I seem to have been nominated for a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award again. Woo woo!
(I’m betting that either Valiant or the “Bartimaeus Trilogy” will win it, though.)
[tags]Mythopoeic Society, award, children’s book, books, children[/tags]
…my favorite tea mug that said “Caffeine First, Wizardry Later”. I got it ages ago to test the CafePress printing system (which is pretty good). Got a little careless this morning, put it down too close to the edge of the counter, turned to pick up the teapot…and crash!
Oh well. The design was a little tired anyway, and imperfect — the regular Tema Cantante font (that’s the one they use for the titles on the YW books) doesn’t work too well in smaller sizes or when there’s too much text: the thin upstrokes get lost. The sans-serif Cantante, though, works better. So I’ve pulled the old mug designs and done new ones that wrap right around the cup instead of just being on one side. For anyone who’s even slightly interested, they’re here, in tea, coffee, cocoa, and generic caffeine versions (just the molecule instead of an image of a cup). You can click on the image below for a larger image showing the tea variant.
…And now I’m gonna go off and order myself one, because all the other mugs in this house are too small for the way I drink tea in the morning.
I ran across this reference to the Big Meow project in a nice weblog called Everyday Literacies:
Online narrative writing practices, especially those associated with fanfic writing have spawned a reading and peer editing process generally referred to as ‘beta reading’. Basically, the process involves the author posting a narrative, or a chapter from a more extended narrative, to a relatively private public space like a blog before publishing it in a wider or more formal venue, including as meatspace novels, and asks for reader feedback on work done so far (e.g., the novel,Four and Twenty Blackbirds was written this way). Now, Diane Duane, a writer of young adult fiction, is posting online installments of her latest novel, Feline Wizards 3: The Big Meow, for readers to review and provide feedback on….
Erm. Can I clear something up here (before the mailbox starts filling up with kindly offers)? I’m not posting the chapters “for readers to review and provide feedback on.” I’m publishing them to publish them. 🙂
…Oh, doubtless there’ll be some critique and comment here and there; but that was never the point of putting the chapters up. (Nor would I dream of trying to blanket-pressgang beta readers in such a manner: it’d smack too much of trying to get other people to do my work for me.) The idea has been (a) to let people see the material as it would go to an editor in first-draft form: (b) and just plain to let them read and enjoy it, since a lot of folks clearly want access to it the very minute each chapter is ready. (BTW, editorial is handled: I’ve already hired a professional editor — one I’ve worked with before on more conventionally published books — to assist me in going over the material when the book is done.)
So if anybody sees anything in the pages on the Big Meow website suggesting that I’m soliciting beta-readers, please let me know where it is so that I can get it out of there. I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea of what’s going on.
(sigh) The graphic above (which occurred to me very early this morning) is the only worthwhile thing I’ve gotten done today. (If you like it you can get one here: we have a tea one, too.) Everything else has been about sick cats. If you’re not a cat person, or feeling sympathetic, skip this blog entry….
Goodman — the all-white cat and the middle-ranked of our three males — found and ate something bad, early in the week, in his wanderings through the countryside. He came down with a terrible case of diarrhoea, went off his food, and initially stopped drinking as well: then the drinking picked up again, so we thought at first he was getting better.
But he wasn’t. He got very dull and lethargic, and was completely disinterested in food — so much so that when I offered him steak one night, he just stood there and stared at it.
When that happened, on Tuesday, I said to Peter, “He goes to the vet tomorrow.” And that’s what yesterday was about. Taxi rides, moaning unhappy cats, sitting around in waiting rooms full of greyhounds, waiting for blood work and other tests to get done, etc etc. Finally our vet told us that Goodman had enteritis — no surprise there — and he stuck him full of pain relievers, anti-diarrhoeics, and cortisone, and sent him home. “Bring him back tomorrow,” our vet said.
So we got up early this morning and did that. Goodman was already significantly improved over his condition just twelve hours before, though the diarrhoea was still a little bit with him (and we’ve had to follow him around the house with paper towels mopping up the occasional leak). Today he had some more shots, and we were given some diet food for him, and we came home again and relaxed a little in hopes that things would get back to normal.
