The books

  • 20235 reads

Chapter Seven of "The Big Meow" now online for subscribers

It's up at last!

Chapter Seven is now available online for subscribers: it's linked to from the normal TBM subscriber gateway page. The same old username and password that worked for previous chapters will get you in. (If you can't find your login info, email me and I'll send it out to you pronto.) HTML and PDF versions are there right now -- the mobile .prc versions will go up in due course, as soon as we receive the conversions.

If you're not a subscriber, the chapter will go public on the 28th of the month. Look for the link to its gateway page in the left-hand menu at the project page at http://www.the-big-meow.com. (click here for the rest)

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New YW wallpaper: the "Red Rede"

DD's 'Wizard of Mars' wallpaper

 

Newly added at the YW wallpapers page: DD's A Wizard of Mars wallpaper, featuring a foreboding sunrise over the dangerous terrain of Mars's Aram Chaos, and the ominous and ambivalent "Red Rede".

This wallpaper is available in the following sizes: 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864.

 

Also available at the wallpaper page: the new WizPod Touch wallpaper, in four sizes.

 

 

  • 1874 reads
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"Wizards at War" audiobook now available for download!

Cover of CD version of 'Wizards at War'

The audiobook version of the eighth Young Wizards novel, Wizards at War, can now be downloaded online from Audible.

This is the full, unabridged version of the novel -- more than 15 hours long -- read (as always) by the talented Christina Moore.

For a limited time, Audible is offering a chance for new customers to get Wizards at War with a 25% discount, at a bargain price of $26.23. Or, if you join the AudibleGold Listener's program, you can get Wizards at War for as little as $7.49. Click on this link to find out more!

  • 1201 reads
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Madeleine L'Engle is gone

Submitted by Diane Duane on Sun, 09/09/2007 - 11:05.

And so, to my great sorrow, passes one of the most senior, and certainly one of the most beloved, of this century's YA fantasy writers: one of the first of us to break out, over the course of years, into worldwide fame, and to general agreement that she "wasn't just writing kid stuff".

She was a gifted and powerfully imaginative writer with a graceful style. Unquestionably she was an influence on me, though perhaps not in the way people might think. I read her first few books in my late teens / early twenties; and while in a general way I liked what she was doing, I had personal niggles about the way she was doing it. Certainly there were things about A A Wrinkle in Time and A Swiftly Tilting Planet that made me think, Hmmm... I'm not so sure about this. If I was going to do something of this sort, I'd do it this way (...there you have it in a phrase, the eternal/internal certainty that they have it right of writers everywhere...) -- and the result, somewhat later, was So You Want to Be a Wizard.

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So You Want to ...play Jeopardy?

 

This game features answers and questions from the first of the YW novels, So You Want to Be a Wizard.

 

Please note: to play this game you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

More games (and harder ones) will follow soon. Have fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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"Wizards at War" now available in paperback!


Cover for mass-market paperback edition of Wizards at War

Harcourt Trade Publishers has just released the mass-market paperback edition of Wizards at War.

The book is available at Amazon.com, and if you like, you can order it here by using this link (or by clicking on the image to the right.)

After returning from a hectic wizardly holiday, Nita and Kit are looking forward to returning to their everyday routine. But there doesn't seem much hope of that what with three other wizards living in Nita's basement, her sister Dairine's computer muttering peculiar prophecies, and Kit's increasingly magical dog Ponch behaving more strangely every day.

And there's far worse trouble brewing. A strange darkness of the mind and heart is about to fall over the older wizards of the world, stealing away their power. Soon the young wizards of Earth and many other planets must defend the people of their worlds -- wizards and non-wizards alike -- against an invasion of a kind they've never imagined.

But mere defense won't combat the evil afoot. In company with their human and alien teammates, Kit, Nita, and Dairine must race to search worlds both known and unknown for the secret weapon that the Powers that Be have promised them - before the minions of the Lone Power find it first.

And then, for the first time in millennia, the wizards must go to war...

 

Featured Concordance Entry: WizPod

 

An instance or implementation of the Wizard's Manual installed in an iPod. Such devices, when running in Manual mode, often display the Apple Without a Bite. Since each WizPod contains an inbuilt "stand-alone" temporospatial claudication, they are able to unfold to many times their apparent external size to display data, and are especially useful for working with spell diagrams which are better rendered in 3D format.

Darryl McAllister turns up on the Moon with a new WizPod during the crisis meeting in WAW, causing Dairine to go into a state of serious hardware envy. This WizPod is probably one of the "4G" or fourth-generation WizPods, as the first wizardly implentations started appearing around then.

(Interested parties should note that the implementation of the WizPhone now seems to be proceeding much more smoothly since the issue of international service providers for the phone component has at last been sorted out.)

An early ad for the WizPod, detailing some of the more attractive features of the first models, can be seen here. An ad for the more recent WizPod Touch implementation can be seen here (or click here for the large /PDF version).

(See also: Claudication and its associated entries.)

 

 

 

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About the Errantry Concordance

To the Errantry Concordance

The Errantry Concordance is a Wiki-format encyclopedia of the Young Wizards universe up to volume 8, Wizards at War. DD began work on the Concordance early in 2003 and has now begun gradually converting her notes into online entries. The Concordance already contains hundreds of entries, and is growing steadily -- see the main page for examples, or click here to view a random page. Our stats page will give you an up-to-the-minute report on the number of active entries in the Concordance today.

You can link directly to either the master contents page or the new entries page, both of which are automatically updated every time an entry is added. Concordance readers can also be notified by XML feeds (RSS and Atom) of the addition of new pages, or changes to old ones.

Theobroma

Coming in 2007...a new short story in the "Young Wizards" universe.

 

“What are you looking for, roaches?” Ana sounded indignant. “We’re very careful here. We don’t have roaches!”

“On the contrary,” Ken said. “You are very careful, and as a result, you have very careful roaches. Guys?” he said in the Speech, and whistled.

Ana went ashen and stood absolutely still as about a hundred roaches came flowing out from under the baseboards, all together, gathered into a little group, and looked up at her and Ken...