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At the Young Wizards end of things: an...
2021 Hugo nomination eligibility: the Young Wizards series
Maluns
Owl Be Home For Christmas
Vintage Scots Christmas recipes: “Good Fare Christmas”
From the Young Wizards universe: an update
Irish life: The things you don’t discuss, Halloween...
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From the Baking-While-You-Write Department: Spicy Apple Pie
Peter Morwood on Moroccan preserved lemons
Greek mythology, feminist reclamation of lost/ancient tradition, and...
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Diane Duane's weblog

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Cover excerpt from 'Young Wizards: Lifeboats'
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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.

Cover for "Young Wizards: Lifeboats"

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September 8, 2015
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Now available: the New Millennium Edition of HIGH WIZARDRY

by Diane Duane December 19, 2012
High Wizardry New Millennium Edition cover

Teenage wizards Nita Callahan and Kit Rodriguez have been working the New York suburbs for nearly thirty years now, through nine novels’ worth of adventures. As the dawn of their fourth decade in print draws near, the long-planned updating of the Young Wizards series is at last underway.

Available now at Ebooks Direct is the third novel in the series, and the one that made this whole project happen: High Wizardry.

Of the initial tranche of Young Wizards novels (published between 1981 and 1994), this was the one that had suffered most from the passage of time. Written with 1987’s computer technology in the background, it had increasingly begun to show its age.

Not any more. High Wizardry, like So You Want to Be a Wizard (book 1 of the Young Wizards series) and Deep Wizardry (book 2), now appears in a New Millennium Edition that has been extensively edited and updated for the present century.

You can find out more about the update project as a whole here. All nine books will be updated by the end of 1Q of 2013, and all brought into alignment with the new (2008-based) timeline.

If you’ve already picked up copies of the first two New Millennium Editions, you can grab High Wizardry here. Alternately, if you haven’t yet acquired any of the new editions, we’re offering a three-volume “box set” of the first three books in the series at a slightly lower price than buying all three separately.


(For those who’re interested: A Wizard Abroad, the fourth of the oldest group of Young Wizards novels, will be available next week. Please check the blog or the front page at Ebooks Direct for more news on the availability date.)

A little about the story:

Magic doesn’t stop where the atmosphere does…

Don’t take shrewd, eleven-year-old Dairine Callahan for just any bratty younger sibling. Impatient for adventure, knowledge, and recognition, maybe even a little jealous of her wizardly older sister, Dairine comes across Nita’s copy of the Wizard’s Manual and reads the Wizard’s Oath aloud….

Disappointingly, nothing seems to happen. But when her family’s new computer arrives, Dairine discovers that it’s come with a whole lot more than the usual bundled software. The computer contains a beta version of the new online edition of the Wizard’s Manual. Wrapped up  inside it is a whole world’s worth of spells, secrets and magical knowledge…and it’s all hers to play with.

Never the kind to do anything by halves, Dairine launches herself into a reckless, cross-universe, high-voltage magical conflict with the implacable enemy of all wizards and wizardry, the Lone Power. It falls to Nita and Kit to track Dairine down before she gets into trouble so deep that not even her precocious brains can save her.

But by the time they catch up with her, it’s already too late. On a bleak and empty world, Dairine has already become the wizardly godmother to a brand new life-form. And the relentless Enemy of all new life is even now hot on her trail, intent on ending the threat Dairine poses… permanently.

Reviewers say:

“The sheer effrontery of the plot — coupled with the gritty charm of the characters and the sprightly dialogue of these credible siblings — makes for enormous fun.” (Kirkus Reviews)


“Duane is tops in the high adventure business… This rollicking yarn will delight readers.” (Publishers Weekly)


“There’s a pacing that doesn’t let up from the very beginning. And even more than that, there’s a Heinleinesque affection for the characters. Duane writes about people you can really care about, with lots of quirks and endearing traits that feel real in a way most writers don’t manage. High Wizardry is… high entertainment.” (Locus)


To sign up for our shop’s mailing list and be informed of new releases in the New Millennnium series (and other offerings), click here.

December 19, 2012
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Setting Out on the Journey

by Diane Duane December 14, 2012

Bilbo Baggins at Rivendell

The second I saw it, the image above turned into a kind of mental “money shot” for me. I’d been awaiting this particular movie with interest for a long time, but not until I saw this image from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey did the hair stand up on the back of my neck and the little voice whisper in my ear, “Start marking off days on the calendar.” Yesterday The Big Day finally came, and I went up to Dublin to see the film in the best possible company. What follows are some very broad and non-spoiler-y notes on the experience.

