Out of Ambit
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Out of Ambit

Diane Duane's weblog

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Online life

One of the writer's virtual workspaces
Online life

Handling Twitter

by Diane Duane January 10, 2020

Some time back I noticed that some people who use Twitter and have a fair number of followers have put up guides to the ways they use the platform, and what’s to be expected of them if you follow them. And some time last year the thought came to me: I really should do something like that, because my Twitter habits might need explaining to some folks. 

And then a number of things happened to me, not least among them being Dublin 2019, and the thought got tucked into my ToDoist app and buried. But just now, as one does when the year turns over, I was going through ToDoist to weed out tasks that had been dealt with or didn’t need to be any more, and ran across this reminder. Okay, I thought, let’s get this sorted.

So here’s how I handle Twitter.

As regards my own usage: I’m normally in and out of the platform all day, using it to take breaks from work and to keep an eye on what that part of the online world is up to. I use it to clue me in to news that needs to be more closely examined, and to keep track of what friends are up to. I check it almost first thing on awakening and almost first thing on turning in for the night. 

I retweet a lot, sharing things that strike me as funny, beautiful, notable, otherwise worthy of attention, or (sometimes) deeply annoying. If heavy-ish retweeting is a problem for you, you might not want to follow me to begin with. But if you do follow me, here are some thoughts about what you’ll see on my timeline:

A lot of different kinds of art. Graphic arts, calligraphy (both western-medieval and eastern, especially Islamic), font art, lithography, poster art in general. Renaissance art, medieval art, ancient art. Stained glass, sculpture, architecture. Art is life.

Music. Professional musicians and composers are amazing people, and my admiration of them is endless. I follow some of them here and am delighted when they share the mysteries of their craft. (I have some musical training — I started out as an organist — and have sort of devolved into someone who tinkers with keyboards.) Classical music is one of my great loves, but I like almost all kinds. Film soundtracks and TV music are my greatest modern-music loves (for various definitions of “modern”). 

Some stuff about militaria and weapons. Partly this is due to being married to @p_morwood, who is way too encyclopedic in this branch of knowledge, and in sharing it, causes more interest. But some of it is down to my own research preferences. I’ve found information of this kind handy in my writing, and (in particular) I have experience with swords of various kinds because I knew from my early 20s that it would be useful in my work as a writer of fantasy that contains these tools and technologies. …The confluence of militaria and art is also an interest. I follow the Met’s arms and armor feed and RT from it sometimes when something particularly elegant turns up.

Mythology, legend, folkloric info. All this is part of the normal ground of being for a fantasist, so any time something new and interesting turns up, it tends to get reflected in my timeline. Fairy tales are a passion for me, and their study (especially regarding the way everyday human beings intertwine them with their life scripts) is a constant fascination.

The sciences, especially astronomy. I’ve been hot for astronomy since I was eight. The hots haven’t worn off yet, and I don’t expect they ever will. My timeline is frequently infested by deep space and whatever fabulous new weirdness is going on in it. Nearer space, and space medicine, are also strong interests.

Cats. We’ve had quite a few. We don’t have any at the moment, but felines are often on my mind. 

Science fiction and fantasy fandom(s). My roots in fandom (convention fandom originally, but also book and media fandoms) go back to my early twenties, and my fannishness will be pried away from me only via the cold-dead-hands route. And when I fangirl, I fangirl hard. (I mean… look what happened with Star Trek. Started with fanfic… ended at the pro end, much to my own surprise.) My present great joy is the Good Omens series — not just for its smart structure, its beauty, and the felicity of its casting and look-and-feel, but because it’s the work of two good friends…  and few things make me as happy as when friends have a hit.

The writing business in general. News from all kinds of genres turns up in my timeline (since I’m a genre writer, after all). I often RT tweets pertaining to the professional end of life in the business: Writer’s Guild staffing boosts, SFWA and Writer Beware tweets, writing advice, and the like. Sometimes I point people at other advice. Sometimes I advise, if I’ve got something germane to say. I frequently RT other writers I admire; because, well, they’re admirable, yeah?

The media. Though I’m a screenwriter, I’ve also worked behind the scenes in production and PR along the way. The ongoing business of the media world and the way all the media are changing with time and technology is a constant fascination for me, and I RT news about that when the mood strikes me.