Until we saw that Mr. Squeak, the senior male, who’s been working on extending his territory by the most straightforward method — by beating up on the male cat who lives down the road about a quarter mile from here — had started to limp. At first we thought it was a sprain. But a little while ago I got a whiff of him, realized that whatever else they may do, sprains don’t smell, and took a few minutes to check out his side more carefully. Turns out he’s got an infected bite or other wound buried under all that thick Norwegian-forest-cat fur, where he can’t get at it to clean it, and it’s paining him so much that it’s hurting him to walk…and enough that he won’t let us clip the fur to get at it and and clean it up. So now Squeak has to go to the vet first thing in the morning…get sedated, have the wound cleaned up, possibly stitched, get some antibiotics…
Ah well. In the good news department, for those of you who were asking, there are some more hardcovers of Wizards at War available in the bookstore. (There are some more advance readers’ copies as well, but I have to go into the store and add them.)
Oh, and for those who were asking how I manage to follow baseball season in Europe? It’s these guys — NASN, the North American Sports Network. They have a pretty fair schedule once the season gets going. (wry look) I wish that was right about now…
I see the Young Wizards books turning up on a lot of “If You Like Harry Potter…” lists these days — hundreds of them, scattered all over the US and Canada (and some elsewhere in the English-speaking world). But this is the first time I’ve seen one of these:
This, I guess, bemuses me even more. Generally speaking — to my eye, at least — in a strictly thematic sense, the YW books have even less in common with Narnia than the “Harry Potter” books do. There’s not even the common thread of “kids learning wizardry and having adventures”: the similarity is more like “kids having magical adventures in another world.” And sometimes, even that would be stretching it.
…Yet at the same time, there’s no denying that the YW books are somewhat haunted by C. S. Lewis’s influence, from Narnia (where I first met him) onwards. It’d be fibbing to claim that Perelandra wasn’t on my mind when I was writing High Wizardry, or that Out of the Silent Planet isn’t very much on my mind (or at least loitering in the background) while I finish work on A Wizard of Mars. Lewis has been my mentor-at-one-remove for many years…so I don’t mind being on this list, really. It’s honorable company to be in: extremely good company — and not just Lewis’s, either.
Still…one walks very softly when coming along behind the great Lion. But in a case like this, bringing up the rear isn’t such a terrible place to be.
For those who might be interested, we’re in the middle of restructuring the Young Wizards CafePress store. Things are getting moved around, old designs are getting spruced up or dumped, and a lot of new designs are being installed to take advantage of the much wider range of products available since the store opened up in ’03.
Just added: a couple of T-shirts that appear in Wizard’s Holiday and Wizards at War — Roshaun’s “Fermilab” T-shirt and Sker’ret’s “Will Do Magic For Food” shirt. Also, there’s an entire section devoted to various sorts of Wizard’s Oath material, which people have repeatedly been asking for.
(Also: CafePress is just now rolling out its API. As soon as I can figure out how, I’ll install an RSS-fed box on OOA so those interested in such things can see what’s new in the store without blog posts being required.)
The first of the Transcendent Pig items are up in the store now. Some more stuff will go up later after I’ve finished remasking the image for output on white things.
For those of you who were asking, I should have the masking issues on the black T-shirts sorted out by this afternoon — check the YW CafePress store then.
There’ll also be a few other items — mousepads, etc (including the new WizPod design). I’m still undecided about the merits of a TP chef’s apron. 😉
More later.
For those inquiring about the new Transcendent Pig items in the YW.com CafePress store: the T-shirt will be ready in a day or so. (The basic design is here.) The “Got Pig” mug is there already, but I may do another design or two.
All praise to Ursula Vernon, whose work this is! (And yes, of course she gets a cut of the profits. A significant one.)
Late last fall, my literary agent relocated from offices on the upper West Side of Manhattan to new, more spacious quarters down in Chelsea. As usual, there was a fair amount of tidying, and many extra or unneeded copies of books were boxed up and sent off to their respective authors via surface mail.
Late last week, along came a couple of those huge canvas “M-bags”: we hauled them into the house and shoved them to one side, as things were busy at the time. This morning we finally got around to opening them.