Just so you know what previous affiliations may color this review: I first read Tolkien’s work in my mid-teens, loved it instantly, and have returned to it repeatedly, for pleasure and sometimes comfort, all my adult life. So am I a fan? Yes. (So was my seatmate at the film, my collaborator / spouse Peter Morwood, though he came at Middle-Earth from the opposite direction: The Hobbit first, then the Lord of the Rings trilogy.) That said, I think I can set aside fondness and fandom for long enough to review what I’ve seen with a relatively clear eye.

Having seen the original LotR film trilogy and loved it—with only the most minor niggles about creative choices—I was still a bit concerned; for in terms of adaptation, it seemed to me that The Hobbit was always going to be a hard road to walk in terms of getting the tone right. The Hobbit is extremely different from the Lord of the Rings books, plainly intended (as we too-coyly put it these days) “for younger readers”. It was always going to be a challenging work to bring to the screen when a lot of the prospective audience would be adults who’d seen the LotR film trilogy, and were used to something in a more starkly grown-up mode. I was a bit nervous that, with creative imperatives simultaneously dragging it in such different directions, the movie might not work.

Well, I needn’t have worried. That leads to my initial answer to the question: should you go see this film? Yes. Will you be satisfied with this film if you’re a Tolkien fan of the I-read-the-books-now-convince-me-you-haven’t-ruined-them school? I think so.

Let me set aside a couple of meta- or marginal issues first: first of all, the fact that Jackson chose to shoot the film in the higher-definition 48 frames-per-second format, untried until now in a major release. I didn’t find myself bothered by it in the least. Peter and I saw the film in its 3D version, and found the 48fps format not at all distracting or strange—in fact, I’m not sure I would have noticed it if I hadn’t been prewarned. Everything just seemed very clear. And the 3D seemed well-handled and not overdone. Obviously your mileage may vary: but I mention this because it’s been a big issue for some people.

Also: in regard to those reviewers who’re wandering around muttering “I don’t know how you can get three movies out of this one small book…” Sorry, but I don’t have much patience with this attitude. It seems to come chiefly from those who haven’t done their homework, ignoring the interviews with Jackson that clearly detail how the film’s writers went back to the Appendices attached to the LotR books for extensive backstory / background material. These reviewers’ position strikes me as similar to one that might be taken by someone who—having seen, for example, a series of Le Carre-based “cold war”-period films—then tries to claim that you couldn’t possibly get three big films out of the whole of World War II. The Appendices at the end of The Return of the King sketch out, in the briefest detail, centuries of uneasy history between the time when Sauron was first dispatched and the time when he becomes a serious problem in LotR: centuries in which the dark power that once rose in Mordor begins its slow and stealthy reconsolidation further afield. I looked over Tolkien’s bare-bones timeline last night, to make sure my memory of it was correct, and with my screenwriter hat on I could easily see three movies implicit in one page of that material. (I’m half tempted to do a Nothing-But-Spoilers review leading into a tentative breakdown, with an eye to what we’ve seen in the first film, of what the structures of the next two films could be like. Another time maybe.) It’s a pity that some reviewers can’t take the time to inform their opinions before trotting them out the door, but such is life. From where I sit, the advice is: Ignore them and go enjoy the show.


“Incineration…?!” …Martin Freeman and Refusing The Call as
an art form

…So back to the film at hand. About the acting there’s not much to say except that it’s always at the very least workmanlike, and sometimes terrific. When you have a big ensemble cast, with so much going on, getting all the introductions made is always going to be problematic: a lot of us can’t even name all the Seven Dwarves, after all these years, and suddenly here we are with twelve… Suffice it to say, this crowd of characters gets handled as well as it might be. Richard Armitage stands out in the crowd, but he in particular has a hard row to hoe; he has to carry the weight of the character work that will turn Thorin Oakenshield into a hero worth following, without leaving you thinking of him as nothing more but a sort of height-challenged bargain-basement Aragorn. The problem is increased by Thorin’s (canonical) distrust of Bilbo, which has to be established strongly enough to register as a problem, yet not so much so as to make him unsympathetic. (And for me this was a close one: I do remember myself thinking, “If this doesn’t get sorted out pretty soon, he’s going to come off as a real dick.” But it gets sorted, as it must.)

