Help Out Diane Duane (And Get A Cool Book or Two)
Posted on January 12, 2012 Posted by John Scalzi 26 Comments
Writer Diane Duane writes some cool fiction, some of which is available in eBook format. Her bank account recently got cleared out by scammers, and while her bank will eventually credit her for the money, right now she’s in a tight spot. So if you were looking for something to read on your eBook reader, check out her eBooks and consider picking one up.
If I used G+ I would post this on Diane’s page, but one good rule of thumb with Debit cards. Always keep the bulk of your money in a savings or other related account you can transfer from immediately, and NEVER turn on automatic transfers…
People do forget that Debit cards do not have all of the same fraud protection mechanisms as CCs do..
I’ve been a member of her forums for a long time (though the forums have been rather slowly creeping into quiet death for a few years) and can heartily endorse her books. Not quite the same as what Master Scalzi writes, of course, but in my opinion a much more mature and internally coherent treatment of magic and fantasy than some more successful authors.
Jeff L:
I think it’s fine not to have posted that over there in any event. Inasmuch as Ms. Duane has just gotten skimmed, it’s possible a post like that would have been interpreted (despite the helpful intent behind it) as criticizing her when she’s down.
That said, I personally have a low opinion of debit cards and don’t use them because here in the US they have fewer fraud protections than credit cards, among other reasons. Our bank keeps trying to issue us ATM cards that double as debit cards, and we keep taking the cards back and telling them to give us cards that are just ATM cards.
I love DD’s books. In fact, I already own them all (excepting the Star Trek series). So I urge fellow SF fans to try them. Omnitopia: Dawn, is especially fine.
I loved Diane Duane’s books! Definitely buy them if you haven’t experienced her writing yet. :)
For folks worried about skimmers or being introduced to them for the first time.- Boing Boing and Brian Krebs and a number of other web outlets cover how to spot skimmers or things to be suspicious of. http://krebsonsecurity.com/2010/02/atm-skimmers-part-ii/
It’s nice to know how to spot skimmers, but it’s no proof against having your data stolen. A supermarket chain here in northern California was the target of scammers who modified the innards of self-service checkout kiosks by adding a circuit board to them. Two dozen stores were the beneficiaries of this “enhancement” before someone servicing the machines noticed that something didn’t look quite right. Hilarity ensued.
Can someone recommend a book of hers? I’ve only read her Star Trek novels, which I really enjoyed.
I really enjoyed Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses, which I read as a grownup and which I think is intended for an adult audience (although there’s nothing in there that couldn’t be read by a YA audience, imho). In a way, it reminds me of “hard fantasy” a la Bone Dance.
…I was quite ignorant of the fact that debit cards have fewer fraud protections and now I have some thinking to do about how I make purchases. I can’t imagine how terrible this must be for Diane Duane! I’d love a specific recommendation of one of her books, too.
-aside-
Is there anything recentish anyone can legally and morally share about
Terri Windling’s problems? I mean, the sort of stuff that might make a
cynical bastard loosen his purse strings?
-/aside-
–
Kevin and perhaps others: The Science Fiction Book Club (SFBC) lists seven
Diane Duane books.
“Omnitopia Dawn” is the one that does not have “Wizard” in the title.
It’s unusual for the SFBC to have that many books by one author.
–
Is there a way to buy her books that gets the money to her this year?
—-The last time I talked to some one who had been robbed person’s
worst problem was no money so no food, and “We’ll get back to you if
you’ve filled out the forms perfectly.”
The license plates were out of state.
What I did was feel ashamed after I did the math for only giving twenty
bucks–Gas to that car’s home _state_ was about sixty bucks, and I’d
had about sixty four in cash.
Just bought two. Poor Diane!
At Diane Duane and all. ( https://plus.google.com/101086882349363163093/posts/Mvzkc3ubjac )
Good for you, you didn’t opt in to have your bank protect you.
If you had, your bank would allow negative balances, and would
probably charge you forty bucks for each day that your balance
was below zero.
Done. Grabbed a copy of “Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses” just in time to snuggle into bed with my new read and some tea!
Quest completed (1 copy of Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses)! How many XP do I get?
One thing that saved our behinds when scammers attempted to clean us out was that we have for some time had 3 sets of accounts. (Mine, hers and ours) The credit union was actually pretty good about putting the money back quickly, but since our cards (they managed to cancel both when only one was compromised) were cancelled we would have had no way to pay for anything. Since we had the other accounts and could manually transfer between them we were able to keep things rolling. The CU later put a block on that entire country…
@Shawn T
Is there a way to buy her books that gets the money to her this year?
