Kingsbury: Site News
Diana Wynne Jones died on 25 March, 2011, after a long battle with cancer. She will be greatly missed.
26 March 2012:
On 22nd April, 2012, Diana's family and friends will be hosting Diana Wynne Jones -- a Celebration of Her Life and
Work. Come and remember Diana's extraordinary imagination.
The public is welcome to attend.
19 August 2011:
Southwark Playhouse, in association with Arts Collective,
presents the world premiere of
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. Adapted for the
stage by Mike Sizemore. Directed and designed by Davy and Kristin
McGuire. 28 November 2011 - 7 January 2012
It looks like there will also be a Howl's Moving Castle musical Coming soon, with music and lyrics by Andy Goldsmith.
26 March 2011:
Diana Wynne Jones died on 25 March, 2011, after a long battle
with cancer. She will be greatly missed.
31 December 2005:
Major design overhaul, including consistent look and feel and
improved accessibility and print stylesheets. Also added
Conrad's Fate, Firebirds, Firebirds Rising, Puss in Boots, and
Pinhoe Egg.
28 January 2005:
The Howl's Moving
Castle movie (Hauru no Ugoku Shiro) page has been updated with
much information, including the expected U.S. release date of
June 2005, and links to DWJ's comments on the film.
12 October 2004:
A ridiculously tense
baseball game has produced some long-needed updates, mostly
reviews of the Howl film by folks who saw it at the
Venice Film Festival, and links to some fansites. Info about
Conrad's Fate is still in the pipeline.
10 January 2004
[Deborah]: At
long last, some updates. Howl's Moving
Castle movie news; updated the definition of the Books and writings page to be more
accurate, and linked on the page to reviews by DWJ; awards;
Merlin Conspiracy reviews; adding a couple of quotations; and
dealing with mail backlog through May (too bad my mail backlog
goes through ... er ... August 1999.
22 August 2003
[Deborah]: DWJ
discussed her writing and The Merlin
Conspiracy at The
Edinburgh Book Festival 11 August 2003.
12 January 2003
[Deborah] from a mailing list member: DWJ
will be discussing her writing, and reading from The Merlin Conspiracy at The
Bath Literary Festival 9 March 2003. The Merlin Conspiracy comes out April 2003
in the US and the UK.
27 December 2002
[Deborah]New less encouraging details on Howl's Moving Castle film, about possible
changes to the plot.
23 December 2002
[Deborah]New details on Howl's Moving Castle film page from animated-movies.net:
Writer: Reiko Yoshida
Supervising animator: Katsuya Kondou (Kiki's Delivery
Service)
19 December 2002
[Deborah] Check out the new, collaborative DWJ
Wikipedia. Add an article! Also, new good news about the Howl's Moving Castle movie, now
officially directed by Miyazaki.
09 November 2002
[Deborah] I re-did the links
page in order to add all of the resources and discussion
groups about which I'm currently aware (on the Internet). I also
added links to reviews for Tough Guide, Deep Secret, and Dark
Lord.
29 August 2002
[Deborah] Added link to Diana Wynne Jones: an
Exciting and Exacting Wisdom. In DWJ news (not site
news), The Merlin Conspiracy is due for January
2003. Also, Miyazaki himself will be taking over the direction
for the Howl film. Yay! I'm adding a link
dedicated to news and info about the Howl
movie.
16 April 2002
[Deborah] I've made up a family tree
for the Dalemark universe which I
think is complete. Warning: contains major
spoilers.
1 February 2002
[Deborah] Added Japanese fanfic and fan art links to the
links page. Added the mailing list
questionaire results to the mailing list
page. Added link to the Hexwood author's note
on the Hexwood page. All these are thanks to the mailing list folks.
15 October, 2001
[Courtney] The interview with Diana and Melvin Burgess has
been moved to another part of the BBC website.
7 September, 2001
[Deborah] Diana and Melvin Burgess were interviewed
on the BBC discussing reality, fantasy, and children's lives.
Requires RealPlayer. Thanks to Katherine Ferguson.
5 September, 2001
[Deborah] From Locus magazine:
"Diana Wynne Jones disputes assertions in _The
Independent_ that she will be writing an eighth book in C.S.