Martin Freeman, standing at the core of the story, does as Bilbo Baggins what he usually does, seemingly effortlessly: he makes the part his own until you find it hard to imagine anyone else in it. He starts out (apparently) a little hesitantly, but it’s my opinion that this was both an acting choice and a directorial one. To make Bilbo too proactive too soon would be a misstep, as he’s standing in for all of us in regard to how we’d behave if the house suddenly filled up with dwarves, and how most people would handle the ensuing physical and emotional turmoil that Thorin’s business proposition will provoke.

You’ll hear complaints from some quarters about these early sequences being painted in too-broad strokes, or overplayed for comic effect. But where it counts, the real business is if anything underplayed. In particular, in the crucial moments when the adventurous and much-suppressed Took side of Bilbo’s emotional heredity starts slipping out of the shadows and asserting itself, the temptation to go for any Meaningful Close-up has been wisely resisted. We get nothing but a medium angle, and kind of a remote one at that, of Bilbo sitting leaned up against a wall and listening, just listening with all of him to what’s going on in his sitting room. The way his body’s held, and the still hunger in the character’s face, between them say everything that needs to be said about Bilbo’s secret longing for adventure… and remind us that Martin Freeman can do more with his face while holding it still than many actors can while twisting theirs around every which way. (One word here, also, to my fellow Sherlock fans: toward the end of the film there’s a spot—no, two—where I think you will see, on Freeman’s face, a kind of shadow or presentment of an expression we’ll sooner or later see Dr. John Watson turn on his long-missing partner in the Work. In its present context, though, the expressions and the acting go straight to the core of the character’s interior business, in a flash completely changing the way you see him.)

At any rate, in short order Bilbo gets himself together and things get going. I for one didn’t begrudge the leisurely induction: it’s like the slow climb of the roller coaster up to the first big drop. And like a rollercoaster ride, everything after that starts to happen very fast indeed. Sometimes almost too fast: I could have occasionally wished for a touch more breathing space between sequences… but that’s personal preference. Soon enough we get to the point where Bilbo is walking into Rivendell, and what had originally seemed simply hectically real starts (for me at least) to acquire additional depth.

“Now it is a strange thing,” Tolkien says in The Hobbit, “but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to: while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.” Tolkien gives Thorin’s company a couple of weeks in Rivendell, and it would have made me happier (from the fix-this-problem-in-the-typewriter side of the brain) if even just a few more days there had been implied in the theatrical release. This would have put right a whiff of the (canonically) too-coincidental that occurs here, and also would have allowed time to set up a signpost to Bilbo’s personal sense of wonder, longing, and the depth of his regret at leaving. A few shots of montage would be all it would have taken to deepen and fully establish this sense, so that later when (at a bad moment) Bilbo says that he wants to go back to Rivendell, it doesn’t sound quite so much as if he’s simply chickening out. (Out of context, I’ve seen some images that suggest this material may well appear in the Extended Edition that’s almost certain to come out on DVD in the fullness of time.)

In terms of other character business that might possibly have been augmented a bit—there is muttering from some quarters also about Gandalf being a little too wizard-ex-machina in this film. I can only shrug and say that the beats are canonical, and too much foreshadowing of Gandalf’s assets and abilities here strikes me as counterproductive: the dwarves are plainly as much in the dark about exactly what he can do as Bilbo is. One thing I do like in this: we get to see Gandalf be a bit of the swashbuckling swordsman with Glamdring (and that too is canonical).

In any case, as the film moves toward its climax, Bilbo’s character spends his time doing what served the book perfectly, and serves the film so too: endlessly Refusing The Call (as Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” structure would have it) and then hastily accepting it and Refusing The Next One… the refusals becoming briefer and briefer as Bilbo starts the process of growing into his greater place as the hero of this story as well as its heart. This is an arc that in my opinion needs three films for maximum believability: no one would have bought it in one film, and even two (to my way of thinking) would seem rushed. The main story arc, also — the return to the Lonely Mountain and the issue of dealing, both with the very intractable problem lying within it, and the other difficulties that will follow on that problem’s solution — also need time and space to stretch.  So I think the three-film decision is the right one, and that things are proceeding as they should; and I’m intensely happy for the opportunity to sit back and watch Jackson & Co. get on with it.

