#crossingscon

[crossingscon]

Announcing our next TWO picks for CrossingsCon Book Club! Our March read will be This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. The book club meeting will be a week later than usual, on April 6 at 8 EST, to avoid any Easter weekend conflicts. Then on April 26, we're continuing the Queen's Thief series with The King of Attolia! Thanks for joining us, and happy reading!

[dduane]

To celebrate the CrossingsCon weekend...

...for the next 24 hours (until 6 PM IST / 1 PM US EDT on August 7, 2022), the Ebooks Direct store is repeating the Buy Our Whole Store for $44 sale! 

That’s the entire contents of the Ebooks Direct store for $44 -- 35 ebooks by Diane Duane (and one by Peter Morwood that managed to escape his exclusive ebook publication contract with Endeavour Books). ...So if you missed the previous versions of this sale, you can take advantage of it now!

Just go to this URL and put one of the “I Want Everything You’ve Got” packages in your shopping basket (make sure to tell the page which ebook format you want/need: Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iBooks/Apple or generic .epub).

The discount won’t show on the item in your basket: that’s just the way the store works, unfortunately. But when you click the button to proceed to the checkout page, you’ll find the store has applied your discount automatically, like this:

…Then you make the payment by whatever method you prefer, and the store emails you the download links for the files. (Advice on how to download our files to your ebook reader or app, if you need it, is here.) 

(In case anybody accidentally just goes straight to the main product link [which doesn’t auto-attach the discount], the discount code is EVERY24. That way if it’s missing from the field in the checkout page, you can put it in yourself.)

So if you feel like celebrating yet another CrossingsCon with us—even if you couldn’t be there—do drop by Ebooks Direct and buy our whole store for $44!

(If you’re in the UK: please note (with our apologies) that unfortunately we can no longer sell directly to you because of the way HMC&E have structured inbound sales regulations post-Brexit. We hate this, but there’s nothing we can do about it, and the store has therefore been instructed not to allow you to complete sales. Please see this page at the Ebooks Direct site for the details of the whole sad story.)

[meganwhalenturner]

La Finca

[powersandplanetaries]

Okay, I think I’ve mostly settled on the books I’m bringing to get signed at Crossings Con 2022. I was going back and forth on whether to bring The Thief or The King of Attolia, but I’ve decided to go with TKoA because it’s my favourite in the series overall. Which YW book is still questionable though, because I have 2 copies of So You Want To Be A Wizard, so should I get the other one signed as well, or Deep Wizardry, or a third option that I’ve reread more frequently? Cousins help, I am stuck.

[colorfulcuttlefish]

Tonight while waiting for a group to form for dinner, I was hurrying to finish the newest Wayward Children book. It reminded me of cc1 where I was hurrying to finish Every Heart A Doorway on the bus to the hotel. That was the first Seanan McGuire book I read before meeting her as a GoH!

[nimblermortal]

@adroitjackal @jenesaispourquoi you may be interested in meeting each other! You're both into hockey and keep mentioning this Sidney person.

[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 💚

[earlgraytay]

Thanks for the tag, @bakomglaset !

Get to know me

Share your wallpaper:

A pretty image of Beignon from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

The last song you listened to: SING by My Chemical Romance.

Currently Reading:  The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Last Movie: The Super Mario Bros Movie.

Craving: Chocolate. Specifically, Cosmic Brownies. :(

What are you wearing right now: Pink linen button-down, navy blue sweatpants.

How tall are you: Taller than Miles Vorkosigan.

Piercings: Used to have my ears pierced, but the holes closed up.

Tattoos: None.

Glasses? Contacts?: Yes, glasses.

Last drink: Coffee, three sugars.

Last show: Splitting my attention between Trigun (with my friend Lifa) and Oshi no Ko (with my partner).

Last thing you ate: Pizza with my bestie!

Favourite colour: Lavender.

Current obsession: Too many to count! Let's go with the kids's book I'm writing. Or the Vorkosigan Saga. or Bugsnax. Or Trigun.

Unrelated Obsession: The Sims (2 or 4)

Any pets: Do ball jointed dolls count?

Do you have a crush on anyone: Not sure how to answer this question, tbh!

Favourite fictional character: oh god there are so many

Miles Vorkosigan. Dairine Callahan. Vash the Stampede. Mina Murray-Harker. Jo March. Elizabeth Comstock.

The last place you traveled:  The last big vacation I took was to Montreal for CrossingsCon! It was really exciting.

I tag @yooniesim , @amairylle, @terrarkul , @fierceawakening, @ladyyatexel , @tabby-shieldmaiden , @tyrantisterror , @0koyote, and anyone else who wants to do this!