Lewis's 'The Chronicles of Narnia' series, and says she has no
intentions of ever doing so." In the words of Jessica
Hekman, who provided this information: "My response: well, duh."
4 September, 2001
[Deborah] The following news about the Howl's
Moving Castle film has been provided by Andrew Osmond on
the mailing list, on ScreenDaily.com, the web-site of the trade
magazine Screen International:
"Studio Ghibli, whose Spirited Away is breaking Japanese box office records, has embarked on a new feature, based on Howls Moving Castle, a childrens fantasy novel by British author Diane Wynne. But in a first for the studio, the director is not Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata, the two master animators who co-founded the Studio in 1985, but Mamoru Hosoda, a veteran with rival Toei Animation, whose credits includes the popular Digimon franchise."
"'Yoshifumi Kondo directed one of our films, Whisper of the Heart (1985), but it started as a TV program,' explained a Ghibli spokesman. 'This is the first time we've had someone other than Miyazaki or Takahata -- or someone from outside the company -- direct a feature from the beginning.'. The film is being prepared for a summer 2003 release."
20 August, 2001
[Deborah] The wonderful folks at www.dianawynnejones.com
have confirmed that Diana is working with the amazing animator Hayao Miyazaki to make a film
of Howl's
Moving Castle, due out in 2003.
22 July, 2001
[Courtney] It's been a long dry spell, but finally I've done
some work on the archives. Each index page
now has links to the first and last page of the index, and lists 70
messages instead of 20, to cut down on the number of index pages
(there were over 150 pages). I still have some work to do
on the layout of the message pages.
Also, the email addressess of list members have been obscured, to prevent spammers from using the archive for address-harvesting. It should still be easy to tell who sent a message, but you won't be able to see their full email address anymore. This is somewhat less convenient, but I hope it will not be too hard on list members.
Please send us mail to tell us what you think of the new format. Suggestions and requests are always welcome.
9 January, 2001
[Courtney] I have hadded a bunch more cover pictures that I
scanned from my books. The updated books are Archer's Goon, Black Maria, Believing is Seeing, Dogsbody, Fire and Hemlock, Hidden Turnings, Howl's Moving Castle, A Sudden Wild Magic, and A Tale of Time City.
In the introduction to Believing is Seeing, Ms. Jones wrote some interesting comments on the circumstances surrounding the writing of each of the stories published therein. I have typed up these comments on the collections page, and now each story's name is a link to the notes on it.
6 January, 2001
[Courtney] I just added a passel of new covers scan
generously sent to us by Gili. Thank you, Gili, they came out
beautifully. There are new pictures for Charmed Life, Everard's Ride, Fire and Hemlock, The Ogre Downstairs, Stopping for a Spell, A Sudden Wild Magic, Tough Guide to Fantasyland, Warlock at the Wheel, and Witch Week.
26 December, 2000
[Deborah] I've finished converting the bookstore pages
to Powells and tidying graphic presentation of the cover
thumbnails. I've added links to Heffers (UK online bookshop) for
many of the books, particularly those that are unavailable in the
United States. The front page is now just recent news, links,
general page information; the links lead directly to the relevant
pages. I've added a page for audio
books linked off the bibliography page. Note that more
books are coming back into print daily (for which, grudgingly, I
suppose we most thank the success of a certain DWJ imitator), so
if I haven't got them linked, go directly to Powells or to
Heffers and check there (and then let me know).
25 December, 2000
[Deborah] it's a Holiday Miracle: the oil is lasting for
eight days and deborah is updating the page. I've added
Mixed Magics and Year of the Griffin ,
converted about half of the bookstore pages to Powells, tidied up
graphic presentation for cover thumbnails for those same half of
the pages, updated bookstore links to reflect what actually is in
print, and have added the quotations sent to me a year ago to the
random quotation generator. I know I've been terrible about
answering email, but if y'all would let me and Courtney know
what you think is valuable about the site, and what we should
add, that would be great. Happy holidays!
8 November, 2000
[Courtney] I have fixed all but one of the missing pictures
in the autobiography. There were copies of the
pictures in thePicture
Gallery of the Official Diana
Wynne Jones website, which is maintained by one of our very own
list members (thanks, Meredith :).