Comics. I’ve been a comics fan since about age nine — when what we now think of as the Silver Age was newly under way — and quickly got deeply invested in both DC and Marvel (which has made occasionally writing for both sides of the divide much simpler). I profoundly admire comics writers and comics artists and am delighted to be able to follow them on Twitter, and to RT what they’re up to. 

Medicine / medical and nursing issues: Before I was a published writer, I was a registered  nurse with a specialty in psychiatric nursing. I may no longer be in practice, but the Art is still very important to me, and it turns up in my timeline. ETA: With this in mind, it’s impossible that I will avoid to deal as necessary with what’s going on with the coronavirus / COVID-19 pandemic as it unfolds. Where I see untruths about it manifesting themselves, don’t be surprised if I get prickly about blocking the perpetrators. What you’re going to be seeing from me about this is necessarily going to be slanted toward the Irish point of view; but bad science is going to get called out if it crosses my path. It’s truth we’re going to need in dealing with this in the weeks and months ahead, not wishful thinking or politically-motivated fact-avoidance.

Food: I think it was C.S. Lewis (though I’m not sure) who once said that the fact that most of the things we must do to survive — such as eating — are pleasurable was proof that there was a God and He liked us. While none too sure of that line of reasoning, I’m happy to assert that food is fabulous, and good food doubly so. So my own recipes and Peter’s turn up on the timeline, usually with pictures (I livetweeted soup the other week, ffs). And I follow and RT a bunch of interesting food people — cooks, chefs, restaurateurs, reviewers, other unrepentant foodies. 

Travel: I love running around and seeing new places, either by myself or with Peter. In lieu of that (because sometimes one must sit still at home and get the damn writing done) I often RT glimpses of other people’s travels — partly for enjoyment’s sake, partly as notes-to-self. Train travel is particularly beloved, which is why I follow and RT various European rail companies, people who tweet about them and travel on them, and the Twitter feed @_DiningCar. 

My own books and screen work: I talk about these readily enough when asked, and since Peter and I have an online e-bookstore, when we have books on sale or new ones out, I tweet about those. Normally those tweets get pinned to the top of the profile a couple/few times a day. This is one of the ways we keep ourselves eating: thanks for your understanding.

So, the tl:dr; version of my Twitter feed: Eclectic. In these days when writers are urged to “brand their Twitters”, I can tell you without fear that mine is a timeline where that’s not going to happen. There are just too many things to be interested in and want to share.

If you follow me: This is not necessarily a guarantee that I’ll follow you back. If your profile suggests to me that you expect this kind of thing, expect me to take no particular notice of the expectation. I follow people back whose timelines suggest to me that they have more than one interest, and that at least one of these interests is other people.

Every week or so I go through the previous week’s followers to see whose timeline presently looks like something I wouldn’t mind seeing more of on a regular basis. Once I’ve followed you it’s relatively rare for me to unfollow, unless your timeline changes in some way that gets up my nose without warning. This happens occasionally, and all I can say about it is that my curation of my own timeline is oriented toward keeping me doing what I’m here to do: writing without undue interruption to service by outside influences.

Things that cause me to unfollow and/or block without delay: Cruelty. Pleasure in cruelty. Bigotry. Fascism and support for fascistic tendencies. Science denial. Other willful blindness to the proven realities of the world.

Also: my timeline is a safe space for LGBTQ+ people and issues, so take note. My very first novel, written forty years ago, features a prince (sorta/kinda…) who rescues another prince who’s his love interest; that trilogy ends up in the most mixed (and poly) marriage you have ever seen. If you cherish hopes that I might have grown out of a mindset that allows for such possibilities, abandon them. That the world is catching up more quickly these days with the view that love is love strikes me as a positive development, rather than otherwise. If you’ve got trouble with that, it would be an unkindness to allow my timeline to be inflicted on you.

I don’t bother with muting. If I find someone in my timeline tiresome or annoying, I’m not going to simply reduce their nuisance value to me while leaving them still able to bother people who’re following me. I block early and often. Life’s too short to do otherwise.

Other notes: If I’m sharing material that might be triggering to people, I usually remember to tag it as such. If I miss, let me say in advance that I’m sorry.

Also: sometimes — the times being what they are — I react to tweets or events in the political mode. If you mistakenly believe that writers/artists should confine themselves to expressing their political thought in their fiction, you’re not going to find me giving any credence to that position… so save yourself some time and don’t bother following me to begin with. My belief is that responsible adults in the 21st century pay attention to (at the very least) their local politics, and ideally also pay attention to what’s going on a lot further afield. (And I find this useful in my writing work as well; geopolitics is a matter of deep interest to me, because why invent, or reinvent, what already exists?) My impatience with those not paying sufficient attention will sometimes break cover. Just so you know.

