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.)
Frequent flyers are being offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become an astronaut under a newly launched scheme by Virgin Atlantic.
Members of its Flying Club loyalty programme can now convert their earthly miles into 'space miles' and earn themselves a trip beyond the upper atmosphere to join the 100-Mile High Club.
Members will need to earn two million miles on Virgin flights to be able to redeem them for a trip with Virgin Galactic into space. The adventure includes the three-day Virgin Galactic Experience, which will ensure that future astronauts can savour each second of their space flight. It will include 'g' acclimatisation, a flight in the White Knight spacecraft, and will take place in the US at the Virgin Galactic Spaceport. To date, there have been only 444 astronauts, but with the launch of commercial flights, the figure is expected to grow to many thousands.
Initially, flights will cost $200,000 per person but Virgin Galactic expects prices to fall over time.
All I want to know now is: (a) Can you move miles over from other airlines? (b) If not, when will Continental or Swiss take on Virgin as a codeshare partner? :)
posted by Diane: 1/31/2006 11:33:00 AM | link to this post
Yet, if true, is this one of those "the-biter-bit" situations? Because it says a little further down --
She says he told her he'd written a call-girl character into "The West Wing."
"I wrote it because (I'm serious about this) I've always remembered the way you came over to my apartment," according to the E-mail she reproduces. "I remember looking at you and thinking: I don't understand why this isn't my girlfriend."
Despite that note, she feels ripped off. "Almost every time we were together in his penthouse, he asked me to tell him in minute-per-minute detail about my life as a call girl. ...Who knew then he was gathering information?"
...I feel sorry for them both, in a way. And wonder (in as gentle a tone-of-mind as possible) which of them was dumber about this -- him, for not realizing how likely this relationship was to bite him in the butt some day (as he certainly anticipated it would come back to bite Sam in the butt on TWW)?...or her, for not realizing (as his conversation even about other subjects probably was suggesting about every five minutes) that just about everything you say in front of a writer is likely to go into the creative pot?
(sigh...)
posted by Diane: 1/30/2006 10:16:00 AM | link to this post
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Pig stuff
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.
posted by Diane: 1/28/2006 04:14:00 PM | link to this post
Transcendent Pig redux: T-shirts ready later today
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.
posted by Diane: 1/28/2006 09:16:00 AM | link to this post
Friday, January 27, 2006
"If there is life on Mars, the Dutch will find it."
(And to my absolute delight, the ad comes in two versions. I'd only seen the bottled version before. The one at humour.com is draft.) :)
posted by Diane: 1/27/2006 09:14:00 PM | link to this post
A case of the fours
...I was starting to wonder why OOA was all of a sudden getting all these referrals from Joey's blog. The far-famed Accordion Guy has tagged me for a list-of-four meme.
Peter's incomparable goulasch: never the same twice, and better every time. (Took that picture about twenty minutes ago: as soon as I'm done here, I get to go make dumplings for it.)
In springtime, the gitzi (that's deep-fried kid nuggets, for the rest of you. ...Oh, come on, not that kind of nuggets! Tsk.) at Kaiser's Reblaube in Zürich
On the Moon, in a spacesuit...looking down. This is about the right time of month for that...
In the picture to the right. (Well, in the picture to the right again.) Summer solstice of 2003, in the hot-spring-fed infinity pool at the Hotel Source des Alpes in Leukerbad, looking up at the Gemmiwand mountain-wall, the week after we turned in the first-draft screenplay for Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King. It was a sublimely happy time: perfect weather, the best company, great and genuine relaxation...
Zürich HB (see also this morning shot), waiting to catch a train to...just about anywhere, really. Budapest might be nice this time of year. Meanwhile, let's go over to Brasserie Federal and have a Calanda Brau while we decide...
Right here, at the desk, when the phone rings and it's my agent telling me that the TV series has been greenlighted.
Sorry that the article requires a subscription -- "Oprah Winfrey Takes a Guest to the Television Woodshed", they title it...
It was indeed amazing television. James Frey -- the truculent tough guy who used to compare himself to Hemingway -- now sat like a boy in detention, gloomily taking his licks from the nation's headmistress until he seemed to whimper. Sure, Mr. Frey was supposed to have been humbled already, brought low by the grievous sins he chronicled in "A Million Little Pieces," his best-selling creative nonfiction memoir novel of drug addiction. Oh, but that book's phony "hitting bottom" was nothing compared to the chastening -- the emasculation, really-- that he received yesterday on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."
Just like back in the days when her guests were abusers and sexual deviants, Ms. Winfrey came for vengeance — and vengeance on behalf of the poor, the voiceless and the women above all, who get conned and defrauded and violated by men who think they're so bad. But because Ms. Winfrey never sounds just one note, she turned in an uncanny performance, modulating her aggression with such finesse that she seemed to be the penitent one, and not the one with the whip hand...
