#Young Wizards

[dduane]

Hi Diane. Sorry to bother you but I recently was told to try out your Wizard series but when I went to audible (I'm in Australia BTW) it's not coming up. It is available in America but I would need to sign up a whole new account and wouldn't be able to access it from my normal one. Not sure if you have any say on the matters but if you were unaware can you yell at someone until they put it up on the Australian store? Due to my work audiobooks are the only way I can consume books and I'd love to give your series a go 😊

Hi there!

This has been a problem for some time now, and there's no immediate solution available.

The current US/Canadian publisher—which is actually HarperCollins, these days, though the books still say Houghton Mifflin Harcourt—only holds the audiobook rights for North America and, due to post-colonial shenanigans, the Philippines.

Since the Young Wizards series currently has relatively little presence outside the US, HC—maybe understandably—has no interest in acquiring audiobook rights for the rest of the world, which I hold. (The series's UK and Australia/New Zealand presence was due to its 1990s publication by Transworld/Corgi, which unfortunately has since allowed the books to go out of print.)

This does of course leave me with some opportunities. I mentioned to someone here last week that I was looking into recording the books myself. This will require renting/hiring recording space, tech crew, and post-production facilities: all expenses I'll have to bear myself... for ten books.

This isn't a concept I balk at, mind you. It's important to do a good, professional job on something like this. But it's going to run into money, and is going to take a while to execute, one book at a time.

My current estimate suggests that I may be able to start this project sometime in Q1 of 2025. You might want to keep an eye on this space starting around then for further news.

I hope you can hang on until then! ...And in the meantime if you get impatient enough to shake up your consumption modes a little, the ebook versions of the revised Young Wizards novels are right over here... available instantly, on demand.

Anyway, thanks for inquiring! :)

#Young Wizards #Young Wizards audiobooks

[bi-files]

Diane Duane really is the where's waldo of authors. Like oh, I just finished, Star Trek (TOS), those Star Trek books look pretty cool. Huh that cover with Spock on it looks neat. Proceed to read one of my favorite novels in the entire world. Ok ok it's by Diane Duane. Gotta remember that. Starting TNG like yo it's Diane Duane again! She wrote this episode :). Oh well, I guess no more Diane Duane Star Trek as I have found all of them for my collection. Damn, well my friend really likes Spiderman/Venom. Her birthday's soon. Guess I should get her comic books? And with steel chair it's Diane Duane again! And oh wait, what other comics did she write? She wrote a comic book for Star Trek! Better read that! An X-men novel!! Hmmm, y'know I've been reading a lot of sci fi and comic books recently. I would really like to get back to my roots and read some fantasy, preferably with some wizards. Diane Duane once again snipes me from the google recommend books page. Doing some research on Barbie to get ready for the Barbie Movie. Barbie: FairyTopia is cowritten by Diane Duane and Elise Allen. A bomb is dropped on my house. Watching a video essay on Batman because it's 2AM and youtube thinks I might like that. I've never watched Batman the animated series, but I guess I'll give it a try. Diane Duane strikes once again. Talking with my friends about their favorite authors and where they live during a vacation in Ireland. Huh I actually don't know where Diane Duane lives. Look it up and get punched into next week. Get tumblr. Ha that was a funny! Waldo once again has been sighted.

TL;DR: Diane Duane has got range and I haven't looked up all the things she's done and keep getting pleasantly surprised.

#diane duane #young wizards #star trek #venom #barbie fairytopia #star trek comics

[displayheartcode]

Last week, I stopped by one of the B&N branches where I used to work and was happily surprised to see @dduane’s words!

#diane duane #young wizards

[thetokentrans]

I read the first 3 Young Wizard books dozens of times when I was a kid. It was one of those series where I'd finish (what I thought was) the last book, I'd start over again.

Today I learned that not only are there more books in that series (8 more books, in fact) but she also has a series set in the same world about CAT WIZARDS

And a short story in the same world, about adult wizards.

As well as another fantasy series that, according to Wikipedia, isn't in the same world as Young Wizards. And. So. Many. Other. Things.

Sooooo I need to read all the things. Holy cowm

This author is one of the authors that made me want to write when I was a kid.

