all right everyone, who's ready to visit Fantasyland (c. 1997)? please remember when packing for your trip that you are Not allowed to bring any personal items unless they are Magic and/or contain Important Lore zencastr.com/z/U8sm3Gjc

Our first S3 bonus episode drops today, discussing Dalemark as a series, with an eye to the Guide to Dalemark and a long stopover on the early proto-Dalemark novella "The True State of Affairs" Believe it or not, this one was supposed to be short. zencastr.com/z/KuathQUW

Is it a problem that Dark Lord of Derkholm often decides not to dwell on the darkness of its subject matter because it's instead busy fitting more jokes in? Perhaps yes. Are all the jokes very funny? DEFINITELY yes. zencastr.com/z/lClP6mCT

Thank you to my wise and wonderful friends for bringing me along for this ride!! I had so much fun digging into this book and I hope that comes through on the episode. Bonus joke: if DWJ was writing today about R. Venables, wizard and game developer, he would definitely be working in Unreal Engine.

we did not even have time to talk about Janine's Sweaters on the episode so please enjoy this majestic compilation in lieu

Thanks for your patience as we got our Deep Secret episode out the door! We're thrilled to have @agbouskila.bsky.social as our guest consulting expert on game dev and magids on this week's trip back in time to [Definitely Absolutely A Completely Fictional Con], 1997 zencastr.com/z/WduuwZZw

hello all! two quick announcements: 1 - due to technical difficulties, there will NOT be a new episode this week! Deep Secret will go up either 3/7 or 3/14 depending on how quickly we resolve them. as a taster to tide you over please enjoy @emilytesh.net's beautiful Lost Heirs Chaos Family Tree

Finally, we've made it all the way from Drowned Ammet to Crowned Ammet, and we do feel very lucky that, unlike readers in the 70s, we didn't have to wait 15 real time years for it zencastr.com/z/wv-F0dWm

perhaps you'll say: was it really necessary for this to be a four hour episode? to which I say: look forward to at LEAST another hour of Hexwood Time in this season's Q&A. Happy Hexwood Day, everyone! zencastr.com/z/Y9k1q1AZ

New year, new DWJ - and in today's episode, it's definitely a new DWJ, as she throws everything she knows out the window and sets out to write the wildest book of her career to date. We're definitely in the back half of the nineties now! zencastr.com/z/4YIgZkmy

Happy New Year! just a quick note that we're taking a little holiday break, so our Sudden Wild Magic episode will drop on the 17th. see you then!

This week we're talking about Diana Wynne Jones' most classically horror book yet, in which she tackles her ultimate fear: nice little old ladies. MUCH to unpack in this one zencastr.com/z/BitLmcRH

This week, it's Castle in the Air! Welcome back, fan favorite characters; glad to see you still being nightmare people, sorry about the war crimes, and thank you to Christopher Chant for giving us full permission to go all in on Richard Burton zencastr.com/z/v5yFguoY

we're back and launching S3 with a BANGER today as the fabulous @singlecrow.bsky.social joins us for a TWO HOUR episode on our favorite future-dressing-gown-wearing disaster, Christopher Chant zencastr.com/z/26xps9hC

We're finally wrapping up S2 today with our last bonus episode for the season -- thank you all so much for the many thoughtful, interesting and insightful letters you sent in for our Q&A!

A bunch of stories we really loved, a bunch of stories we'd love to see more of, and a Lot of stories in which a bad adult gets turned into (metaphorical or literal) bacon: it's time for DWJ's short fiction of the 70s and 80s! zencastr.com/z/1eIt9L0F

thank you all so much for all the amazing questions you've sent in for our Q&A!! FOR THE RECORD, although we planned to record that ep today, life events plus the realization that people might have thoughts about the shorts has caused us to reschedule for NEXT THURSDAY 9/25

for the first of our S2 bonus episodes, we had the absolute joy of talking with critic and historian @effjayem.bsky.social for an hour and a half about historical context, book-hunger, and DWJ as a critical writer of critical texts zencastr.com/z/MEQO-ixY

apparently we are now a Hugo-winning podcast! a fact which is thanks entirely to a.) Diana Wynne Jones, for her consistent ability to make us think, wonder, and delight and b.) all of you, for taking time out of your lives to join us in reading her as deeply as she deserves

Today we're wrapping up our second season with A Tale of Time City! a real butter-pie of a book: delicious ice cream froth on the outside, but full of surprisingly rich ideas once you actually bite into it zencastr.com/z/8P9vM1fI

through dangers untold (sleeping infants) and hardships unnumbered (three wildly incompatible timezones) we have managed to successfully kidnap brilliant romance expert @freyamarske.bsky.social to discuss DWJ's most romantic novel with us. Happy Howl's Moving Castle Day! zencastr.com/z/r0LaZYob

[belated] obligatory reminder that we are nominated for a Hugo award, and there are approximately eight remaining hours in which you can vote for us if you feel so inclined!