Here are some scattered highlights that stood out for me:

Really big things happening. One of the great delights of film for me has always been its ability to show you something bigger than you could have imagined until you saw it unfolding in front of you right that moment. Probably what initially whetted my appetite for this kind of thing would have been the look down into the heart of the ancient Krell machine in Forbidden Planet. I’m always alert now for scenes in film that do this well, and there are a couple of scenes like this in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. One in particular involves a part of The Hobbit that I had completely forgotten about. Peter Jackson imbues this sequence with such a sense of sheer size and elemental threat that I got completely lost in it for some moments, torn between “Where the hell did this come from, I don’t remember this?!” and “Wow!”

Ian McKellen, doing what Ian McKellen does. In particular his scenes with Galadriel have something about them that’s unusually sweet without being cloying. There are other moments when some expressions of McKellen’s are given particularly close attention by the camera, with very good reason. It’s impossible to tire of watching such effortless mastery.

Smaug…what we see of him. Not very much, which doesn’t surprise me: I no more expected any significant view of him in the How-Erebor-Fell sequence up top than I would have expected seeing much of the shark, early on, in Jaws. But I have been waiting a long time for a dragon attack that properly shows the dreadful power and violence that such an onslaught should entail, and boyoboy do we get a taste of that here.

…Finally: surely I must have a few niggles? Yeah, a few, but they come very much from the fannish end of things. Chief among these: I’m not entirely sure about the characterization of Radagast. He smacks to me more of a T. H. White-ish Merlin than anything else, and knowing what we know about the Istari, I’m not sure that the affect of dotty absent-mindedness (with its overtones of “what-in-Middle-Earth-have-you-been-smoking-old-boy”) really works. Not to mention his, uh, mode of transport, which struck me as a bit on the Pythonesque side. …Well, maybe—if we see more of him—he’ll grow on me. (After all, enough things seem to be growing on him…)

But by and large, I had very, very few other problems with this film, and I’m looking forward to seeing it again sometime over the next couple/few weeks. This is, to sum up, as good an adaptation of The Hobbit as we could have hoped for: or rather, the beginning of as good a one. And we’re not done yet.

Because now, of course, the wait begins for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. For some people (myself included) it won’t come soon enough: next Christmas already seems far away. But I think the wait—and the wait for Christmas 2014—will prove to have been worth it. Looking forward, a time will come, I think, when these three films and the three LotR films that preceded it will be seen as a double trilogy, inextricably interwoven. We’ll see.

 

…One last note. Before seeing the film I almost entirely avoided looking at the early reviews from the trades and so forth: not for fear of spoilers, but because reviewers too focused on the bottom line can often affect one’s impressions in ways that don’t count—specifically, assessment of how the visual and verbal storytelling holds up. I allowed myself only one exception. I went and had a look at the review written by our old friend and colleague, Munich-based screenwriter and media maven Torsten Dewi (aka Wortvogel). I trust Torsten’s judgment, and was curious to see what he had to say. Now, having seen the film, I’m not surprised to see that he and I are on the same page as regards a lot of issues; and I commend his review to your attention (in rough Google translation if you’re not German-speaking).

December 14, 2012
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Coming Cyber Monday (November 26, 2012): "Deep Wizardry" New Millennium Edition

by Diane Duane November 20, 2012

Next Monday is Cyber Monday, and starting at 0800 UK/Irish time that day, our Ebooks Direct store will be launching the New Millennium Edition of Book 2 of the Young Wizards series,  Deep Wizardry.

Like the NME of So You Want to Be a Wizard. this is a revised and updated version of Deep Wizardry, brought up to date for its new generation of 21st-century readers. Besides undergoing some general polishing and tidying, the novel has been revised to include modern technology more appropriate to the here and now than the original 1980s edition, and also continues the process of establishing a new, corrected timeline for the characters and events to carry the Young Wizards series forward into its new century.

There will also be a new cover for this edition by the magnificent Niko Geyer (who did the new cover for So You Want to Be a Wizard). Please note, however, that due to some temporary logistical problems at our Irish production end, that cover will not be available for the Cyber Monday launch. As soon as it is ready, purchasers will be notified so they can download copies of the book with the new cover.

The other two of the first four NMEs (High Wizardry and A Wizard Abroad) will be ready before Christmas: subscribers to the Ebooks Direct general notifications mailing list will be notified as soon as they’re ready. If you’d like to be notified when they’ll be available, please feel free to use the form below to sign up. All nine books in the Young Wizards series will be available in the New Millennium Editions by the end of the first quarter of 2013.