Sounds memorable. And sounds pretty grim. But Frey brought it on himself...
posted by Diane: 1/27/2006 08:08:00 AM | link to this post
I see I've been tagged
I wondered why all those referrals from Joey's weblog were showing up over here! The far-famed Accordion Guy has tagged me to do a list-of-four-things meme.
I started it, but (for some reason) couldn't get into Blogger for much of this evening, so the list is downstairs in the other computer, saved as plain old HTML on the desktop. I'll post it tomorrow.
posted by Diane: 1/27/2006 12:19:00 AM | link to this post
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Today's weird headline
I collect these things, in a desultory fashion. This isn't quite up to the level of my all-time favorite ("Headless Body in Topless Bar"), but it's in the running. (Ouch, did I really just say that?...)
[State Trooper Don] Newcomb took the driver to the patrol car, then chased the passenger, eventually kicking him from behind. After falling to the ground, the passenger threw both of his legs at Newcomb, the report says. One hit the trooper in the chest.
(Insert the predictable joke about your right to bear legs [here.])
posted by Diane: 1/26/2006 10:31:00 AM | link to this post
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
The best walk-on in "Wizards at War..."
If you ask me: but then I'm biased.
It's a humanoid, Nita thought, as the figure came toward them through the smoke. What's that hanging off its head? Humanoids don't usually have tentacles there. And it doesn't look like it's armed.
It wasn't a very big humanoid, either. It was only a little bigger than Nita. As it came through the smoke, Nita could have sworn it was actually human -- the skin color was one of the possible ones, the eyes and other dimly-seen features seemed to be in the right places, and the clothes -- Jeez, will you look at those, Nita thought at the sight of the cropped black T-shirt, the cargo pants in a truly eye-jangling hot-pink-and-green floral print, and the strappy, high pink boots. And the "tentacle" wasn't a tentacle at all, but, hanging down in front of one shoulder, a single long, thick, dark --
Thanks, Mad!!
posted by Diane: 1/25/2006 10:28:00 PM | link to this post
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Transcendent Pig stuff
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.)
posted by Diane: 1/24/2006 02:49:00 PM | link to this post
What happens to Leo
A little more about the details of what's going to happen with The West Wing:
Spencer's absence will be explained by the death of his character -- a plot development that sent West Wing writers scurrying to their constitutional law textbooks. Spencer's character McGarry was Santos' vice presidential running mate, and the writers had to figure out what happens when a vice presidential candidate dies. The answer is, nobody's quite sure.
''There's certainly no constitutional provision with how to deal with the death of a vice presidential candidate during the electoral cycle,'' said Wells.
The closest thing they could find was the 1972 election, when Thomas Eagleton, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, was driven off the ticket of George McGovern by disclosures that he'd undergone electroshock therapy. In that case, several months before Election Day, the Democratic National Committee chose a replacement.
But in a case so close to the election that ballots can't be reprinted, Wells said, the politicians that West Wing writers consulted said the candidate would probably be wise to wait until after the vote to name a replacement, then ask Congress to confirm him under the provisions of the 25th Amendment, which governs presidential succession.
Makes perfect sense. It's still going to be a sad set of events both in the fictional sense and the real-world one: John Spencer was such a tremendous actor... Also interesting to hear that they actually considered ending WW early when he died.
posted by Diane: 1/24/2006 09:50:00 AM | link to this post
...The statement did cause a great deal of excitement at the time, and Hamlin - perhaps not surprisingly - argues that Gates was correct. "I won't say spam is dead, but we can say spam is contained," Hamlin said. "If you use the latest anti-spam technologies and educate yourself on how to use them, you should not have a problem."
Contained? Contained??? He hasn't seen my spam box lately, that's for sure... (mutter)
It's mostly investment and stock spam this week. but the usual p@n!s spam is there as well. Scads and scads of it. (eyeroll)
posted by Diane: 1/24/2006 08:55:00 AM | link to this post
Mr Pamuk’s lawyer said the writer’s trial had been abandoned after a court decided that it could not hear the case after a political decision that it should not be pursued.
Others will doubtless discern the EU's pressure being brought to bear as regards this issue. Maybe so. In any case...the right result. Shame it took so long.
posted by Diane: 1/23/2006 12:14:00 PM | link to this post
The election will be covered on April 2 and 9 and viewers will know by the end of the latter episode whether the presidential candidate played by Jimmy Smits or Alan Alda won the election -- a decision the producers "have only really in the last couple days made," at the end of "quite a brawl," Wells told critics at the very last session of Winter TV Press Tour 2006.
