Diane Duane

Born in New York City, she grew up in Roosevelt, Long Island. After school, she studied nursing and practiced as a psychiatric nurse for two years until 1976, when she moved to California and worked as an assistant to David Gerrold. Her first novel was published by Dell Books in 1979; Gerrold wrote an "overture" to that novel, on the grounds that he'd rather be making overtures than introductions to Duane's work. She subsequently worked as a freelance writer. In 1981 she moved to Pennsylvania.

Duane has worked in television since the early 1980s, initially becoming involved in script work at the Hanna-Barbera animation studio (now Cartoon Network). After writing numerous scripts for such series as Scooby and Scrappy-Doo, Captain Caveman, Space Stars, Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, Biskitts, and Laverne and Shirley in the Army, she moved on to work in development and serve as a staff writer at Filmation, and in 1985 was hired to story-edit the DiC animated series Dinosaucers. During this period she also wrote scripts for Sunbow Productions (Glo Friends, Transformers, and My Little Pony) and Walt Disney Productions (Duck Tales). In 1986, she co-wrote (with Michael Reaves) the script of one of the earliest episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Where No One Has Gone Before".

She married Northern Irish author Peter Morwood in 1987; they moved to the United Kingdom and then to Ireland, where they reside in County Wicklow.

Also known as the Tale of the Five, this high fantasy series was paused in 1992. The books center on some of the same themes as her better-known Young Wizards series; those who wield the Blue Fire have many of the same responsibilities as the wizards and fight the same battle against entropy. In So You Want to Be a Wizard, Nita's wizardry manual is written by "Hearnssen", a reference to the protagonist of The Door Into Fire, Herewiss s'Hearn (son of Hearn), so it may be that the Middle Kingdoms are part of the same sheaf of universes as the Young Wizards setting. Adding to this, one interdimensional portal in The Door into Fire appears to open over New York City. Duane is working on the final volume. The Door into Fire and The Door into Shadow have an omnibus reprint called Tale of Five: The Sword and the Dragon. ( ISBN 978-1892065513)

In 2003, after doing nearly four years' development work with the production company Tandem Communications of Munich, Germany, Duane and Peter Morwood co-wrote the script for the German TV miniseries Die Nibelungen. The miniseries aired in Germany on the Sat.1 network in late November 2004, and a feature version (titled Sword of Xanten) screened in the UK in December 2004. A "megafeature" cut of the entire miniseries was aired on Channel Four television in the UK in December 2005. The miniseries aired on the Sci-Fi Channel in the US in late March 2006 under the title Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King. The miniseries has also been released on DVD in the US and numerous other markets, under various titles (the previous US title was Curse of the Ring).

In December 2005, Duane proposed to her fans that they fund a third novel in the series, The Big Meow. After funding the project via whole-book subscriptions, per-chapter threshold pledges, merchandising, "put something in the kitty" donations, and $2,900 in challenge grants, Duane wrote, over a span of two and a half years, seven of the book's 13 chapters. No new chapters were published between July 2008 and February 2011, but on February 2, 2011, Duane announced the project's completion and posted the remaining chapters for subscribers between then and the 15th.

In February 2011, Duane announced she would be releasing new versions of the first 4 books in the series, updating the technology used in the books, fixing some timeline issues within the series, and overall making the series more appealing to contemporary young adult readers. The first of the series would be available in June 2011, initially in ebook format, with the next three books to follow in the succeeding months and all these to have new ISBNs, with the publisher switching to the revised editions with new covers around the time the next book in the series is released.

It’s my birthday and I’ll have a sale if I want to. :)

I've always kind of liked the Hobbit concept of the birthday, where you give everybody else presents. So as a nod in this direction, while I'm off gorging myself on cake of some kind or another...