Also:  before Cyber Monday comes Black Friday, and the Ebooks Direct store will be celebrating that weekend as well. Subscribers to our store’s general notification mailing list will be offered special discounts for the Black Friday weekend. If you’re interested in availing yourself of these, you can use the form below to sign up: a mailing with the pertinent information will be going out within the next 48 hours.  (Just a general note about our list, by the way: we normally only send out a mailing once a month or so unless there’s a significant release. Naturally you can opt out of the list at any time. And equally naturally, we’ll never share your email address with anyone else. The very thought.)

Thanks in advance for your interest!

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November 20, 2012
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"Stealing the Elf-King's Roses:" new version posted

by Diane Duane June 12, 2012

This note is for those of you who’ve purchased and downloaded a copy of Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses: The Author’s Cut from the Ebooks Direct store in the last six months.

We’ve had a problem with this book in that some (but not all) readers have been displaying the book’s prologue as a single long vertical line of characters, which has been (understandably) a pain in the butt for all involved.

After trying to troubleshoot the problem piecemeal for a long time, and still having the material display correctly for some readers and not for others, we decided that sterner measures were needed. So over the weekend I pulled the book apart, completely reformatted it, reassembled it, and ran it through Sigil and Calibre again. The problem now seems to have been solved.

If you’ve got a copy of the book and it’s been giving you this problem, please go back to your the email that was sent to you by the system after your purchase and use the access link there to re-download the new version. If you have any difficulties, email Lee at the address from which the mail came.

(And if you don’t have a copy of the ebook, and want one, well, now you know you’ll be getting a version that doesn’t have any problems. So feel free.)

…Also, a note in passing: due to the very welcome arrival of an iPad in the household, we’ll shortly be producing iPad-specific versions of all the books in the store. This will take a week or so to complete: please bear with us.

Thanks!

June 12, 2012
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Now at the Ebooks Direct Store: Peter Morwood's "Greylady" and "Widowmaker"

by Diane Duane December 13, 2011
Clickable Image

Book 2 of the Clan Wars Book 1 of the Clan Wars

Now available at last in ebook format are Peter’s two prequels to his Horse Lords series. Now, of course the Horse Lords’ Book of Years purports to tell the true story behind the arrival of the Horse Lords in Alba. But as usual, when the victors write the histories, the truth has been known to suffer. Events that could prove embarrassing or even shameful to later generations get covered up, as do any suggestions that the heroic deeds of past generations might not have been so heroic after all…

Book 1, Greylady, begins to tell the real story of the arrival of the Horse Lords in the realm of Alba, and how they turned the Art Magic that they initially hated and feared into a terrible weapon that would first be used against the realms they conquered. It also tells of Bayrd al’Talvlyn, a young, landless and idealistic captain at the time of the Landing in Alba — and the distant ancestor of Aldric Talvalin — who suddenly finds himself catapulted into the murky political and magical maelstrom surrounding the subjugation of the native Albans. And in book 2, Widowmaker, the story continues into the time when the Art Magic begins to be turned to truly deadly purpose against the invaders from over sea. Bayrd al’Talvlyn struggles to preserve his new young clan from the enmity of the recently deposed sorcerer Kalarr cu Ruruc, while preserving his newly conquered land from those who want it, and those who want it back…

These books have been hard to find since they went out of print in the UK in the 1990s. They’ve never been in print in the US. But now they’re back. Greylady and Widowmaker are now available as ebooks in .mobi format (for the Kindle) and .ePub (for Sony Reader, Nook and the iPads and iPhones), joining the print editions of Widowmaker and Greylady presently available at Lulu.com.

Yes, they’re my husband’s books. Know what? They’re hot. And I’m not just saying that because I married the guy. They’re worth reading. Please go buy some. 🙂 Thank you.

(BTW: for a limited time we’ll be offering a 20% discount on everything in the store to celebrate the prequels’ release! Use the discount code CLANWARS at checkout. Info on how to use our discount codes at the store is here.)

December 13, 2011
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"The Misadventures of Prince Ivan": win a copy!

by Diane Duane November 20, 2011

Click the image for a larger version

 

My author’s copies of the new graphic novel arrived last week, so now I have some to give away as part of the celebrations surrounding the release of the new revised/expanded ebook edition of Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses: The Author’s Cut. (Which you might also like to look into if you know the book. Or you can find out more about the book here if you haven’t heard about it before. Also part of the celebration, for those interested: a very-limited-time-only 30% discount on the complete 9-volume Young Wizards International Edition ebook set. Details are here.)