The story goes on to say that the producers are doing something I rather hoped they'd do: both killing John Spencer's character, Leo, and keeping in the continuity the last work he did before he died. It just somehow seems...more right this way, to me at least.
(sigh) It was great TV. Less so when Aaron Sorkin wasn't working on it: but great TV nonetheless.
posted by Diane: 1/23/2006 09:40:00 AM | link to this post
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Ferrofluid sculptures
I could watch this for hours: it's a shame the video is so brief.
Catwoman-drawing memes don't do anything in particular for me. But now there's a Green Lantern-drawing meme going around. That's a whole 'nother story.
...And so is this one. I can't find my copy of the comic it appeared in: it's been lost after many moves. But I stumbled across the original file the other day.
In honor of the meme, therefore (since I can't draw):
(And I love John Bellairs too, though The Face in the Frost is more my cup of tea. What a wonderfully freaky book.)
posted by Diane: 1/22/2006 07:23:00 PM | link to this post
Incognito mayor catches naughty cablecar conductors
...At one point, he even kept two recycling bins in the trunk of his town car so he could scoop up litter he spotted while driving from meeting to meeting.
But apparently some people, like the Chief of Police, are less than impressed with this whole civic-minded thing (which apparently came to include the mayor getting irate about all the drug dealers he kept seeing when jogging through the Tenderloin).
"With all due respect, Mr. Mayor, we could put a cop on every corner, and the drug dealers would just deal in between them,'' Delagnes said. "But if you are really tired of seeing drug dealers, there is one solution I could suggest."
"What's that?'' the mayor asked.
"Try jogging somewhere else."
Just no pleasing some people...
posted by Diane: 1/22/2006 12:08:00 PM | link to this post
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Jansson's Temptation
I have fine potatoes, ripe potatoes! Will your Lordship please to taste a potato? 'Twill advance your wither'd state, fill your honour full of noble itches. From The Loyal Subject by John Fletcher
(heh) That Fletcher. Always digging you in the ribs with one elbow, going nudge-nudge-wink-wink in the Pythonesque manner. He was of course referring to the early rep potatoes had of being an aphrodisiac.
Never mind that. I've never made this dish before -- one of those archetypal cold-weather dishes. It's essentially potatoes (matchsticked / julienned), anchovies, and cream, with some breadcrumbs on top to make a nice crust. We'll see how it comes out. I'll take some pictures, and if one or two come out well, I'll post them.
While it's baking, I'll put a couple of things up in the eBay store. This house is full of galleys and manuscripts: I don't see why interested parties shouldn't have them.
(BTW, apparently there's some way to generate an RSS feed of the store's contents and changes. I'm still struggling with figuring this out...as soon as I do, I'll put the link up in the central column of the weblog under the store's link.)
posted by Diane: 1/21/2006 06:45:00 PM | link to this post
Out there in the buddy-o-sphere
The blogroll is full of links to acquaintances of mine, friends, buddies past and present, and just plain folks I know. Here are some news headlines:
Michael Reaves is co-writing the new "Star Trek: New Voyages" episode starring George Takei as Sulu.*
C.J. Cherryh continues to work on her ice skating and installs a new reef tank
Bob Greenberger goes job-hunting (Someone please hire him quick, OK? You're letting one of comics' great talents just sit there, and there's no reason for it. You ask me, his firing was unwarranted.)
The news about Dave Stewart's tumor is better than we were afraid it might be, thank God
Charlie Stross gets cranky about ads and spam (and why not?)
Bruce Willis is offering $1 million for info leading to bin Laden's arrest (I don't know Bruce, but this was on Joey's blog and I just had to link to it... Someone commented, "In the old days, Bruce would just have hunted Osama down himself...")
I love it when Ian gets annoyed. I look forward to being able to take him and Tessa and baby Lucy out to dinner some time so I can hear it live, up-close and personal.
posted by Diane: 1/21/2006 12:15:00 PM | link to this post
Then Jimmy Joe Jenkins's DNA proved he was the primary descendent of the translators of the King James Version of the Bible. At first, Jimmy was satisfied with ten percent of the price of every KJV sold and 10 percent of every collection plate passed by any church that used the KJV. But when some churches switched to newer translations, Jimmy sicced his lawyers on all translations based on the KJV. That got him a cut of every Bible and every Christian service in English. Some translators claimed their work was based on older versions and should therefore be exempt, but none of them could afford to fight Jimmy in court.
So the churches grumbled and paid Jimmy his tithe, except for the Mormons, Christian Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists, Quakers, and Unitarian Universalists. Jimmy said their teachings hurt the commercial value of his property and refused to let them use the Bible. All of those groups dissolved, except for the Unitarian Universalists, who didn't notice a change...