Anyway: if you’ve read this far, thanks for your patience. Follow me for a bit and see what you make of the experience. You’re welcome on the journey!

Looking for my main website or specific info about my work? Check DianeDuane.com.

Book series info: YoungWizards.com | MiddleKingdoms.com

Like the mug in the illustration? I do assorted CafePress stuff mostly for my own pleasure, but other people sometimes express an interest, so there are other versions of the mug: “…people like me”, “artists like me”, “gamers like me”, “scientists like me…”. (The original sentiment is via the redoubtable @scalzi, but I’m in complete agreement.) Have a look over here: Random Swag. (Sorry if the structure of the store is a bit shambolic at the moment: CafePress’s store-management software is truly byzantine in its complexity, and every time I think I’ve gotten to grips with it, it gets the better of me in some unexpected way. Dammit.)

January 10, 2020
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Coffee
Ebooks DirectHome lifeOnline lifeRandom musings

Virtual coffee

by Diane Duane May 10, 2017

Just a note in passing: There’ve been times lately when people who’ve stopped by the Ebooks Direct store have left notes in their orders asking whether it’s possible to simply contribute something to the local creative endeavors without actually buying an ebook.

I thought about this a bit (while looking into some of the online options for this kind of thing) and then came up with a temporary solution. For the time being I’ve simply added to the store a virtual product that’s about the same price as a good cup of coffee in Dublin. (The pic above is of a flat white from the “Bald Barista” up in Aungier Street.)

So for those who don’t need any more ebooks, and feel like adding one of those (or however many they please) to their shopping card at the store: Go for it! And thank you very much. 🙂 …If you do this, the system will send you a little digital “thank you” card once you’ve been through the checkout… a stopgap measure till I can drop you a note myself.

Eventually I guess I’ll make a button or a widget for the side column to handle this. But for the moment, the Virtual Cuppa product page is here:

http://bit.ly/cuppacontrib

Thanks, all. 🙂

ETA: Sorry, the link was redirecting back to Facebook for some reason. That’s been fixed.

May 10, 2017
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The last post
Online lifePolitics

It’s all over

by Diane Duane April 10, 2017

Over there, anyway.

Secondary to the recent changes in LiveJournal’s TOS, all the posts except this one at my LJ have been deleted. The journal itself, though, has been relocated to new digs at dianeduane.dreamwidth.org. *

In the next little while I’m going to start mirroring some Tumblr posts to the Dreamwidth journal: and (as used to happen at the LJ) some Out Of Ambit posts as well. If I can find a blogging tool that’ll let me blog to all three at once, I’ll be a happy camper. We’ll see how that goes.

ETA: rewriting this for clarity. I first used Dreamwidth’s own import tool to import all my LJ entries and comments to the new clean Dreamwidth journal. (The job executed in stages: the entries took longest to import, they and the comments spending about 36 hours in the queue. The results page once you start the import has a “refresh” link you can click to see how things are coming along. Understandably the Dreamwidth resources are under a fair amount of pressure at the moment, but I wasn’t in any rush.) Then I used  this post management tool to bulk-delete the posts at the LJ. It works just fine. NB: if you have a lot of posts, LJ will halt the migration after a thousand posts or so, citing “too much editing” and telling you to come back in an hour and try again. I did that and thereafter the deletions completed smoothly.

*Yes, I do have an older Dreamwidth journal at dduane.dreamwidth.com. I’m still working out what to do about that one.

April 10, 2017
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Online life

Bye bye, LJ

by Diane Duane April 6, 2017

Just a quick administrivial note:

I doubt that many people have been following my LJ account (dduane.livejournal.com) — it hasn’t been getting much use of late. But along with many other people who find the new ToS something they refuse to live with, I’m migrating all the posts and entries from that account to a new one at Dreamwidth (it’ll be dianeduane.dreamwidth.org when the migration completes).

Once the migration is done, I’ll be deleting all the content in that account except for a message letting people know where the content’s gone.