In any case: on to the giveaway!

I’m going to mention this blog posting here and there over the next few days — on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr — and where you’ve seen it mentioned, you have a chance to win an autographed copy. I’ll be sending these out to three winners from each social network where the offer’s made.

Here’s what to do to be in with a chance to win:

If you’ve seen this mentioned on Twitter: The Twitter contest’s done. Congratulations to our winners, @anagenesis4E, @cshabsin and @cclemons!

If you saw this offer mentioned on G+: The contest’s over. Congrats to our winners:  John Davis, Rowan Fairgrove, Spider Boardman.

If you came here via Facebook: Your contest’s done. Congratulations to the winners: Murray J. Anderson, Pat Steed, Joan Oakland.

If you saw this offer on Tumblr: The Tumblr contest’s over. Congratulations to the winners: kayloulee, ussrosalind, falldiewakefly.

Here’s what you’ll be getting!

Once upon a time, there lived a prince…

But not your ordinary prince with some run-of-the-mill royal destiny. When Ivan’s three sisters are married off to enchanted princes and he goes off in search of his own true love, he finds himself matched up with the sorceress and warrior maiden Marya Morevna, fairest princess in all the Russias. Shortly the two of them are navigating the emotional “white water” of one of the world’s more traumatic fairy tales — but not without help, not without high hopes of a happy ending, and not without a lot of funny stuff along the way.

This story was serialized in Eclipse’s groundbreaking fantasy comic The Dreamery in the late 1980s, and its parts have now been brought together for the first time in graphic novel format. Featuring artwork by the fabulous Sherlock, the graphic novel also contains a new final section written for this edition — “Prince Ivan and the Bachelor Parties of Doom.”

Order now and start preparing yourself to make the acquaintance of the Little Humpbacked Horse, who just can’t get enough junk food… the Raven Prince who knows the ins and outs of the world’s strangest military equipment catalog… the terrible secret in the cellar of Marya Morevna’s palace… a whole heap of the most opinionated talking animals you’ll ever meet… and an final event that starts out with “vodka and strategy games” and ends in the world’s biggest fairytale smackdown!

 

 

Click for larger: A Visit to the Boyars' Delight Pizza Pavilion

 

THE MISADVENTURES OF PRINCE IVAN
A graphic novel by Diane Duane
Art by Sherlock
104 pages, paperback, 5.5″ x 7.75″
ISBN: 978-1-936404-01-8
Price: $9.99
Published by About Comics

 

 

November 20, 2011
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"Stealing the Elf-King's Roses: the Author's Cut" in the Ebooks Direct Store

by Diane Duane November 18, 2011

It’s been in the works for a good while now, so it’s a pleasure to announce that the new revised ebook edition of Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses — which anticipated CSI-style forensic drama and introduced it for the first time into an SF/fantasy setting — is now available in the Ebooks Direct store.

The new edition of Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses comes with an afterword that talks about the evolution of the book, and also with the worldbuilding notes that set up the histories of the sheaf of universes where the story’s set.

From the afterword:

As usual, when you look at a work almost ten years after you’ve written it, you find things that the almost-ten-years-on writer really wants to fix. There are little edits all through this edition, and some material that was edited out in the original edition has been restored; but in particular, the last few chapters have been rewritten to try to clarify exactly what the heck is going on.

Previous readers of my work will know that I have no trouble at all playing Cosmic Conkers – i.e., banging two universes together and seeing which one breaks first — but this situation was big and complex even by my standards.  I hope the revisions satisfy both old readers returning to a favorite work, and new ones reading it for the first time. (In particular, some readers have mentioned that they’ve never read the book because the original cover gave them the idea it was a romance. I hope the new cover will have remedied this.)

…Every now and then people ask me when I’m going to do another book in this worldset. Until now the answer had been, “I’m not sure where else I can go with this.” Now, though, after the revision, I begin to see some ways forward. We’ll see how this realization plays out over the next year or so.

— While it’s always dangerous to ask a writer what his or her favorite book is, I have to admit to having a real soft spot for this one — maybe because I spent more time working on the project than on almost any other in my career: so I’m delighted to be able to relaunch it now, in this new and improved version, in e-format. You can read an excerpt from an early chapter here, if you like.