(snicker)
In other news: thanks to Moirla, who unwittingly handed me the title for the YW short story I'm working on at the moment: "Source Material."
(This story will be going in an anthology of wizards-in-business stories coming out next year. More data as it becomes available.)
posted by Diane: 1/20/2006 12:44:00 PM | link to this post
Hotel Babylon
I don't usually do TV reviews, but I really enjoyed "Hotel Babylon"'s BBC premiere last night. A decent break out of the starter's gate -- characters it was possible to empathize with / lock into quickly (with the necessary touches of ambvalence in background or motivation here and there), and with camera work out of "CSI" by "Vegas", though those particular idioms not overdone. A nice piece of work: it'll be fun to see where this goes.
posted by Diane: 1/20/2006 06:15:00 AM | link to this post
Those of you who've got multiple purchases and are contemplating others (or are sharing shipping with another buyer), please make sure you drop me a message via myEbay (or whatever) so that I know to hold onto whatever you bought until all the buying's over. No point in you paying more for postage than necessary.
...Images will be going up tomorrow for those who want to see pictures. Also I'll add a few extra things -- some copies of Wizards at War and a couple of unusual things.
Thanks again!
posted by Diane: 1/19/2006 10:58:00 PM | link to this post
Book sale
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!
posted by Diane: 1/19/2006 12:45:00 PM | link to this post
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
For Google Earth: Young Wizards "Places of Interest" placemarks
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!
posted by Diane: 1/18/2006 12:12:00 PM | link to this post
a committee man who worked most effectively through back channels. With equal gusto he preached temperance and wrote drinking songs. He practiced frugality only, he admitted, so long as it was absolutely necessary.
...His legacy is not a political philosophy but a protean existence, act after act of bold curiosity, brash risk-taking, raw ingenuity. Once those constituted a definition of the American character. Today they would more likely be termed "hypomania," a fair diagnosis for any individual who manages single-handedly to found a library, fire company, police force, hospital, university, insurance company, sanitation department and militia.
...A materialistic age returns him to his glory, none more so than our overachieving own. His passions are ours: smarts, self-improvement, social welfare and better cell phone reception for all.
Happy Birthday (a day late), Ben.
posted by Diane: 1/18/2006 08:51:00 AM | link to this post
Some of the fan mail that comes in is a shade less polite than the rest. Here's today's example...
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.)
posted by Diane: 1/17/2006 01:53:00 PM | link to this post
1418 Chinese world map: a scam, or real? The arguments begin
The Chinese map, which was drawn in 1763 but claims to be a reproduction of an ancient map dated 1418, presents the world as a globe with all the major continents rendered with an exactitude that European maps did not have for another century and a half, after Columbus, Da Gama, Magellan, Dias and others had completed their renowned explorations.
I'm something of a map freak, and will be watching this with interest...
posted by Diane: 1/17/2006 11:02:00 AM | link to this post
"Experiments we carried out have demonstrated that several weeks after vaccination the birds developed an intensive immunity that should prevent them from falling ill. And it is guaranteed that this poultry will not fall ill..."
Must be nice to be so certain after only three weeks, and what has to be a fairly short testing cycle. Going to be interesting to see how this develops...
Apropos of absolutely nothing: a terrific fried chicken method
I was tidying up some links in the my note storage today (I use OnFolio for this, and like it a lot) and, as usual, I discovered some things that had been misfiled. What this fried chicken method was doing in with the Martian stuff, I can't imagine. Anyway, it works really well: this is the only version I know that produces a really crunchy crust while leaving the chicken moist and tender. (Don't let the lard and clarified butter scare you off. The crust absorbs very little.)
(BTW, this is the same method that appeared in the New York Times last summer, but someone seems to have exported it to this site, probably to get around the Times's login requirements.)
posted by Diane: 1/16/2006 02:32:00 PM | link to this post
This appeared in a for-sale version on BoingBoing a couple of years ago; but Peter came across a do-it-yourself version of it today. With this gadget, you can use a full bottle of soda, water, what have you, as an impromptu tripod for your camera.
If you dare. ;)
posted by Diane: 1/14/2006 06:12:00 PM | link to this post
Go buy this woman's artwork
I'm not kidding.
(Beware: slight orc-ish nudity.) The orcish poet Urrshahurruk-gah (Celadon Toadstool) was famed throughout the fifty-seven tribes for the quality of her poetry, and also for that time she put a mace through that one guy's head, while shouting haiku. Her martial poetry was of course the most popular, including such works as "Warpig Sonnets" and "Ode to a Dagger Stuck In Somebody's Eye," which dealt with the perennial themes of melee and mayhem popular among orcs. But many believe that her finest work were her more delicate and introspective pieces, including "Reflections Seen In The Blood Of My Enemies," and the elegant "Poem for Mushrooms Growing From The Skull Of A Dead Elf."
