a bargain price right away, all you have to do is make a purchase at Ebooks Direct between today and Monday. In the email that brings you your download links, you’ll also find a special one-use-only discount code that will give you 30% off the purchase price of Interim Errantry 2. That book will not be available at a sale price for the foreseeable future to anyone but our Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend purchasers and members of the Ebooks Direct mailing list. (IE2 will be exclusively available from Ebooks Direct for the next 90 days and will therefore not be sold on any other online platform until late February of 2017.)

So scroll down and have a rummage through our inventory (please bear with it if it takes a moment to load), see if there’s something that interests you, and pick it up at a bargain price… along with savings on the new Interim Errantry 2!

*Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. — DD

November 24, 2016

Art Books ebooks Fantasy and SF Raetian Tales

Cover work: RAETIAN TALES

by Diane Duane November 22, 2016

Covers. Even when they’re almost done they’re not that almost done…

Here the mountain girl Mariarta dil Alicg and her great-stag Grugni look down at a bewitched Aletsch Glacier in a color “sketch” of the wraparound cover for the forthcoming paperback (and the re-cover for the ebook version) of Raetian Tales: A Wind from the South.

The character rendering is in DAZ Studio: the background rendering, in Terragen 3.0. The terrain is derived from Swiss radar data of the Jungfrau region, accurate to about a meter: the three-glacier junction known as “Place de la Concorde” is directly below.

…Yeah, I know, Mati needs a winter coat. I’m working on it. The trouble is that most of the women’s coats available at Daz seem designed to show as much of the woman as possible. (In fact 98% of the women’s clothing there constitutes the most blatant proof possible of the Male Gaze concept.) Right now Mariarta’s wearing men’s clothes (which is fine since she’s doing that in the book as well), but finding a decent men’s winter coat that also looks like something you might have worn in the 1100s is proving a little bit of a challenge.

And forget cloaks. I refuse to put Mariarta in a cloak. Every damn pre-medieval heroine seems to wear a cloak. And this is a huntress who doesn’t need a damn cloak flapping around while she runs around the Alps shooting chamois and hunting down rogue goddesses.

(sigh) Back to it. There’s work still to be done on the glacier and some of the snow, and I’m not sure I’m happy with the lighting yet…

November 22, 2016

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New in the Young Wizards universe, a prose miniseries: ON ORDEAL

by Diane Duane August 3, 2016

I wasn’t sure what to call it at first, but that’s what it is: something a little different at the Young Wizards end of things, falling under the “Interim Errantry” rubric.

The plan at the moment is for there to be three of these works (but I’m not absolutely ruling out more). The first one is ready now: 45,000 words of the backstory of a character who’s turned into a (slightly) unexpected favorite among Young Wizards readers.

Once upon a time there was a Prince who wanted just one thing: to be a wizard…

Only child of the union of two great wizardly lines of the planet Wellakh, heir to a position and lifestyle considered equivalent to royalty by the people of his half-ravaged world, Roshaun ke Nelaid lives what most Wellakhit would mistake for a life of unfettered pleasure and privilege, moving apparently casually through the corridors of power and seemingly being given instantly whatever he desires.

But the one thing he wants most is the one thing not all his family’s wealth and influence can give him. What he longs for more than anything (well, almost anything) is something it’s beginning to look as if he can never have.

In the wake of an unexpectedly terrifying day in his family life, Rho discovers that he’s wrong…

The first tryptich of Ordeals will be complete by mid-September. Meanwhile, this should do to be going on with.

August 3, 2016

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It’s real!

by Diane Duane January 7, 2016

From my point of view, this is one of the few perks an author gets that’s worth anything. A month before pub date… I get mine first.

It’s real now. The sale doesn’t matter (well, okay, it matters, but only as the setup for this): the rewrites don’t matter, the first pass pages don’t matter, the ARCs don’t matter. Only when one of these arrives is the book really real for me. Only when the whole finished thing can be picked up and held in the hands does it become honestly, genuinely, really-and-truly a book.

Now I open that bottle of champagne that’s been lurking in the fridge since New Year’s. It took a while, but here’s Games Wizards Play, finally. Real.

Wanna preorder it? Go here for Amazon, here for B&N.

Want the in-between book between A Wizard of Mars and this? Interim Errantry is here as an ebook at Amazon, or here DRM-free from Ebooks Direct, or here as a paperback.

And meanwhile I can get back to work on the next one…

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January 7, 2016

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“Interim Errantry” now out in ebook and paperback

by Diane Duane October 24, 2015

For those of you who’ve been (patiently!) waiting: Interim Errantry is now available in both ebook and paperback editions.

You can get the ebook here at Ebooks Direct, DRM-free, or here at Amazon.com in Kindle format. You can get the paperback edition here at Amazon.