Right now the book is available in the two main ebook formats: .ePub (for the Nook, iPad and Sony Reader) and .mobi (for the Kindle and all MobiPocket-friendly readers). And people who have devices that use both formats can also pick it up in a bundled download that contains both the .ePub and the .mobi files.  We’ll be adding more formats to the selection at the Ebooks Direct store over the next week or so, and in mid-December we’ll be launching the book in the Kindle Store at Amazon and other online facilities.

Enjoy, all!

November 18, 2011
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WritingYoung Wizards

The new Young Wizards Hallowe'en novelette: read it for UNICEF!

by Diane Duane October 29, 2011

ETA, November 1 — Contributors: You beat our goal of USD $1000 (by pushing the contribution total up to more than $1100)! THANK YOU so much for your help — you’ve made a huge difference!

“Not On My Patch” is now available at the Ebooks Direct store in all the major formats. All proceeds from the story will continue to go to UNICEF.

I love Hallowe’en. (Or Halloween. I prefer it with the apostrophe.)

I was always an enthusiastic Trick-or-Treater when I was little. It would have been, I think, the golden age of that cultural phenomenon in the US —  a time before anyone had ever thought of anything like razor blades  in apples (or the rumors of them), a time when no one was yet so terrified that you’d be snatched by some stranger that most kids were allowed free run during their play time, and therefore no one was unduly disturbed by the idea that you might be walking around in the dark in ones or twos at age seven or eight or nine;  a time when mostly parents hadn’t yet learned the art of depriving you of the night’s loot, but were content to leave it with you, and let you discover the dubious delight (rarely repeated) of making yourself sick by overindulgence; a time when very few people seeing you wearing a witch costume thought that you were seriously advocating devil worship.

Particularly I remember doing the “Trick or Treat for UNICEF” thing. We were shown how to take the little waxed paper milk containers of the time — my yearsmates will probably remember them, the ones with the little stapled-on pop tops — and wrap these in the orange and black paper labels that the UNICEF people sent our school. We would go around collecting pennies and nickels and dimes for UNICEF while we were trick-or-treating, and hand the cash over to our teachers, on November 1st, to be sent back to UNICEF to help children in other countries have things we took for granted in the New York suburbs in the late ’50s and early ’60’s — like clean water, and vaccination against polio and measles.

So it was a little weird, the other day, to discover that UNICEF’s “Trick or Treat for Halloween” campaign is just a year older than I am. When I realized that, I thought, “I ought to do something special for these guys.”

And so I offer you “Not On My Patch.” At a shade more than 14,000 words, it is the longest Young Wizards-universe  short work to date (both “Uptown Local” and “Theobroma” are way shorter). (Continuity geeks: “Not On My Patch” takes place after the events of The Big Meow and A Wizard of Mars.) I’m inviting you, between now and the end of Hallowe’en in the USA, to make a contribution of more than USD $5.00 to UNICEF for the right to be one of the first to read this story. Here’s the formal pitch:

“Not On My Patch” is the first of a series of planned YW short stories scheduled to be published together in late 2012 in a one-story-per-month anthology entitled The Wizards’ Year.

We’re offering “Not On My Patch” to advance readers this year as part of an effort to help UNICEF celebrate the 60th anniversary of its annual Halloween “Trick or Treat for UNICEF” campaign.

“Not On My Patch” is now available for reading on the Young Wizards website! If you want to read it, here’s what you need to do:

Go to DD’s donations page at the UNICEF USA website and make a donation of USD $5.00 or more directly to Trick or Treat for UNICEF. (Donors from outside the USA: please note that the “State” dropdown has a “none” option at the very bottom of the state list. Choose that so that the form will allow you to fill in other info and complete the donation. Don’t forget to change the country dropdown, too.)

Once you’ve donated: the UNICEF USA website will send you an email confirming your donation. When you receive it, just forward a copy of it to this email address:

youngwizards4unicef@gmail.com

We’ll immediately send you back a link to a web page where you can read the story or download an e-reader-friendly file (.ePub / Sony Reader & Nook, .mobi / Kindle, and .lit / Microsoft Reader formats). The email will also contain a password that will enable you to open the page.  (E-reader users: we had upload difficulties due to local network congestion [i.e., all of Ireland is out celebrating Hallowe’en and YouTubing it to each other], but links to the files are now available on the story page.)