They contained a surprising number of books that I’ve had requests about, via email and other means, over the last year. And some of them are just plain surplus to my requirements: our house is rather small, and the off-site storage is full enough of authors’ copies as it is. (When you have two authors living in the same house, this stuff really starts to pile up.)
So I”m going to sell off all of these books that I can on eBay. The books fall broadly into two categories: collectibles (mostly hardcovers, and mostly in the YW series, though there are a couple of Trek books that would qualify) and good-condition paperbacks and trades that some people might like to have if they were autographed. They are almost all in what the International Online Booksellers’ Association grading scale would describe as “fine”: none of them show signs of ever having been opened, and though some of them show shelf wear, it’s uniformly very slight.
The collectibles will go up for auction. In one or two cases (such as the first-edition hardcover copies of So You Want to Be a Wizard) I’ll be setting reserve prices — “base” prices under which I won’t allow a book to sell. (I will also link to searches at AbeBooks where possible, so that interested parties can get a sense of how much these books are going for on the open market.)
The not-so-collectibles will be listed as “multiple sale” items, with “Buy It Now” prices. If by chance you plan to be buying several books, please let me know in your post-sales contact email so that I can ship the books together and save you postage. (I usually send books to other countries via registered mail, which generates an online tracking number, travels by air, and keeps the package under lock and key until it reaches your local post office. If you prefer a cheaper / less secure method, let me know, but I don’t advise it, especially for the collectibles.)
The list of available books follows. Doing the necessary listing on eBay will take some time, so if you see something here that you like the look of, please check back here (LJ users, please check my main blog, which will be easier to update frequently) for direct links to the eBay auctions.
If you’re interested in viewing the selection directly on eBay, I’ve opened an online bookstore there: click on the link to go straight there. Please be patient with me as it’ll take a little while to get the store “loaded up”: presently it’s about 1430 GMT / 9:30 AM (US)EST, and I expect to take a couple of hours sorting all this out. (PS: if you go to the store from this posting and decide to buy something, please try to do so in the same browser session: eBay cuts me a small discount on my seller fees for such direct-referral transactions, and this will help me defray the cost of opening the store in the first place. Thanks!)
Young Wizards books:
Hardcovers — These are rarities: copies of these books that are not ex-library.
- A first-edition hardcover copy of So You Want to Be a Wizard. This book has spine fading and slight shelf wear on the dustcover at the bottom, but is otherwise “fine” in binding and has rarely if ever been opened. This is the rarest of the books on offer.
- Three copies of the first-edition Deep Wizardry. All are in near-mint condition with only slight bumping to the bottoms of the spines.
- Two copies of the first-edition High Wizardry. All in near-perfect condition with only small bumps or scrapes to the bottom of the dustjackets’ spines.
- Four copies of the Harcourt first-edition hardcover of A Wizard Abroad. This is a paperback-size hardcover, now relatively hard to find. All are in excellent condition except for bumps to the bottom of the spines.
- One copy of the hardcover first-edition A Wizard Alone. One bump at the bottom of the dustcover’s spine: otherwise perfect.
- One copy of the 20th-anniversary edition of So You Want to Be a Wizard, with the new afterword by yours truly, and the hard-to-find YW short story “Uptown Local”. Fine condition, like all the others.
Trade paperbacks — In the “Feline Wizardry” sequence only.
- Ten copies of the trade paperback version of The Book of Night with Moon. All in near-perfect condition.
- Two copies of the trade paperback of To Visit the Queen (the US edition of On Her Majesty’s Wizardly Service). Both near-perfect.
Large-format paperbacks —
- Six copies of the Dell Yearling large-format paperbacks of High Wizardry. Two have slight scratches on the spine.
Mass-market paperbacks —
- Six copies of the small-format Dell paperbacks of Deep Wizardry. Some slight bumps and chipping at the bottoms of the spines and/or front covers: otherwise fine.
- One copy of the first Hardcourt paperback edition of High Wizardry. Perfect condition.
Audio —
- Three copies of the Recorded Books cassette version of Wizards at War: twelve cassettes. (I didn’t even know this was out yet: I was surprised when I had a mail from someone the other week saying that it was out of stock at the publisher.)