Interim Errantry contains the whole “transitional trilogy” of canonical works bridging the gap between A Wizard of Mars and Games Wizards Play: that is to say, the novella Not On My Patch, the novelette How Lovely Are Thy Branches, and the full-length novel Lifeboats. (All of these are available separately from Ebooks Direct, of course, but you get a price break buying them in the omnibus edition of the ebook.)

About the hardcover edition: This will be coming out from Lulu.com, though right now I can’t predict a date: we’re busy getting ready for our trip to Hal-Con, and I can’t spare any more time right now for wrestling with Lulu’s cover builder (the interior of the book is ready to go). My apologies for this. But if you’re in North America and you’re going to Hal-Con and want a signed copy of Interim Errantry, you should have time to order it and receive it before the con. Check with Amazon, of course.

A reminder, also: the half-price sale on the 9-volume Young Wizards New Millennium “box sets” is still running. $24.99 is truly a silly price to pay for nine ebooks. Grab yourself a set before we come to our senses!

October 24, 2015

Cover excerpt from 'Young Wizards: Lifeboats'

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“Young Wizards: Lifeboats” now at Amazon.com

by Diane Duane October 5, 2015

A lot of people have been waiting for it to turn up there… so, finally, the news you’ve been wanting to hear: Young Wizards: Lifeboats is now available on Amazon.

(Naturally if you prefer to get it DRM-free or in non-Kindle-ish formats, it’s also available at Ebooks Direct.)

For those of you who’re also interested in “dead tree” / print formats: we’re working on that now. The paperback will most probably come from Amazon and the hardcover from Lulu. We should have news about that next week.

In the meantime: if everybody wants to rush straight over to Amazon and give me some sales stats to look at, far be it from me to stand in your way. 🙂

October 5, 2015

Ebooks Direct is becoming EbooksDirect.co

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A new domain for Ebooks Direct

by Diane Duane September 27, 2015

For some time now we’ve been intending to move Ebooks Direct off the subdomain at dianeduane.com where it presently resides. Over the last couple/few years things have been changing in the search-engine optimization world, and the way SEO is working now makes hosting a store on a subdomain, rather than on its own dedicated full domain, a less effective way to do business than it once was.

So some time around the middle of next week we’ll be moving EBD away from dianeduane.com and over to its own domain at ebooksdirect.co. (I would have preferred the .com TLD, but someone is squatting on it and I have no intention of wasting the eyerolls I’d inevitably spend on being invited to pay umpty-ump bucks for the privilege of buying the domain from them.)

There’s nothing the store’s patrons need to do about this (except change their browser bookmarks if they feel inclined). Fortunately the tech end of the change is fairly simple: a change or two at the Shopify end and the installation of a redirect instruction at dianeduane.com that’ll send anyone who types an old page address to its equivalent new one.

For those of you who’ve been in contact with the store’s help email address: there’ll be a new address to deal with, yeah, but all your emails from the old help account will be forwarded to the new one before the domain change kicks in. The old help address will continue operating as previously for a couple/few weeks before it starts automatically forwarding all incoming mail to the new help address.

So otherwise everything will be business as usual. I just thought I’d give everybody a heads up about this before the fact.

Thanks, all.

September 27, 2015

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Young Wizards: Lifeboats

by Diane Duane September 8, 2015

When the renowned saurian Species Archivist to the Powers that Be summons young wizard Kit Rodriguez to participate in an urgent off-planet intervention intended to save many millions of lives, Kit’s hardly going to say “no.”

He soon discovers that not only he, but his wizardly partner Nita Callahan and her sister Dairine, his friend Ronan Nolan, and tens of thousands of other wizards from Earth have also been drafted in to intervene on the distant world called Tevaral. There the planet’s single huge moon Thesba has become tectonically unstable and will very soon tear itself apart, its massive fragments smashing down onto the surface of Tevaral and utterly destroying it. The wizards’ mission: to extract Tevaral’s hominid population and “raft” them off-planet to new homeworlds before the apocalyptic disaster begins.

There’s only one problem: millions of the people of Tevaral don’t want to go.

Kit, Nita and their thousands of fellow Earth wizards must now race against time to find a way to save all the Tevaralti despite their near-symbiotic relationship with their beloved world and its unique life forms. As doomsday inexorably draws nearer, hope is fading fast, and it seems like it’s going to take a miracle to keep the people of Tevaral from being wiped out. True, wizardry is all about miracles. But will one turn up in time?…

Young Wizards: Lifeboats is a 90,000+ word canonical work in the Young Wizards universe, and is set in February 2011, shortly after the events of the two preceding YW novellas, Not On My Patch and How Lovely Are Thy Branches. These three works together constitute a “transitional trilogy” preceding the events of the forthcoming Games Wizards Play.

The standalone ebook edition of YW: Lifeboats is now available at Ebooks Direct. A compendium volume, Interim Errantry, including Lifeboats and its two companion novellas, is also available at Ebooks Direct and in both print and ebook formats at Amazon.com.

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September 8, 2015

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