It was perhaps not entirely politic for Celadon to recite that last piece at an elvish court during a rare cultural exchange program between warring kingdoms, but everyone agreed much later that it had helped to open a really honest dialogue, and there hadn't been all THAT many casualties, and you couldn't expect artists to compromise about these things, after all.
The image of the duckbilled haggis down at the bottom of the page also gives me pause.
...Apparently it's a haggis-hunt contest sponsored by the Scotsman newspaper. There are prizes (a stay at Gleneagles, whisky, etc. You just have to spend all day looking at their HaggisCams and waiting to spot a haggis.
"I'm not making this up, you know..."
posted by Diane: 1/14/2006 10:26:00 AM | link to this post
Friday, January 13, 2006
Now online at the British Museum's website: a thematic catalogue of Mozart
The British Museum has added something new to the "Turning The Pages" site: a Shockwavy virtual book of Mozart's "thematic catalogue", with 75 audio excerpts.
Also available on the same page: Mercator's first atlas of Europe, and excerpts from the Sherborne Missal, the Lindisfarne Gospels, Baybars' Qur'an, and da Vinci's notebooks.
posted by Diane: 1/13/2006 06:57:00 PM | link to this post
I'm going to be changing the OOA layout a little here and there over the next couple/few days, so if things start to look weird, please bear with me. They'll settle down shortly.
posted by Diane: 1/13/2006 01:27:00 PM | link to this post
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Corrected
The problem with e-Junkie which would have asked readers for $599.00 for each copy of the MS Reader version of A Wind from the South.
(I think moderately well of my work, but, guys, not THAT well.) ;)
posted by Diane: 1/12/2006 10:54:00 PM | link to this post
"A Wind from the South" Microsoft Reader version now ready for download
It took some tweaking, but it's finally ready -- see the sidebar at the Raetian Tales blog for the purchase link.
This version also contains (in an appendix) a set of maps illustrating Mariarta's travels. (The .PDF version will also shortly be upgraded to include these: everyone who's purchased a copy of the book in that format will receive an upgraded version as soon as it's ready.)
Thanks again to the amiable "test-drivers" who ran the original .LIT file through its paces! You'll all be receiving a free copy of the final version shortly.
posted by Diane: 1/12/2006 04:14:00 PM | link to this post
One of the great Brunhildes departs
Not much to say about this except that it's sad to lose so un-diva-like a presence from the artform that invented the word.
Another legendary moment came after one of her frequent battle-of-the-high-note contests with tenor Franco Corelli during the second-act duet from Turandot. Enraged that no matter how hard he tried she could hold onto the climactic high C longer than he could, Corelli apparently got his revenge during their third-act love scene by biting her on the neck instead of kissing her. Ms. Nilsson is said to have telephoned [Metropolitan Opera general manager Rudolf] Bing to cancel her next performance with the explanation, "I have rabies."
And another favorite:
Once asked what was the chief requirement for singing the role of Isolde, she replied: "Comfortable shoes."
For those of you who've been reading "A Wind from the South": a Google Earth placemarks file
I've been reworking the basic map that will be coming with future e-versions of A Wind from the South. It'll be a while before it's ready, though, so here's a stopgap measure.
For those readers who use Google Earth, I've uploaded a basic placemarks file that shows the major (and minor) locations involved in the book. You can download the file at this link.
(And yes, I'm looking into doing something similar for A Wizard of Mars. We'll see how that goes.)
posted by Diane: 1/11/2006 05:23:00 PM | link to this post
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
In the comments
Re the He-Man/She-Ra Christmas Special: Peter Murray (stalwart keeper of the YW Timeline) says, "According to IMDB, Bob Forward and Don Heckman wrote it. But is that reliable? I don't know."
Sounds so to me. Bob would have just been getting started in writing at that point: and this would have been happening just before Filmation (lamentably) shut down. Bob quickly established himself as a writer / story editor of great skill -- I watched with great pleasure what he did with X-Men: Evolution and Kong: the Animated Series. After a while, one story editor can start to hear another's "tone of voice" even through other writers' scripts. Bob's voice is very sure. ...Don's is a name I don't recognize: his work at Filmation seems to be kind of occasional.
Serge says: "There's one thing I was wondering about... Why was a decision made to go for what was the source of Wagner's Ring Cycle? I seem to remember that there had once been talk about Wolfgang Petersen wanting to adapt Wagner's tale for a TV mini-series."
And indeed he was involved in the early stages of the project -- but he then became very busy with "Perfect Storm" and then bowed out entirely to devote his attention to "Troy". When that happened, the project wound up getting restructured to suit another studio (Columbia).