I wonder if the audio books are any good. 🤔

#diane duane #Young Wizards #Books #Reading

[oldinterneticons]

Top icons posted to @oldinterneticons in July 2023

#old web #old internet #icons #avatars #graphics #livejournal #xanga #myspace #msn #aim #2000s #funny #dolphins #club penguin #snoopy #peanuts #cats #books #young wizards #was not was #walk the dinosaur #memes #top posts #top posts 2023

[semiotomatics]

i meant to make some big well-written post abt it but unfortunately my brain was otherwise occupied experiencing The Horrors so instead, have some wordvomit

this past monday marked twenty years since i went on a field trip to the library and ran my hand along a bookshelf in the children's fiction section and found a book called So You Want To Be A Wizard* and brought it home and read it cover to cover in like. a day. and i couldn't even begin to explain how that day has shaped my life but i do just wanna acknowledge it and say that i'm so glad my friend let me borrow her library card (cause i didn't have my own yet) so i could bring the book home and i'm so glad my mum special ordered the rest of the series from the local independent bookstore almost immediately after i finished it and i'm so glad i discovered the forums and i'm so glad i found so many cousins on tumblr—including my best friend and platonic soulmate @astraldepths—and i'm so glad i got to help plan and execute crossingscon (twice!!) and that i got to meet so many of you in person—INCLUDING DD HERSELF—and i'm just. so glad i discovered this series

i have like twelve copies of SYW but i think my favourite is the twentieth anniversary edition (which is now, itself, twenty years old—wild), because it contains both the short story Uptown Local, which i adore, and an afterword by DD, which i have read entirely too many times. anyway, i wanna share a quote from that afterword, bc it seems fitting:

Wizardry, too, changes with the times, because its practitioners do...and indeed it must change, to keep up with the Lone Power, Itself never averse to using new means to Its old end. Even the Wizard's Oath will seem to change from time to time, altering its appearance according to species, age, cast of mind, and (sometimes) simply according to where you're standing, in time and space, when you examine it. But beyond that, as the series continues, I can promise that some things will always stay the same—the knowledge of a partner's dependable friendship; a shared go-for-broke determination to get it right when the Universe is watching; and the glad adrenaline rush caused by the sudden incursion of the unexpected...as when you run your hand down a row of books on a library shelf and one of them catches your finger.

so yeah. in lieu of a more coherent post abt it, i just wanna say. thank you @dduane. for everything 💚

#this has been an original post #personal spewage #young wizards #dying rirhait noise #*technically i discovered High Wizardry first and read the first page and was like ''i feel like i'm missing something'' lol #then i noticed it was the third book in a series so i went looking for the first #but anyway #my point still stands #also if you saw the version of this post where i tagged the wrong diane duane: no you didn't

[sandybrett]

Mike mentioned at one point that he wished there were a tense for things that once had happened but have been undone by time travel (and I think I heard that there actually is such a tense in The Speech in the Young Wizards series, which I have not read.)

Now consider this: a tense for things that happen in at least one iteration of the future and are currently affecting the present via time travel, but are not necessarily still going to happen.

#woe.begone #linguistics #five dimensional chess #that time travel podcast #young wizards #fandoms i'm not in

[kiragecko]

After months of posts by Diane Duane (@dianeduane) showing up on my dash, I read 'So You Want To Be A Wizard'.

After one chapter, I restarted it so I could read it with my son.

I am SO GLAD I found it right now.

NQ is turning 13 in a few months. He's autistic, and finally starting to enjoy his childhood as he's also observing the first signs of puberty. He's terrified of growing up. He's terrified of loss and death. He thanks me weekly for telling him he's allowed to consider himself a child for as long as he wants to. He's obsessed with bugs, and space, and alternate realities.

'So You Want To Be A Wizard' is all about the beauty and magic of life. The wonder of natural life and mechanical creations. I don't KNOW that an inspiration was 'all fantasy seems to be set in natural landscapes, someone should explore the magic of cities in the same way', but I sure felt that way while reading it.

It's also about the fact that losing things is hard, but we can survive it. That there is more than this world, and so death isn't the end.

The main characters befriend a white hole. They talk to rocks; and trees; and many, many built objects. They travel realities. They choose to love and see value in hateful things and people, and by doing so give those things another chance. They're bullied, and they learn to protect themselves, while also changing in ways that make bullying less effective. They move on.

My son needed this so much. My son needed to read about the Timeheart. My son needed to see grieving where the death didn't get undone, but the being still wasn't lost. My son needed to see situations that couldn't be fixed, but help still being offered and maybe improving things a little.