This week, in our most intimidating project yet, we spend two recording sessions and three hours exploring Nowhere as we attempt to unpack the dense oppositional layers of truth and fiction, heroism and monstrosity, sacrifice and selfishness underlying Fire and Hemlock zencastr.com/z/6AFSB60R

Loved your Archer's Goon conversation! Thanks for doing the podcast, it's so great. To fill up the time until Fire & Hemlock, I decided to share my LEGO re-enactment of Archer's Goon. Thought you might get a kick out of it! samhester.substack.com/s/archers-goon

We are back with CAHOOTS. We are back with HIJINKS. We are back with MEGALOMANIAC EVIL WIZARDS, and we are back with the best picture of a family that actually likes each other that DWJ has written to date: it's Archer's Goon! zencastr.com/z/jiZt3zhC

Please give a warm welcome to a collection of miserable children with transcendently bad vibes: it's Witch Week! zencastr.com/z/1UBGm4SC

Looked up with some shock from the things I am buried in (the Clarke Award shortlist, my Iliad reread, a first draft in progress, the new season of the DWJ podcast @eightdaysofdiana.bsky.social) and realized that THE INCANDESCENT has been out for a month.

It's Homeward Bounders day! This week we're incredibly fortunate to have the brilliant @aptshadow.bsky.social walking the Bounds with us as we explore tragedy, time, the multiverse, and evil D&D zencastr.com/z/hOgSOXdy

good morning everyone it is TIME! for the GHOST! are you ready to confront the looming spectre of childhood trauma? because DWJ sure is! zencastr.com/z/Z23DWyle

And we're back! Starting off the 80s with a cream pie and a clown car, it's Magicians of Caprona, a joyous structural experiment in comedy and heterosexuality that is also somehow a sequel to Charmed Life zencastr.com/z/x3fhRKxo

our second season of Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones is coming soon! the 1980s is full of certified bangers; we'll be covering, in order: The Magicians of Caprona The Time of the Ghost The Homeward Bounders Witch Week Archer's Goon Fire and Hemlock Howl's Moving Castle A Tale of Time City

Eight Days is some of the work I’m proudest of from last year, thank you SO much to those who nominated the show for Best Fancast.

Still kind of reeling: A Meal of Thorns is a Hugo finalist! A huge thanks to everyone who listened & nominated, and of course to the wonderful guests who have made this project such a treat. Also, it is lovely to be in such company; a quick thread of faves from '24 in case followers are unfamiliar:

we're Hugo nominated?! a wild and delightfully surprising thing to happen to a highly specific podcast in its first year of life, thank you so much to any of you who put our names in!

We are in the process of recording season two of @eightdaysofdiana.bsky.social and may I just say the 80s is an astonishing decade in Diana Wynne Jones’ output. Just an unbelievable creative flourishing. Time of the Ghost, Homeward Bounders and Witch Week back to back and that’s just the START.

thanks to whoever nominated us for the BSFAs, we're very stoked to see the podcast on the longlist! bsfa.co.uk/bsfa-awards-...

Really delighted to see @eightdaysofdiana.bsky.social on this list, which reminded me that Eight Days of Diana is in fact Hugo eligible! So if you're thinking about your Fancast ballot and you enjoy deep dives into an influential author's backlist, please give it a listen.

we couldn't let the seventies pass from us without talking for another hour-plus about Dalemark -- here's our bonus episode, in which we answer questions from listeners to us and also from us to each other zencastr.com/z/w9rpWSlv

267 pages in two coats: it's time for Spellcoats, the last book of the seventies and of our first season, in which we get very excited about the magic of making and finding meaning in a text. zencastr.com/z/zjvlTJix

Drowned Ammet! hear us literally starting to talk faster and faster as we desperately race to get all our thoughts about this book out before our hard stop zencastr.com/z/RVl7nzhs

Charmed Life! the audio this week is a bit fuzzy but the conversation may be our best yet as we tackle the Problem of Gwendolen(s) zencastr.com/z/3WzPq5C_

This week we're doing Power of Three! which three? take your pick, you're extremely spoiled for thematic choice zencastr.com/z/H0R4ClYR

This week we're doing Cart and Cwidder -- our first trip to Dalemark, but definitely not our last. zencastr.com/z/4XnL5XAL

Hello everyone, it's Dogsbody day! A classic story of a girl, her dog, his evil ex, and the inescapable power of death. zencastr.com/z/X8OU1ptn

thank you for dropping this important scholarship just in time for tomorrow's Dogsbody episode!

The other thing I’m doing at the moment is a passion project podcast with @rebeccafraimow.bsky.social: Let’s Read ALL The Diana Wynne Jones. Here’s episode one, on masculinity and romantic friendship and the everyday mythic in Eight Days Of Luke.

This is our lone twofer episode, covering both Wilkins' Tooth and The Ogre Downstairs. Revenge, violence, & several attempted murders: hijinks ensue! (warnings both for some technical difficulties on the audio and for more than usual the amount of discussion of child abuse) zencastr.com/z/seg7nCqV

And we're up! zencastr.com/z/KuEf5qKH Episode transcript available here: drive.google.com/file/d/1fcbV...

Thanks for the warm welcome, everyone! In addition to following our RSS feed, you can now subscribe to us on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts: open.spotify.com/show/6gxtq3n... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... Our Eight Days of Luke episode will drop on Saturday. See you then!

GREAT question. we're going decade by decade, so for the first season we're just tackling the 70s: 1. Eight Days of Luke 2. Wilkin's Tooth/The Ogre Downstairs 3. Dogsbody 4. Cart & Cwidder 5. Power of Three 6. Charmed Life 7. Drowned Ammett 8. Spellcoats (also yesss join us)