But the German networks had long wanted to see a TV version of what has for many years been considered to be the greatest of the German epics. I admit that it took me by surprise when they hired a Northern Irish guy and an American woman to write it. But we were standing at the right place at the right time with our intentions to do the work clearly declared. The rest just sort of ... followed ... though there were many strange and sometimes hysterical episodes in between. Either way, the thing won the German TV industry's DIVA award for best TV movie of 2004...and we pulled down a 30+ share (i.e., nearly one out of every three Germans watched the series: the ratings were even higher elsewhere in central Europe) ... so we must have done something right.
Peter and I are of course both clear that what we did isn't the pure Nibelungenlied... even if you could figure out what that was, as there are about six different versions of the story, and a number of ancillary but not-really-part-of-the-poem myths. Any version of this epic brought to the screen is going to be the result of a long, long series of compromises. We made the best compromises we could, under the circumstances. (And, by the way, nothing positive enough can possibly be said about our friends and production partners at Tandem Communications, who were a solid support to us and a never-ending help in times of craziness all through the five years we worked together on this thing.)
Jenny says: "Dear God, is there a special department that comes up with dodgy sounding names for this series?"
(grin) Each local market comes up with the one it likes the best. We think of it as The Ring of the Nibelungs, and who cares what anyone says? :) But there are many many markets -- something like ninety -- who will be airing it in the next year or so, and I'd bet there must be fifty names. As for Channel Four, I have no idea what was on their minds. (Sometimes we had cause to wonder about this particularly hard, when the "notes" on a given draft came in...) Whatever: they aired it, finally. (Only fair, since they helped finance it.)
posted by Diane: 1/10/2006 11:03:00 PM | link to this post
Head. CLUTCH.
Okay, the odds are heavily in my favor that somebody I know wrote this. Who's the guilty party??
(grin) I know we all have to do, uh, strange things to feed our cats...but...but...
(sigh) Then again, I'm one of those who knows how, when Lou Scheimer stood in your office door and said, "I need it Tuesday!!", and after him, Art Nadel put his head in and said, "Oh, come on, it won't be that bad.." ...sometimes you just did it. Whatever it was.
(sigh) Ah, those wild & crazy days at Filmation...
posted by Diane: 1/10/2006 10:32:00 AM | link to this post
So the "Dark Kingdom" PR begins
And now we have an exact airing date: March 27-28.
"'Dark Kingdom' is an action-packed, visually stunning film with an epic love story at its heart," said Thomas Vitale. "The scope and scale of this fantastical miniseries will make it one of the highlights of our channel's 2006 programming slate."
But as usual I foresee that this slight misunderstanding of the source material is going to ruffle some feathers here and there:
"EPIC TALE THAT INSPIRED TOLKIEN'S 'LORD OF THE RINGS' TRILOGY"
(sigh) Oh well.
posted by Diane: 1/10/2006 09:56:00 AM | link to this post
Monday, January 09, 2006
Next version of "A Wind from the South": iPod ebook
I'm working on converting a text version of A Wind from the South for reading as a series of linked Notes files for the iPod. (All I really have to do is convert the .PDB version of the file to .txt and then do some format-tweaking.) Should be ready by the end of the week.
Meanwhile, if you haven't already heard about this new book, check here for details and a link to reader comments.
posted by Diane: 1/09/2006 12:27:00 PM | link to this post
In its 16th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted truthiness as the word of the year. First heard on the Colbert Report, a satirical mock news show on the Comedy Channel, truthiness refers to the quality of stating concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true. As Stephen Colbert put it, "I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart."
The full report is also available on their site as a PDF. Runners-up to the Word of the Year include: Katrina (and all Katrina-related words): podcast: "intelligent design": refugee: Cruiselex (and all other Tom Cruise-related words): "heck of a job": brownout (redefined as the poor handling of an emergency): and disaster-industrial complex.
(Take a look at the "euphemism" category, too. "Internal nutrition," huh.) (mutter)
posted by Diane: 1/08/2006 01:06:00 PM | link to this post
I love cooking blogs
And foodblogs in general. Not least because of unexpected moments like this:
Mrs Weasley glissa un bol au-dessous, juste à temps pour recueillir l'épaisse soupe à l'oignon fumante qui s'en déversait. (Harry Potter et le prince de Sang-Mélé - J.K. Rowling)
Has somebody got a hot date tonight or something?... :)
posted by Diane: 1/07/2006 02:07:00 PM | link to this post
Narnia again (just a thought)
I was thinking about this posting, in which Narnia's negotiator at the World Trade Organization talks (Queen Susan) was reported to have walked out of the negotiations. Somebody dropped me a comment saying, "What'd they send her for? They should have sent King Peter. He wouldn't have put up with any of that nonsense."