False virus alert warning: Some folks have noted that their virus scanners have been taking exception to the anti-cut-and-paste encryption that’s been applied to the story’s text, or to the simple fact that the story appears in a frame. If you run into this problem, please email Lee the Web Lady and we will arrange to have a PDF sent to you.

Until Halloween 2011 is over in the USA (at 00:01 Hawaiian Standard Time on November 1st), only direct donors to UNICEF at DD’s UNICEF USA page were able to read the story. But as of November 1st, “Not On My Patch” is available at DD’s online Ebooks Direct store, where all proceeds from the story will continue to be donated to UNICEF. The story will continue to be available until November 30th, at which time it will be withdrawn and will not be available again until it appears as the October story in the anthology The Wizards’ Year in late 2012.

Thanks for investigating our plan to help make a difference in the 60th birthday of the “Trick or Treat for UNICEF” campaign!

...So there we go. Friends, please help! …And thank you.  🙂

October 29, 2011
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ebooksKindleWritingYoung Wizards

Finally: all Young Wizards novels available in International Edition ebooks!

by Diane Duane June 17, 2011

It’s taken a while, but it’s so super to be able to announce that at last readers outside the US and Canada can acquire all the Young Wizards books in ebook form.

Previously only North American readers had access to the whole series in e-format (and even that took a while, due to some hiccups at the publisher). But now all nine books will be universally available, and I can turn my attention to other things — like the upcoming publication of the New Millennium editions of the first four books.

(One note about the latter: due to production issues at both my end and the cover artist’s, the pub date for the New Millennium edition of So You Want to Be a Wizard has been kicked into mid-July. More about this in another posting.)

With all the books now in clean electronic editions, I can now also start the business of getting all of them set in type as  POD hard copy editions, for those international readers who prefer a paper book to the electronic sort. This process will take several more months to complete, at least, as there’s new book work going on around here alongside the business of improving the availability of the old.

But at least these guys are dealt with now and are available DRM-free in .ePub (Nook, iPad) and .mobi (Kindle) formats.  Enjoy, all! ETA: Apologies to all who tried to get in last night and couldn’t due to a brief flash of #neilwebfail after @neilhimself Tweeted the link to this page. Also: if you’re in the US or Canada and looking for ebook versions of the YW novels, try the Ebooks page at YoungWizards.com: it has all the links you’ll need for access to the books via Amazon.com or Kobo.com.

 

Cover thumbnail for Deep Wizardry High Wizardry Int'l Edition A Wizard Abroad Int'l Edition
Cover thumbnail for Wizard's Dilemma Intl Edition Cover thumbnail for A Wizard Alone Intl edition Cover thumbnail for Wizard's Holiday Intl edition Cover thumbnail for Wizards at War Cover thumbnail for A Wizard of Mars

 

 

 

 

June 17, 2011
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Film and TV

Game of Thrones, episode 1

by Diane Duane April 18, 2011
Kings' Landing

Well, it’s gorgeous.

Everything’s very handsomely art-directed and designed; the money (as they say) is on the screen where you can see it. Always a good sign. Though there’s no point in overstating the importance of the size of the budget. Our Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King, for example, hour for hour, cost more ($24 million for four hours). What matters is what you do with the money.

The point here is that the producers have plainly spent their budget carefully, and gotten good value for it — spending time and care on design, and in taking the cameras to places not so often used for shooting fantasy film. (P. and I immediately started analyzing what we saw to try to work out which scenes might have been shot in Northern Ireland.)

As for the story, my main interest is in experiencing it without having any other background info except what’s been apparent from the months-long hype that’s preceded the first episode over here via Sky. (No, I haven’t read the books, even though George is an old buddy from way-back-when East Coast SF fandom. Much as I might like to have read all the books of all the writers I know, if I tried it I’d never get anything done around here. …But I’ll probably start reading George’s series after the miniseries is finished).

So far it looks like fun. I think I’m seeing signs of things that are going to start happening: we’ll see if I’m right. This is where not having read the books pays off. Now I can just kick back and have fun watching the plot unfold, while amusing myself with the eternally fascinating game of trying to second-guess a fellow writer and the people who adapted his books.

April 18, 2011
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Film and TVMediaNewsWriting

CSI Ankh-Morpork

by Diane Duane March 22, 2011

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.

March 22, 2011
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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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