I also added some information on some of the short stories that appear in collections.
8 October, 2000
[Courtney] I've just added a new cover scan to Cart and Cwidder and two new scans to
C harmed Life (as well as a larger
version of a current scan). These picture s are courtesy of Kylie
Preisig. Thanks, Kylie!
And thanks to Deborah for all of her compliments <blush>.
28 July, 2000
[Courtney] The date index of the mailing list
archive is finally listed in reverse-chronological order. If it
stops being in reverse order, or if you have problems when using it,
you should tell me.
I was also wondering what other people think of the format of the index pages. Currently, every index page lists 20 messages, and I'd like to know if you think that's just right, too many, or too few.
10 July, 2000
[Deborah] I'm finally answering all my old email, so if
you have long since given up on me, you might get a surprise.
I've also added a page (linked from the links and bibliography
pages) of Harry Potter links that mention Diana, since so many
people are curious about the level of recognition of
similarities. And Courtney still rocks my world.
16 June, 2000
[Courtney] Finally! Once again, the mailing list archive is
set to update automagically at 4AM EST. My next project will be
working on the (currently cumbersome) user interface for the archive.
And in case you hadn't noticed, the mailing list has been back for a while.
10 May, 2000
[Courtney] I've gotten email recently asking if the list was
down; it does appear to so be, probably as a result of an upgrade
(yay! Everybody say thanks to Deborah) that took place this past
weekend. Deborah's working on getting it back up.
7 May, 2000
[Deborah] I've added my graduate thesis on Diana Wynne Jones and the power of language
which was requested by a few foolish souls. I'm very curious to
hear constructive criticism, actually.
[Deborah] oh, and for the record, Courtney rocks my world.
4 May, 2000:
[Courtney] I've just gone through and fixed the links to
some of the cover scans on the
bibliography pages. Some of the pictures
were not actually on this server, and the links to the site where they
did reside had been broken for a while.
13 April, 2000:
[Courtney] The mailing list archives have
been updated! Currently, they are
being updated every few days as I remember to run the conversion scripts
manually, but I'm working on figuring out a good way to re-automate
the process. I will also be working on redoing the user interface to
the archive, as it's rather cumbersome for an archive this big.
Anyone with suggestions for things they'd like to see can send me
email at cme@suberic.net.
Those of you on the mailing list will have heard that I am now assisting Deborah with the maintenance of the web site. I'll be marking all of my additions to the news section with [Courtney].
[Before this date, all links are by Deborah]
17 August, 1999:
Check out the new quotation generator
that gives you random DWJ quotations. Stocking of the file is
still in progress; as yet, it's nearly empty. Feel free to mail me more!
I've added much more cover art, thanks to Kylie Preisig, who's been scanning and sending to me, and Katherine Ferguson, from whose site I am directly linking.
4 July, 1999:
Thanks to some folks on the mailing list,
I've learned about the Puss in
Boots, which appears to be for young children. Also,
Seeing is
Believing is due out soon in the US.
I've restructured the bibliography to make it easier to find things and to maintain. Let me know if you think it's worse, or if you have any better ideas. Individual book purchase links are now linked from the books themselves. This is just the first of many changes you should expect as my thesis deadline approaches and I procrastinate faster.
28 April 1999:
Thanks to Sharyn November at Puffin, I can tell you that Puffin
will be reprinting DWJ titles. They'll be starting with Dark
Lord of Derkholm, Howl's Moving Castle,
Fire and Hemlock, and Archer's Goon.
They'll be rack trim, and designed to crossover between the
children's and SF/Fantasy market.
26 April 1999:
Join the DWJ Mailing List! A link to a page
of awards is up, and awards are now mentioned on the books' own
pages. Online reviews are now also mentioned on the books' own
pages.
23 April 1999:
The next big set of changes is coming through. I've added some
info for Minor Arcana and a stanza of a nasty Diana
poem in the collection Now We
Are Sick.
23 November 1998:
I've got my first Amazon Associates check -- my cut from what you
all bought through the bookstore.