Thanks, folks…

April 6, 2017
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Hobbyhorses and General RantingOnline lifePolitics

Mindfulness

by Diane Duane January 29, 2017

It’s such an overused term, these last few years. It was originally a technique for achieving a fuller view of the world-as-it-is and a deeper sense of one’s place in that always-fugitive here and now.  But more recently it’s been co-opted as a technique for improving work output in corporate settings — a use that’s probably about as far from its original purpose as can be imagined.

The world shifts. You can try to avoid seeing how it’s shifted, how it keeps on shifting — but (in my experience, anyway) that’s a mistake. Turn your head away for too long and when you feel like turning it back again, some new and bigger shift has come that’s twice as hard to deal with as it would have been if you’d kept watching.

I don’t think anyone with interests based in the United States can have failed to notice, in the last week or so, how fast the status quo is shifting under all our feet. To say the trends are alarming is (for me) putting it pretty mildly.

The place where the effects of the shift are unfolding most rapidly is on Twitter. Now, normally Twitter is a place where I spend time in a relatively lighthearted mode, and so when I tweet and retweet there tends to be a lot of art and graphics and photos I like, and news about ongoing writing projects and sales at Ebooks Direct*, as well as Irish news and weird-or-strange news, and travel and cooking and other similar subjects that affect me personally at the European end of things.

Now, since the middle of last year, with the Brexit situation ongoing — and its fallout onto and into Ireland, like the results of a very very slowly growing mushroom cloud — and then the US election, the seriousness-level of my Twitter feed has been increasing. It’s been unavoidable, really, but I’ve tried to maintain a general balance.

The events of the last week have shifted my attention pretty hard, though, and this too is unavoidable. Even at a great distance, I take my US citizenship seriously. When I see the country I grew up in being twisted into unconscionable new shapes, my Twitter feed’s going to reflect my opinions about that and those of others I think need listening to.

I doubt that people who follow me because of an interest in my written work will jump ship just because I’m being mindful of something besides writing and mass media and entertainment. And what I am very mindful of right now is those people who went through the already-significant vetting it takes to get a green card in the post-2001 world, people who went abroad on holiday or to see relatives or for other reasons more urgent, and have suddenly discovered they can’t get home to their families again. I’m mindful of legally-issued court orders that US officials are refusing to obey. I’m mindful of spite and bigotry and stupidity running loose in places where they should never have been permitted access. I’m mindful of Angela Merkel having to explain the Geneva refugee convention to the present inhabitant of the Oval Office. I’m mindful of people who’ve escaped death in other countries and were hoping for peace and a chance to start over in the US, now most likely being shipped back — very possibly to their deaths — without due process. I’m mindful of all kinds of things, norms of law and behavior that we’ve taken for granted for a long time, apparently starting to unravel — thus demonstrating how institutions that seem robust may prove terrifyingly susceptible to accidental or purposeful sabotage by the reckless or thoughtless or cruel.

I have to be mindful of these things when I notice them, at the cost of betraying the priorities that make me write what I do, and the way I do. So if you’re someone who hangs around my Twitter feed mostly for entertainment and you find this level of mindfulness troubling, then I invite you to mute me for a while and come back later to see if the environment suits you better.

I make no guarantees about this, mind you. What passed for normalcy just a month ago now suddenly seems lost in a distant golden past — and if I bear weight on the concept of what might happen tomorrow, I can already hear thin ice cracking underfoot.  So I’ll react to new events as I must. But I can promise that I’ll keep on working, and keep letting folks know how it’s going when there’s news on something new. Right now it seems important — when anyone comes looking —  for me to be found at my post, doing what I’ve been doing for the last few decades: telling stories that will give both you and me something else to be mindful of… if only for short periods.

If (under the circumstances) your preference is to stop paying attention to my Twitter feed, then go well, and look out for yourself. You’ll be missed. If you’re sticking around, though, strap in and we’ll make what we can of the ride together. Your company’s very welcome, even if  things around here get so busy that I can’t tell you so myself.

And a final note, in a slightly more typical mode. Try this cupcake recipe; it’s really good even without the frosting. Nobody can be mindful all the time, and while I was in the middle of typing this up I said to myself, “Screw this, I need some chocolate.” …Also, hot tip: I didn’t have quite enough cocoa for the recipe, so Peter suggested I top up  the amount by adding Americano-style coffee powder. My God did that work out well. (I just had one with nothing but sour cream on it, and it was fabulous.) Give it a shot.

*Yes, we’re having one at the moment. Go take advantage if you like.