Finding ways to support a kid's growth when they were suicidal at 10 is ... a balancing act. He doesn't need to be stretched in the usual sense - 'exposed to the real world'. He sees enough darkness all on his own. He needs to find ways to reconcile with that darkness, to find hope.

'So You Want To Be A Wizard' was perfect. I'm so grateful. Thank you, Diane Duane.

#diane duane #so you want to be a wizard #young wizards #kids lit #suicide #(briefly mentioned) #bullying #(also briefly mentioned) #I cried during the timeheart chapter #I LOVED the book too #but I wanted to keep this focused

[zzedar2]

I always thought it was odd that in the Young Wizards series the Lone Power is never (that I can recall) explicitly identified as the Devil, but the archangel Michael is explicitly identified as such.

#young wizards #diane duane

[dduane]

...Okay, this is a lovely shout-out. And to be mentioned in the same neighborhood as both Ursula Le Guin and Terry Pratchett and @neil-gaiman is seriously something I have to take a breath to recover from.

...

...Okay, I'm good. :)

(ETA: [laughter] "...both." It's pushing midnight for me, people. Forgive me.) :)

#young wizards #in the general #but also the specific #as in #Young Wizards #and of course #Ged #and #Tim Hunter #AND #Eskarina Smith #Terry Pratchett #Neil Gaiman #Ursula Le Guin

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

#fantasy #books #So You Want to Be a Wizard #Diane Duane #Young Wizards #poll #l: English

[best-childhood-book]

Round 1, Poll 13: Young Wizards vs Ella Enchanted

Now, I'll always be a Gail Carson Levine stan, but I have to admit that So You Want to Be a Wizard occupied a unique space in my brain for many years; thank god I'm not voting

Remember to reblog for a bigger sample size!

#poll #best childhood book #young wizards #diane duane #ella enchanted #gail carson levine

[askeataiho]

My parents brought me this reusable shopping bag as a souvenir from their trip from Norway.

Very Young Wizards, and they don't even know. 😌

#Young Wizards meta #Young Wizards

[egregiousanathema]

Re-listening to "A Wizard Abroad"; there's a mention of the dewey decimal system number that Nita's wizard's manual camouflages itself as. The camouflage is as a children's book called "So You Want to be A Wizard" and the DD number for it is given as "793.4". I looked that up and it's "793 Indoor games & amusements". Very cool of @dianeduane to include that in a book in 1993; you'd probably have needed to be sitting in your local library to learn that if you were reading at the time of publication. Also: happy 30 years to book which made me look up how to pronounce names from Irish mythology.

#young wizards #diane duane #a wizard abroad #irish mythology #I heard my English friend try to pronounce 'Fionn mac Cumhaill' earlier this year; would not recommend. #After learning how to pronounce some of those names at such a young age I thought it was just normal for people to know how to say them.

[fiction-quotes]

Even before she'd been a wizard, waiting had been tough for her. Nothing happens fast enough – that had been the most basic motto of her short life. When she'd become a wizard, at first Dairine had thought that that would be the end of waiting, at last – that everything would begin happening at a speed that would suit her, and that the world would finally start working. Now, looking back at that early time, she had to laugh at herself. Dairine had discovered the hard way that even becoming a practitioner of the Art that sourced its power from the magic at the heart of the universe was not guarantee of protection against bureaucracy, accident, or failed expectations. Entropy was running, and in an environment conditioned by the never-ending battle against that ancient enemy and its inventor, not even wizardry could necessarily make your wishes come true.

There were other compensations, of course. On her Ordeal and after it, she had seen things that few other human beings have been privileged to see. She had watched the Sun rise through Saturn's rings, heard spring thunder in Jupiter's atmosphere, watched distant galaxies rise over alien landscapes; she had even officiated at the birth of a species. But none of these experiences had gone very far to make her any more patient. Maybe when I'm older, she thought. By the time I'm twenty I'll probably have it licked.

  —  Wizard’s Holiday (Diane Duane)

#book quotes #science fiction #fantasy fiction #ya fiction #diane duane #young wizards #wizard's holiday #dairine callahan #impatience #waiting #magic #wizardry #astronomy #sun #saturn #jupiter #galaxies #aliens #motherhood #patience #growing up

[oldinterneticons]

Call me sentimental. I like books. They don't crash.

#books #young wizards