With it, I've bought copies of Witch Week,
Charmed Life, and The Spellcoats, and I
have domated them to Citizen
Schools.
30 October 1998:
I've added lots of cover art. Some of the thumbnails are linked
to larger images when I've got them. I've also added links to
lots of other Diana pages from the Moving
Castle Door.
29 October, 1998:
Dark Lord of Derkholm is
out, and I just finished it last night! Then I read the last two
chapters again this morning. I'd recommend reading it after
reading Tough Guide to
Fantasyland, which is due out in the US in
December.
14 October, 1998:
A friend just sent me the following:
All information from Locus removed.
I can't confirm this on the Locus Web site (http://www.locusmag.com/) but I assume it's true. If you care to send cards, you can do so care of her publisher.
I'll be getting the magazine soon, since there's apparntly a review of _Dark Lord of Derkholm_ in it.
22 May, 1998:
I've now made an arrangement with Bookpages, a British online
bookstore that's now owned by Amazon. Same general deal as with
Amazon: all store credit I get will be turned into DWJ books and
donated to schools, libraries, literacy programs, the like. IF
you go to Amazon through my links and buy anything there at all,
I'll get a little cut.
May Eve, 1998:
Charmed Life is out in paperback in the US. Look
for it in the newly revamped flower
shop redesigned to make books easier to find. In the flower
shop you can now buy books from Amazon which are in print in
the US. If they're out of print here, I try to find them in
print in the UK and include a link to Waterstone's page.
24 October 1997:
Tough Guide to Fantasyland didn't win its Hugo Award, more's
the pity.
I'm finally catching up on that email you all have been sending me for months.
28 July 1997:
Look soon for my personal notes on my meeting with Diana (as soon as I type
them in) and for the autobiographical text she gave me (it's a
Something About the Author text).
Tough Guide is up for a Hugo!
9 July 1997:
Apologies to everyone who's sent me email I've ignored. Since I'm going to
Britain in three days (pending on BritAir's labor disputes), I'll be
meeting Diana, and have to update the page so I can show off. <grin>
In any case, you'll see copious updates over the next several days, and
copious updates several days from now.
28 January 1997:
Many thanks to Kylie
Preisig who sent me scanned in covers and descriptions for some books
I've no access to. These are there for Changeover;
Yes, Dear; Wild Robert.
Another note, I saw an import copy of Minor Arcana in a bookstore this weekend. Frustratingly, most of the things in it are reprints; there's only one story I've not seen before. I'll get a story listing and add it to the collections page.
I've also added a thumbnail for "Howl's Moving Castle".
17 December 1996:
My wholehearted apologies for the length of time since my last update.
Since I last added to these page, I've scanned in my second letter from Diana. I've also found
The Time of the Ghost, and I loved it. I have to run to a
meeting now, but I've promised a number of people I'll be better with the
page. Happy Holidays, all!
27 August 1996:
I found Stopping For a Spell in paperback in a bookshop, and
will write it up tomorrow. I've got the answers to my interview questions
from DWJ; I'll write those up tomorrow, too. And Time of the
Ghost is due out in hardcover in the states within the week.
27 June 1996:
Tough Guide to Fantasy land has been published in the States.
It's an excellent book; I highly recommend it.
5 May 1996:
Two great bits of news: my parents just got back from a wedding in England,
and they brought me The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, and we got
a scanner at work. Why is the second bit good news? Well, today I've
scanned in the covers of Howl's and the Dalemark quartet, the
first chapter of Drowned Ammet, and my letter from Diana.
Tomorrow I'll shrink all of those down and add them to the page. I've
brought in my entire collection of DWJ books, so look forward to a new few
pictures and chapters after every weekend.
Walpurgisnacht 1996:
Many of you have been sending me feedback and suggestions for this page,
and I have been horribly lax about answering and following up, for which I
apologise. I've now refiled all of my email in an easier to track manner,
so I will soon be updating the page in the ways which you've all suggested.
Don't give up on me, please. I have a job, too. *grin*
April 1996:
I received an answer to my letter
to DWJ, so look forward to more chapters,
some cover pics, and an interview. If there's anything you'd like to ask