January 29, 2017
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ClothesInconsequentiaOnline lifeShopping

MailChimp socks: the unanswered question

by Diane Duane November 14, 2016

Last year, or it might have been the year before last, our mailing lists at MailChimp (there’s one for our customers at Ebooks Direct [sure, go to the form at the bottom of the page here if you’re interested in signing up] and one for DianeDuane.com generally [ditto, the form’s at the bottom of the sidebar here]) got big enough that we had to move from MailChimp’s free model to the paid one. So we did, and I didn’t give the issue another thought;  but at the end of that year, in what I assume is an associated event, something arrived from MailChimp at holiday time.

It was a pair of socks. The socks have MailChimp’s mascot Freddie on them, and I kind of laughed and put them aside as a nice thought. But eventually I wound up wearing them one morning when all my regular socks were in the wash… and was astonished to find that they had some of the best stay-up-ability of any socks I’d ever worn: as good as what until now I’ve been thinking of as the best ladies’ socks anywhere, the ones sold by the German drugstore chain Rossmann. (Their knee socks are the best, especially the knee-highs for under-trouser wear and wear with boots. Sleek, smooth, hard-wearing, and they stay the feck up. Trust me — find a Rossmann, get in there, buy socks.)

Anyway. I came across the box this morning and found that I’d saved the tags from the socks, probably with the intention of finding the company who’d made the socks and buying some more that didn’t have chimps on them.  Interesting, though, that some minutes of Googling gives no indication of where they come from (except the tag says “Made In China”, as I’d sort of half suspected). And at MailChimp…

socks-search

Yes, well. Not unexpected. So now I find myself in the position of having to write to MailChimp and find out what I can about where these were sourced and who else their source might be supplying.

The joke, though, is figuring out under which category to mail them…

mailchimp-contact

I don’t think the Technical Support folks are going to thank me if I get onto them about socks.

Never mind. I’ll report back on this later.

…And yes, folks, the new dashboard is very nice. Now about these socks…

November 14, 2016
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Middle KingdomsOnline lifeWriting

Open now: MiddleKingdoms.com

by Diane Duane November 6, 2016

So, some online and book(ish) news from this end of things.

The Middle Kingdoms books have been needing a home of their own for a while… so now they’ve got one. The site isn’t absolutely perfect as yet, and not all the desired bells and whistles have been hung on it as yet, but there’s no reason not to let folks in to kick the tires.

One of the first things to announce is that, finally — for those of you who’ve been asking — all the “Tale of the Five” / “Door Into…” books are now in paperback at Amazon! You can find the links in the sidebar on each book’s page at MiddleKingdoms.com. The Amazon/Kindle versions of the second and third books aren’t available just yet, but they will be within a couple/few days. And anyway, if you want a Kindle-friendly .mobi file in any of the main Kindle types, we’ve got those at Ebooks Direct. Again, check the sidebar in each book’s page.

Also, there’s now a dedicated “update” page for a certain project that’s been hanging fire (cough, cough) for some years now. Those of you interested in the progress of the fourth and final book in the Tale of the Five sequence are invited to bookmark it and watch the developments during 2017.

Thanks, all! Enjoy.

http://www.MiddleKingdoms.com

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November 6, 2016
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AdministriviaOnline lifethings that piss you off

The joys of webmastering

by Diane Duane September 12, 2016

So after various struggles and craziness the YoungWizards.com site finally has its WordPress install running for all to see, and the old Drupal install is packed away, and I can look forward to a week or three of fixing busted links and installing URL redirects and handling other delights. It’s all a bit shambolic at the moment, but at least (in the sense of being blissfully unhacked) it’s clean.

Some other issues, though, are raising their heads as I watch the new install bed in. The security software’s “live traffic” function is showing me the most charming things! Especially spammers’ scripts battering futilely at the spot where the Errantry Concordance wiki used to be. I’m taking notes and blocking IPs and having so much fun. (I don’t want to block all of Russia, there are fans of the YW books in Russia, but, you know, if I have to…)

Less fun, though, and more of an annoyance, are the bandwidth thieves. One New York Jets website in particular keeps calling and calling and CALLING on the server that holds the YW discussion forums, trying to pull up a particular smiley.

Now, this smiley isn’t even on my server any more. God knows how many years ago it was there. But this damn website is hitting the Forums about once every five seconds, and this annoys me. Yes, teeny tiny bits of bandwidth are involved in the short term, but how long has this been going on? It’s just not right.