That would be buying the ebooks; you can PayPal it or use a credit card. The digital books come as epub (Nook, Aldiko for Android, iTunes/iBooks for iPhone/iPad/Mac, Adobe Digital Editions for every machine) or mobi (Kindle and the iPhone/Android Kindle apps that can read from the Personal Documents library, or with the Kindle programs for Mac or Windows).
The books are nicely, cluefully formatted; curly quotes as well. Additionally, they have tables of contents that are linked, which is a nicety still ignored by some publishing houses. They fully use both the guide component for Mobipocket and have valid spines for the epub readers and the Kindle mac app. I complement them as someone with ebook creation experience.
And the books come without DRM, so they can be obtained internationally and truly belong to you.
Ouch.
I can highly recommend Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses and Omnitopia: Dawn (actually, I highly recommend the entire Duane canon, but those two are both excellent entry points). The first of these is newly available in an “author’s cut” edition from the Duane Web site, and the second is recently in mass market from DAW, with a sequel (due in hardcover) just over the horizon.
Dang! I had to cut up and discard my credit card only Tuesday last due to scammers, which has effectively frozen my online buying power. I’ll lob something over when I get my new one.
Sheesh. I’ve had to get a new card every year now for the last few years. I play a lot of online mmo’s, and, as you may have heard, a few have been hit over the last while. Getting silly now.
My bank suggested I use a separate account for online transactions, and just keep a small amount of money in it. That way, if anything goes wrong, the scammers/whoever only have access to a little bit. It is a pain because you have to keep an eye, and transfer from the main account. But, maybe it’s worth checking into. (It sounds like Ms Duane’s situation involved the physical card, though, and this method wouldn’t help with that at all.)
That’s terrible; I’ve loved her books since I discovered So You Want To Be A Wizard in our junior high library. The later books in the Young Wizards series are great, too; her magic system’s sort of the crossover point between string theory and religion, and if there is an afterlife I hope it looks a lot like her version, Timeheart.
If the thought of reading YA turns you off, I’d recommend The Book of Night With Moon; it’s set in the same universe as the YW series, but the wizards are cats (which, if you’re a cat owner, explains a lot!). It stands alone pretty well, too. Just bring plenty of Kleenex!
That doth sucketh. I’ve forwarded the link to a couple of other author blogs who mention DD’s own blog, and am looking at her e-backlist to see what I might pick up for myself.
On an unrelated note, might we have your opinion at some point on Google+ as a social network? Good, bad, medium-rare?
@Arachne Jericho:
About how buying the ebooks gets that money to her this year.
Thank you for that information.
Bought the Wizards package and the Tale of the Five! I do love her books.
Diane gives an update on the situation and many thanks:
http://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/2012/01/14/an-interesting-couplefew-days/
Time to preach what I don’t practice, with preaching and more.
At least one of my credit cards will let me create a one time use temporary
number. Whenever you can (most online purchases) you should do so.
I did, once. It worked fine.
Not useful for whoever those book people are who billed my CC once for
each seller–I bought let’s say twenty used books and my credit card got
got, -shrug- fifteen charges.
The CC’s fraud guy told me that they’d been alerted to some irregular activity,
and then started talking all like distracted as if that was the first time he’d seen
the charges.
I told him it that I’d noticed the charges the last time I’d checked that CC
account online, and that the charges should add up to, shrug, $123.45.
Which they did.
I think he wanted to swear at them.
(Thing to be aware of: The CC companies do two charges per transaction:
First is a cover charge of I don’t recall but about forty cents? Second is a
percentage of the total: Five ish years ago the industry average was some
1.99 percent.)
One time use numbers are probably not useful on game sites and are not
useful on my monthly paid subscription sites.
At least one of my CCs allows me to put a custom picture on it: Useless as
things are, but I do have a fantasy of putting that custom pic in front of some
camera on the card reader, and having it say “[stenography in image matches
card number, this card is verified as valid , transaction may proceed.]”
Fantasies aside, what I meant was I could put a custom image on the card wid
me mug and woids in da pic dat sez I ain’t nobody else: And the fem would
answer with words like “It’s cold out and I’ve nowhere else to stay! Please don’t
make me go back to /him/ without! his beer and the stuff he sent me here for!”
–
–
What I do:
I have more credit cards than I need and one checking account with one
associated debit card.
I officially think of my CC’s and my checking account as one account that
has a balance of the checking minus all credit card balances.
I “only” use my debit card to get cash, preferably at one of my banks
ATM’s that doesn’t charge a fee, but usually not.
For magazine subscriptions (and more) I write a check because most of
them say that for my convenience they will auto renew and bill my credit
card–note that some companies have convenient to the subscriber
agreements with the card company that move that billing to any new card.
Caught this on BoingBoing last night, and used it as a mighty fine excuse to pick up an ebook by a new author, namely the Author’s Cut of Elf-King’s Roses. I love it when I can selfishly assist someone in the name of the greater good!