[yavosaur]

[ID: Text of The Oath from Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series. After three lines is a grey car radio antenna with red and white sparks around the top segment. Under the next three lines are wheel skid marks as a brown sports car drives off the image. Three lines below that is a yellow transit circle surrounded by a  non-english font. Geometric light comes up from the circle as if the transport is active. Under everything is a meandering trail of paw prints. In the lower right hand corner is a logo featuring a green dinosaur head over an orange maple leaf.]

I implied that I had a second Oath ready to go and it is for our boy Kit! Kit has yet to have a personalized Oath in the books so I gave him the standard one for now.

I still don’t have a designated tag but I’m going to throw up a masterpost with links to all the Oaths-so-far when I have moment.

Edit: I had to reupload to fix a typo and I added an ID.

[lizzieraindrops]

CrossingsJam returns!

Dai, cousins!

For those of you who will be at @crossingscon 2019 in Montreal and are interested in hearing or making some music while you’re there, we’re having another concert/open mic! 

Anyone interested in the scheduled concert part is welcome to join! We can always use more voices and instruments. We’ll be doing some old classics and a few new things. You can find us in the #yw-songsmiths channel if you’re on the Young Wizards slack, or message me or @imaginariumgeographica here. Please contact us ASAP if you want to be part of the concert!

You can sign up for the open mic at the event itself, so prepare your songs, your personal Oath recensions, and spur-of-the-moment slam poems. We’ll hear you there!

[crossingscon]

Volunteer for CrossingsCon!

CrossingsCon is looking for volunteers to help make the convention a reality, and our sister project Linguistics After Dark is also currently in need of volunteers.

Do you have a skill or passion you think would be a great fit for our projects? Let us know!

See what positions we're looking for here or contact hiring@crossingscon.org to learn more.

[dduane]

CrossingsCon 2022

It'll all be happening in Montréal! I'm one of three guests—alone with Megan Whalen Turner and Ursula Vernon—at this very cozy, intimate and exclusive gathering of cousins and associated others.

My only (and huge) annoyance is that this time—despite all my best hopes—I can't be there. Or at least not physically.

Pesky physicality, unfortunately, is at the root of the problem—one that's been making my life more than difficult since the turn of the year. Since early in January '22 I've been struggling with a medical issue that repeatedly manifests as significant abdominal and pelvic pain, and has sometimes left me bedridden and/or immobile for days at a time. (Forgive me for not getting into more detail: I have no desire to inflict TMI on everybody.)

We don't yet have a diagnosis, though at least after the last month's investigations there are fewer possible causes on the list than there were in earlier months (and let me emphasize that this presently shows no signs of being life-threatening... just really uncomfortable and disruptive to work and life in general). Diagnostic procedures have been scheduled (and along with almost everybody else in Ireland, I'm on a waiting list for them. Our health service is under exactly the kind of pressure you might expect after two-plus years of COVID, especially with a new surge presently in progress). But for the meantime, my doctor has told me in no uncertain terms that I'm not to attempt to travel more than an hour away from home, and emphatically not to attempt to fly anywhere. Essentially, I'm grounded.

Fortunately the wonders of modern technology mean this doesn't mean I won't be there. I'll be on a fair bit of programming, and the CrossingsCon staff and I are working on some events and features that wouldn't previously have been on the cards. I'll be pointing to the published schedule here in days to come, and adding extra detail where I can. Meanwhile, I'm really looking forward to seeing what my fabulous co-guests Megan and Ursula get up to on their program items (and looking forward just as hard to the panels and so forth I'll be sharing with them).

Just two weeks now! And I'm really looking forward to seeing everybody there.

So onward!

[astraldepths]

yavosaur replied to your post “Book Your Room!”

I'm driving up the East Coast,

:o Where from, if you don’t mind me asking?

[thewordscomealive]

You should get your telepathy checked

Overheard At The Crossings

[colorfulcuttlefish]

I hate this modern world where I have to download 3 separate apps to check in for a flight

[in-mutual-weirdness]

taxonomic terror

songofsunset: I feel like when crossingscon happens it'll get to lunch time and someone'll be like 'hey you wanna go to a sandwich place' and I'll be like 'yeah sure' and then things will just black out and I'll wake up handcuffed to a chair with someone waving a hotdog in my face like 'IS THIS A SANDWICH??? HUH???? IS THIS A SANDWICH OR NOT??????' as someone eats a chicago style pizza in the corner, holding eye contact the entire time, then silently mouths 'casserole' at me