DD's Short Stories

[Kathy Li]

So, I finally got my hands on "The Fix" in the Magic Toybox anthology, and I quite enjoyed it. It's set in ancient Rome, and the main character is a young slave who's a fan of gladiators (and toy representations thereof) and then gets a wish granted by a certain goddess.

I really liked it, especially the action figure and sportsfan translations to things. My only problem is now I have to read the other stories in the anthology, too.

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

I haven't seen that one...

I did come across the Thieves' World stories in my Diane Collection box when I was in it the other day, though.

[Kathy Li]

Man, it's been ages since I read "Down by the Riverside." I really need to pull that one out again. Her stories are the only ones I actually remember from Thieves' World.

I'm looking through the bibliography and there are quite a few short stories I haven't read. Practically all the short stories post-Dreamery are unknown to me. (Ok, I think I read "Dovrefell Cat" long ago). Man, we really need an anthology. ... somebody get DD to be GoH at Boskone!

[Kathy Li]

Bump.

I just ran across the post for "Theobroma" (yes, I know. I'm way behind all the rest of you).

Interesting. I don't think that DD's done a YW-universe story without any of the YW characters in it before ("Wizards on Call" excepted); although I supposed I'd consider "Midnight Snack" a close cousin.

Anyhoo, I did a search on Amazon, and Wizards, Inc., has a publication date of (sigh) Nov 2007.

[Peter Murray]

I'm not sure about Wizards on Call - I'd have described Nita and Kit as at least minor YW characters.

As for Thieves' World, I seem to have stopped reading/buying the series with the fifth book, having lost interest in it. I've just found two of DD's on eBay though. I'm consoling myself with the thought that the Big Meow challenge grants amounted to more than two short stories of royalties.

[Kathy Li]

Just wanted to mention that DD's just released her short story, "Parting Gifts," into the wild. It's up in HTML and PDF formats. It's one of my favorites of DD's works. I hope that she publishes the Middle Kingdoms (aka the "Door" series) short stories anthology.

If you're unfamiliar with the Door books, they're a four-book adult fantasy series that DD began writing before YW, and hasn't yet finished (the first three have been published, but we're still waiting for the fourth). It's a medieval-set fantasy world, in which some women are born with the ability to do a Goddess-gifted form of magic, the blue fire. "Parting Gifts" is about an older Rodmistress who's on one last errand for the Goddess against her world's version of the Lone Power.

[Kathy Li]

Bumpity-bump-bump-bump (not to mention reopening the thread) just to mention that Wizards, Inc. is now out on the bookstore shelves, and that DD's short story, "Theobroma," is contained within.

Charming little bonbon of a story. I particularly liked how our hero's Manual was a smartphone and the idea of a Graffiti version of the Speech, and that Carl was his Advisory. Not an absolutely necessary addition to your YW collection, but certainly fun. And I'm definitely looking forward to sitting down and reading the Esther Friesner story.

[seabiscuit1009]

Bump-bump again. I found Wizards Inc.in the library by chance yesterday (it wasn't in the card catalog for some reason, so I didn't know we had it...) "Theobroma" was a very fun story; I really liked (spoilers whited out)how even though it's set in the YW universe, it introduced aspects of it that we've never gotten in the YW books. In other words, the xocolotl A very fun story, though it gave me a huge craving for chocolate.

The rest of the book is worth reading too; while I liked the Esther Friesner story that Kli mentioned, my other favorite (besides DD's story) was "Back Door Magic." All in all, a fun anthology.

[Kathy Li]

Bumpity-bump. Has anybody gotten their hands on Witch High, yet? I'm curious about "The House", since DD posted an excerpt on her LJ, but I haven't seen it anywhere.

[meteorite]

There are copies of Witch High up on The River, but right now I'm miffed at Amazon, because I went in to get the title of a book off of one of my lists, and found that SOMEHOW I had 4 electric teakettles and a unrelated anthology in my shopping cart. Since I don't want or need any of those things, how they got there is an annoying mystery, and I am declaring shenanigans.

Does anyone have a definitive list of DD's short stories and where they might be found? I'd like to ransack my library's collections, but anthologies don't usually have their contents indexed. Without searchable anthology contents, tracking down individual stories becomes quite tedious.

Edited to add: I just searched for both of the previously mentioned anthologies, and my library system has neither The Magic Toybox nor Wizards, Inc.. Grr. More money out of my Amazon gift card.

[Kathy Li]

Nope, I don't think we've got a definitive list, although DD's Bibliography/Filmography is probably the best starting point. The only short story I can remember that's not on that list is "The Span" in Dragon Magazine, issue #256 (iirc, it was Nathan that found that one).

I can highly recommend the Prince Ivan serial in The Dreamery comic (as well as Donna Bar's Stinz stories which were in there as well)--if you can find it. I damn near gave Lex Nakashima a heart attack when I thanked him for editing The Dreamery at a World Fantasy con lo these many moons ago. He couldn't believe that someone had actually read it, let alone remembered he was the editor.
-----
So, while I was at the local SF/F bookstore, picking up a bunch of Charlaine Harris mysteries, I also managed to grab a copy of Witch High. I was bad. I skipped to DD's story first.

It's pretty cool, as you'd expect. High school science projects ala witchcraft. And I think DD watched that Skoda Fabia advert a few too many times. [grin] (sidenote: you gotta love it when a commercial has a making-of documentary.)

[Stormwind]

These are new ones for me, except Wizards Inc, that came in shortly before I was relocated... (isn't it interesting what Wizardry WE do when we don't think) I loved the stories.... (thinking on that, I'll have to check the library again....)

Any others of DD's that someone can recommend, and does anyone know if Audible has them?

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

"Midnight Snack"

Any others of DD's that someone can recommend, and does anyone know if Audible has them?

"Uptown Local""Midnight Snack" is a good one as well. When reading, it's a good idea to keep in mind what Diane's middle name is and what role David Gerrold wrote for himself to do a walk-on (which went to someone else) in "The Trouble With Tribbles". :-)

It's not on Audible, as far as I know, but I read the first half as a teaser for the folks here a year back or so. http://donnael.com/duane/Part1-64k.mp3

Edit: Oops, that's not "Uptown Local". *embarrassed* *thinks* *Googles* It's "Midnight Snack", published in the Dell anthology Sixteen.

[Tuttle]

Uptown local is in fact available as read by DD herself as one of the few episodes of the WizCast back in summer 2005. There are some threads on the WizCast in here if you search for them, and for a direct link http://wizcast.youngwizards.net/13_J...town_Local.mp3 has Uptown Local (the link won't continue working past December, but it is currently working, I just checked) and if you subscribe to http://wizcast.youngwizards.net/wizcast.rss in whatever you listen to podcasts in you'll get the whole podcast.

[btw, are the wizcasts moved to youngwizards.com or will they be?]

As for other short stories I haven't found any besides those listed here already.

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Oops

Tuttle, thanks for reminding me that "Uptown Local" was not the story I meant. I fixed it above.

Speaking of "Uptown Local", does anyone else have a copy of Dragons and Dreams, the anthology UL was published in, or are most of you going off Diane's podcast?