It occurred to me that even this good idea might not have been severe enough. If I were "they", I'd have sent someone potentially much more dangerous...
...Reepicheep.
(heh heh)
posted by Diane: 1/07/2006 01:26:00 PM | link to this post
Friday, January 06, 2006
By the way, for those of you who keep track of such things
The revised manuscript of Rihannsu: The Empty Chair has gone to the publisher.
Next in line to finish: A Wizard of Mars.
posted by Diane: 1/06/2006 10:56:00 PM | link to this post
LIT test-drivers: thanks, it'll go out to you today
We've now got enough test-drivers now for the LIT version of A Wind from the South, folks...thanks to everybody who wrote.
I'll have the file to you later in the day. There was a slight hitch at this end, secondary to a new software installation: nothing serious.
(addendum: And it seems I have an ear infection. In both ears. (sigh) And 2006 was going so well...)
posted by Diane: 1/06/2006 09:09:00 AM | link to this post
For my trial, I was told to make a soup, salad, appetizer, entree, vegetarian entree and dessert. I prepared Steve's Google-icious Menu: edamame hummus, Bahamian chicken chowder, sun-dried tomato agnolotti with roasted mushroom fra diavolo sauce, Indonesian seared rock shrimp salad with Asian slaw, Ligurian stuffed petrale sole, giant baked stuffed portobellos with asiago cheese, baked tofu with mango-macadamia crust, streusel stuffed plums with candied ginger and balsamic pomegranate reduction.
...(sigh) Now I've gone and done it again. My lunch is scheduled kind of late today (got other things to finish first). And now I'm going to be stuck thinking about that streusel for hours. (mutter)
posted by Diane: 1/05/2006 01:51:00 PM | link to this post
New .LIT version of "A Wind from the South" now ready
I'm checking it over at the moment before making it available on the Raetian Tales blog. Would a few of you who use Reader care to test-drive this version of the book? It's free to the first three people who respond to the contact email in the middle column -- look down under "Our other pages". (Please put "Test-drive LIT" in the subject line.)
Yes indeed. But there's more to it than that. A little ways down the article...
While drinking and dancing are part of many modern New Year's celebrations, the early Egyptians probably would have disapproved of the partying because they viewed such activities in a very different light....
"The Festival of Drunkenness was not a social occasion for them," said Betsy Bryan, who led the dig. "People did not come to enjoy themselves. They drank to enter an altered state so that they might witness the epiphany of a deity."
Partypooper.
According to Bryan, the Festival of Drunkenness began with attendees appeasing a lion goddess deity, such as Mut, with red beer that received its color from red ochre.
Oho...now I know where we are. We're celebrating the time when the Great God Ra got pissed off at mankind about something, and told Hathor to go kill them a little to get his point across. So she did, taking the shape of the lion-goddess Sekhmet for greater effectiveness in the job (since Hathor's normal shape was that of a divine cow or cow-headed woman, and even under optimum conditions a divine cow can't kill as many people as fast as a divine lion).
After a while Ra said, "Okay, that's enough now," and Hathor said, "No, I'm liking this -- !" and killed a whole lot more of mankind, so that the earth ran red with their blood, as if it was the Nile overflowing its banks.
And Ra said, "Wait a minute, if this goes on, we're not going to have much mankind left at the end of the day!" -- and he told some of the gods to get him mandrakes, and told the rest of them to Make Beer, Fast. Which they did. And they then made beer, and put the mandrakes in it, and then went to Hathor, and said, "Hey, after a long day killing mankind, we know you work up one heckofa thirst. And so...it's Beer Time!"
And Hathor drank the beer, and got plastered, and stopped killing mankind. Everyone said "Whew!" And the next morning, when Hathor got up and walked off rubbing her head and wondering what they'd put in that beer, Ra said to the rest of the gods, "From now on we do this every year at this time -- at the New Year, when the Nile overflows its banks -- in case she gets the same idea around then. Oh, and mankind can have some of the beer too. It'll keep them off our case, and remind them that if they get out of hand again, there's always Hathor."
And so it came to pass.
Now somebody get me a kriek (which is a pretty color of red without anybody putting red ochre in it)...
posted by Diane: 1/04/2006 08:35:00 AM | link to this post
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Screaming wrongheadedness and what you can do about it
I'm very annoyed this morning. I hate being annoyed before I've even had my tea. But I have reason.
Take a look at this posting over on Making Light / Electrolite, which belongs to Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. It'll give you the basic facts.
For those who don't have time to read the above: Take a moment to imagine that you have a condition that makes you fall asleep abruptly and without warning....while you're carrying your baby around the house, say, or doing 70 mph down an expressway. Or just sitting still and trying to do your work.