- One copy of the Recorded Books cassette version of Deep Wizardry: six cassettes.
The Door Into… books:
- Two copies of the first-edition Tor hardcover of The Door into Sunset. The slightest bumping to the bottoms of the dustcivers’ spines: otherwise perfect.
Star Trek books:
Hardcovers —
- Three copies of the hardcover first edition Spock’s World. Slight dustcover bumping top and bottom, otherwise pristine.
- One copy of the hardcover first edition Dark Mirror. Same as above.
Paperbacks —
- Five copies of the first-printing The Romulan Way. A few scratches on one or two of the spines: otherwise perfect.
- Four copies of the first-printing Rihannsu: Swordhunt. All perfect or very nearly so.
- Four copies of the first-printing Rihannsu: Honor Blade. Ditto.
- Six copies of the first-printing Intellivore. Ditto.
X-Men books:
- Two copies of the first-printing paperback X-Men: Empire’s End. Slight top and bottom bumping, otherwise perfect.
…So there you have it. Enjoy!
For those of you who might be using Google Earth and are also YW readers, I’ve uploaded a file of Google Earth placemarks for the Young Wizards series.
The list isn’t by any means complete or exhaustive as yet: it’ll probably keep growing for a good while as I continue work on the Errantry Concordance. It just seemed like a good idea to start coordinating the two, where possible.
Have fun!
So I start going through the email and find one waiting for me that has no topic, no salutation, and the very first sentence is as follows:
First off i would like Diane Duane to respond not some hired help.
Then a critique of some timeline issues in the YW books ensues, in a rather brusque and cranky tone. The mail then ends like this:
Respond or I will send an email a week for as long as it takes to get your attention.
And that’s it: signature, but no “thanks for your time” or anything of the kind. (eyeroll) Sorry, [name omitted]. The Lady Mevrian and I are of one mind in this regard: “patience only and courtesy shall get good of me”, especially when somebody’s work day looks like mine.* So [name omitted] gets one of the form letters which my long-suffering part-time assistant composed.
I resisted that kind of thing for as long as I could. But it got to a point — what with the artless and delightful emails and letters from ten-year-olds looking for help with their school projects, the twelve-year-olds who want me to write their essays on Deep Wizardry for them (or, in some cases, instruct me to tell them where they can find the Cliff Notes online, and hurry up about it, because they need it for today, for something at school), the older fanficcers who want me to read their YW fic and [approve it / critique it / include it in the next YW novel], and many other similar kinds of query — that I was spending whole mornings dealing with the e-correspondence alone, and we had to pull together some kind of FAQ or canned response for messages like this. (Paper letters always get answered. But the sheer volume of the emails is just too great these days — routinely ten or twenty such messages each day, on the average.)
As regards this particular guy’s query: yes indeed, there are timeline issues in the YW series, especially as regards the ages of the characters. For some of them, I accept responsibility: occasionally a writer can get confused, especially while transiting a series from one publisher to another. Other hiccups (especially in earlier volumes) are errors in copyediting where things got “fixed” for me and I didn’t catch them in time to fix them back. (One notable example of this kind of thing: the book where Kit’s last name is spelled all the way through with a terminal “s” instead of a “z”.)
There’s at least one online attempt to reconcile / make sense of the timeline (and document the parts that already make sense) — the YW timeline and miscellany page run by one of our YW discussion forum moderators, the enthusiastic and thoughtful Peter Murray. But the “reconciliation” parts are a stopgap.
Pretty soon now I’m going to be talking to the present publisher about the next three books, and further plans for the series at large; and one thing very much on my mind is tweaking all the age references in the first eight books so that they make sense, and dealing with some other time-related issues to iron out various other difficulties. Obviously this is going to mean resetting the type on some, if not all, of the early volumes: which runs into money. We’ll see what the publisher has to say.
Meanwhile, time to get another cup of tea and dig out that form letter…
*And if someone would tell me what a scan of The Worm Ourobouros is doing in the Sacred Texts website, I’d be grateful. Not that I mind, particularly. (Apropos of nothing: the Sacred Texts pages link to a fairly recent map of the world of The Worm, which is useful if [like me] you sometimes have trouble getting to grips with the geography there.)