So I’m going to break the site in question of this habit by the most straightforward means I can think of. I am loading the graphic you see below into the directory and giving it the filename in question. We’ll see how long it takes for the website’s sysadmins to kill that particular link… but I’m betting it won’t take more than a day or so, as the image is 800×800 px and the sentiment is, well, not that polite.

worlds_smallest_dick_nonexistent_file_full

(Yes, I know some people use explicit porn images for this kind of thing. Not my style, though it’s fun to think about.)

…And now let’s see how good their sysadmins are. 🙂

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September 12, 2016
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AdministriviaOnline life

About the blog being in a state

by Diane Duane July 31, 2016

Just a quick note to let people know that we’ll be updating / upgrading the theme on “Out of Ambit” over the next couple/few days, so the layout situation may be expected to be a little screwed up for a short time. In particular, this is going to involve fixing posts where the featured image appears twice (there was a bug regarding this in the old theme, and the workaround meant adding the image to the post itself. Now all those extra images have to be gotten rid of.

(Additionally, the slider is going to need some kicking until I get it to show the categories I want… Whoopee.)

This situation won’t last very long: so please bear with us for the brief period during which elements of the blog will be a bit disarranged.

Thanks!

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July 31, 2016
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MailChimp logo
AdministriviaEbooks DirectOnline life

Spring cleaning at our mailing lists

by Diane Duane May 23, 2016

A couple of times each year we go through our mailing lists at MailChimp and shake them out a little bit to make sure they’re current. The spring cleaning pass is about to happen, so this is a note for those of you who’re subscribers and also frequent DD’s Twitter feed, her blog at “Out of Ambit”, her Facebook page or profile, her Google+ feed, or her Tumblr.

If you haven’t opened emails from Ebooks Direct or DianeDuane.com recently and you want to stay on whichever mailing list you signed up to, please open tomorrow’s mailing so that we’ll know you want to stay subscribed — or so that you can unsubscribe! Because we have no interest in sending you stuff you don’t want. After tomorrow’s mailing has had a few days to yield its results, we’ll be removing the names of all the people who haven’t opened a message within the last year.

On the other hand, if you’re interested in receiving news from the DD side of things — including advance news about releases, info about appearances and signings, links to new short fiction, and the  scoop on other interesting developments — you’re cordially invited to sign up for the Ebooks Direct mailing list here, or the list at DianeDuane.com here. In fact if you do, you’ll be in a position to see the offer in tomorrow’s mailing, which might well interest you.

Or you can use one of the forms below — or both, if you don’t mind receiving two mails from us. They won’t usually be duplicates, and they don’t usually go out at the same time except for occasions like this one.

Thanks!





 

 


 

 

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May 23, 2016
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Advent Caledar screenshot
metaOnline lifeWritingYoung WizardsYoung Wizards meta

The “How Lovely Are Thy Branches” Advent Calendar

by Diane Duane December 2, 2015

Advent Caledar screenshot

ETA: The Advent calendar is now shut… maybe until next year. But a compiled version of the whole Calendar is available below…

Every day, from now until Christmas, behind a door of the Advent calendar here there’ll be a small chunk of dialogue material that either didn’t make it into the final cut of How Lovely Are Thy Branches, or occurred to me after the work was finished. Snippets and snatches of conversation, half-heard (as it were) from across the room. Think of them, not so much as outtakes, but more like DVD extras.

All you need to do is click on the little red tab on the right side of the window to make the calendar pop out: then click on the door for the day. Obviously, today only the December 1  and 2 doors will open. One more door will be available each day until we hit Christmas.

Enjoy!

Now available:  The How Lovely Are Thy Branches Advent Calendar — 25 days of extra dialogue / outtakes from the work. Download the ebook or PDF formats free from our cloud storage at Box.com:

Advent Calendar generic .epub | Advent Calendar Kindle-friendly .mobi | Advent Calendar .PDF

December 2, 2015
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Ebooks Direct is becoming EbooksDirect.co
Computer stuffebooksEbooks DirectmetaOnline life

A new domain for Ebooks Direct

by Diane Duane September 27, 2015

Ebooks Direct is becoming EbooksDirect.co

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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The blogger


40 years in print, 50+ novels, assorted TV/movies, NYT Bestseller List a few times, blah blah blah. Young Wizards series, 1983-2020 and beyond; Middle Kingdoms series, 1979-2019. And now, also: Proud past Guest of Honour at Dublin2019, the World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland.

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