That's narcolepsy (or a very brief description of what it can be like.) Now imagine that there's a particular drug that, for you, helps keep the condition at bay -- and you have to take that drug because no other has the same effect, or because you're allergic to the others usually prescribed for the condition.
Now imagine that Ralph Nader and a group called "Public Citizen" get concerned that the drug can cause liver problems, and pressure the FDA to ban it.
And the FDA does.
I sat there for a while this morning imagining what this would be like for me. Well, there goes my personal and professional life. Gee, thanks, Ralph, for coercing someone into deciding what was best for me without even asking! Doesn't matter that my doctor tests my liver function more often than some people change their underwear, and this drug has worked fine for me for decades (in Patricia's case, 24 years and change). No, I'm sure it's for my own good that I can't get hold of the stuff any more! Guess I'll just watch the level in that bottle of medication go down, and down...and calculate how much time I have left before I finish the last novel I'll ever write.
GRR.
(Myself, I find it hard to believe that operations like this one don't contribute somewhat to the atmosphere surrounding such bannings. (Just look at that banner graphic. "Stand up! Be brave! Do the patriotic American thing, call our toll-free number now, and SUE!")
Don't mistake me here. I adamantly support the concept that people who have been injured due to negligence on a drug company's part should seek and receive fair compensation. (And without the drug company stonewalling them for decades in the hope that they'll either run out of money and die, thereby dropping the lawsuit.) But in this case the drug companies involved have been quite responsible in warning people that the drug involved, pemoline, can cause liver damage, and that you need to have frequent testing to make sure that this isn't happening. And the number of cases involved, frankly, is low: even the injury lawyers' website above can cite only thirteen cases of liver failure attributable to this drug since 1976. Only one of those has occurred since 1999, when the warnings on the drug packaging were stiffened and (theoretically) both doctors and patients got more aware. (A note to one side: judged the same way, the death rate from acetaminophen is higher.)
Yet now the drug has been banned, and the companies involved have stopped production. (Don't see them doing that with Tylenol, do you? But that would be because a whole lot more people take it, and a whole lot more money is involved.) One press release regarding the issue contains this horrifically dry advice: "Healthcare providers who prescribe Cylert or any of its generic products are being told to transition their patients to a different therapy."
And what if there isn't one??
Then you get to fall asleep suddenly and without warning (a) for the rest of your life, (b) until a better drug/therapy comes along. Whenever that might be. If it ever happens.
This is unacceptable. The quality of life for many, many thousands of people depends on this drug right now.
Time to get up off the butt and start making myself a nuisance to my congressfolk and senators, and to the FDA. I hope that some of you reading this might do so too. Please check the comments on that post at Making Light for some extremely useful and cogent info that can help you draft a response.
posted by Diane: 1/03/2006 09:22:00 AM | link to this post
Monday, January 02, 2006
Another couple collaborates
And it's fun to hear about.
We also spent a lot of time looking at one another in flat-out amazement. "I've known you for almost 20 years," I'd say to The Wife on reading some sex scene she'd come up with, "and only now do I learn that you have this kind of thing on your mind? Hussy." "Dude," The Wife would say on reading a sex passage I'd written, "where'd that come from? Pervert." Then we'd crack up.
Since there are no online reviews available as yet, I'd welcome your comments -- they'll make it easier for readers-to-be to decide whether they want to shell out their $5.99 for the book.
But when Schwarzenegger, now governor of California, declined to commute the death sentence for Stanley Tookie Williams, the former Los Angeles gang leader who was executed in California two weeks ago, the reaction in Graz, where the death penalty is seen as a medieval atrocity, was swift and angry.
"I submitted a petition to the City Council to remove his name from the stadium, and to take away his status as an honorary citizen," Sigrid Binder, the leader of the Green Party said in an interview in Graz's stately City Hall, describing the first step in the chain of events that led to the renaming of the stadium. "The petition was accepted by a majority on the Council."
But before a formal vote was taken on the petition, Schwarzenegger made a kind of pre-emptive strike, writing a letter to Siegfried Nagl, the town's conservative mayor, informing him that he was withdrawing Graz's right to use his name in association with the stadium.
There will be other death penalty decisions ahead, Schwarzenegger wrote, and so he decided to spare the responsible politicians of the City of Graz further concern.
I blogged about it this time last year -- with much affection, as Peter and I first saw it in Switzerland about ten years ago and have loved it dearly ever since, watching it almost as often as many Germans. Maybe if enough people keep bringing the subject up, it'll get shown in the US eventually....
(Meanwhile, Google Video has it in full (though possibly only for viewing in the US. Try it and see what result you get.)
posted by Diane: 1/01/2006 08:59:00 PM | link to this post
A Wind from the South
Four of my favorite dishes:
