So, I’ve Taken Up Tailoring Recently. And While I Was Working On A Draping Today, I Got To Thinking

The Powers went ‘Dairine’s kinda annoying, we’ll make her deal with someone annoying so they’ll get on each other’s nerves’ and it worked for about a week before she and Roshaun teamed up so they could get on the nerves of the rest of the known and unknown universe instead.

Selections from Tallmadge Doyle’s ethereal Celestial Mapping Series

fave reads of 2017: Deep Wizardry by Diane Duane

“And we will cause it to be well-made, this Sacrifice. You, young and never loving; I, old and never loved. Such a Song the Sea will never have seen.”

read if you like: middle grade fiction, male-female friendships, a blend of science fiction and fantasy, magic that has real and lasting consequences, and crying over large sea animals

Question about the consequences of the events in Deep Wizardry. Will the Master Shark be replaced by another shark like the Silent Lord is replaced, or on a more permanent basis? Or was his power simply lost, and there will never be a Master Shark again?

This may sound odd, but this is a matter to which I think I’ve given absolutely no thought whatsoever. …Which is unusual for me.

And now that it comes up: Mere replacement of Ed’rashtekaresket – either qua Ed, or as regards his particular unique developmental, historical and spiritual positioning – seems impossible. I rather think that there will be (meaning “almost certainly already is”) a shark now holding the Master-Shark position in lieu of the original office-holder. Except that shark will be holding it, as it were, by vicariate. (And I’m invoking “vicar*” here not in the Home-Counties-C-of-E mode that means “your [cozy] local clergyman who invites you round for tea”, but rather in the sense in which Catholics use the word when they speak of the Pope as “the Vicar of God on Earth”: of someone acting as a stand-in or deputy for someone of much greater inherent power.)

I think that should there be need for the attriibutes we think of as the Master-Shark’s to be exercised, then this vicariate Master would do so, enabled by (and channeling) the power still embodied in the original… who, as we know, appears to be Not All That Dead, Not Really Dead Anyway. (But then that would be somewhat in his nature, and shark-nature generally, so no surprises there.)

That make sense? Hope so. :)

*In passing, I coudn’t not link to the dictionary.com definition of vicar because of the quotes about Obama and soccer riots. Tea, meet keyboard…

by Aurelien Police

WHY ARE PEOPLE NOT MORE EXCITED ABOUT SPACE. THERE IS A PLANET MADE COMPLETELY OUT OF DIAMONDS AND A HUGE ASS RAIN CLOUD FLOATING AROUND IN SPACE THAT IS SO FUCKING COOL.

Mind-Blowing Beauty of Mars’ Dunes: HiRISE Photos

Mars plays host to a huge number of dune fields — regions where fine wind-blown material gets deposited to form arguably some of the most beautiful dunes that can be found on any planetary body in the solar system. Using the powerful High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, planetary scientists have an orbital view on these features that aid our understanding of aeolian (wind-formed) processes and Martian geology. Here are some of our favorite Mars dunes as seen by HiRISE.

Just a quick reminder that the "All The Wizardry" bundle is still available at Ebooks Direct! (Curiosity rover not included...) :)

Contains nineteen DRM-free ebooks:

The nine New Millennium Editions of the main-sequence Young Wizards novels

The Feline Wizardry trilogy

The two collections of interstitial fiction: Interim Errantry and Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal

The only two Young Wizards short stories (as the title item and "Theobroma" in Uptown Local and Other Interventions

The non main-sequence novel Young Wizards: Lifeboats and the standalone novella Owl Be Home For Christmas (These last two works are included as independent ebook volumes even though they also appear in the Interim Errantry collections.)

The "CD extras" work The "How Lovely Are Thy Branches" Advent Calendar, featuring outtake dialogue from How Lovely Are Thy Branches (which appears in Interim Errantry)

The Young Wizards OTP Challenge, Days 1-17: short fiction in the OTP format

...And as always, should you misplace any of these, or need to change platforms, we'll replace them for you free! Details here.

So stop in and grab yourself an armful of wizardry!

Get the "All The Wizardry" Bundle

(For our UK friends, the normal sad caveat: we can't sell directly to you from the Ebooks Direct store any more due to Brexit. Our apologies.) :(

What is an Ocean but a Multitude of Drops?

I’ve been pondering the recurring notion in Young Wizards—introduced in the first book—that “even…unmagical-seeming actions” have importance in the fight against entropy. Whether it’s turning the lights off when one leaves a room, having a kind word for someone in need of encouragement, or just using the bus for transport to an alien mall crawl (“Wizards are supposed to use public transport—it’s ecologically sound!”), these little choices are no less important than galaxy-spanning fights with the Lone Power. And indeed, it’s often the little things—like Nita’s space pen or Ponch’s squirrels—that make the big victories possible.

It’s a concept that recurs in several of my other favorite works of fiction, as well. Rory’s father, Brian, from the most recent season of Doctor Who springs immediately to mind. A down-to-earth sort, Brian spends his screentime changing lightbulbs, carefully watching alien artifacts for days on end, and throwing golf balls for nearby dinosaurs to play fetch with. Unlike most of the Doctor’s associates, he doesn’t progress from these humble beginnings into something “remarkable”—he never becomes immortal or the Bad Wolf or anything like that. But instead, his very mundane habits are exactly what’s needed to save the world on multiple occasions. And when the Doctor offers to let him travel across time and space full-time, his response is simply, “Somebody’s got to water the plants.”

I bring this up because it’s a rather uncommon line of thought, on the whole. Far more common is the desire to change oneself, to journey forth from humble origins and grow into something great, to leave a mark on the world. But examples like the ones I mentioned above suggest that perhaps we’re not on the way to doing something remarkable—we already are, from one day to the next.

In the final lines of Cloud Atlas, both the book and the film (I heartily recommend either, incidentally), one of the protagonists ponders the notion that his efforts to change the world only amount to “a single drop in a limitless ocean.”

"But what is an ocean," he concludes, "but a multitude of drops?"

The same, I think, applies to all of us. We may not all be heroes or luminaries who command the destinies of millions, but within the smaller confines of our individual lives, every choice we embark upon makes a difference. And ultimately, the whole of human history is comprised of nothing else but people making decisions, many of them seemingly unimportant, one day at a time. Taken all together, though, it adds up to something remarkable. No man is an island, and every rock idly tossed into a pond produces ripples.

It’s both encouraging and terrifying to think about.