Can't help it. Squeeing madly here. Serendipity is surely one of life's best simple pleasures.

About a year ago, when I had just about exhausted the entire oeuvres of my favorite authors and was rummaging around in Booksale for some new and interesting reading material, I happened upon this glossy paperback with an intriguing title: So You Want To Be A Wizard. As with most of my lucky finds, I scanned a few pages, found myself wanting to read the whole story, and had to buy the book.


So You Want To Be A Wizard is the first book in the Young Wizards series by Diane Duane. Lest you think it is but another Harry Potter offshoot, I discovered that it was actually first published in the 1980s and is becoming popular again because of the renewed interest in fantasy stories.

Anyway, I soon got immersed in the adventures of Nita Callahan, her best friend Kit Rodriguez, and her younger sister Dairine as they discover that they are, in fact, young wizards. Unlike J.K. Rowling's series which is strongly based in folklore, however, the Young Wizards series is wizardry with the laws of science thrown in, which makes it very interesting, and with a twist on parallel universes as well. Think Diana Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci. Think J.K. Rowling meets Madeleine L'Engle. In short, the Young Wizards series went into my "buy at whatever costs" list.

Then today, while checking Twitter, I happened to see one of the people I'm following tweet at spec-fic author Kristine Kathryn Rusch, so I thought I'd check if some of my favorite authors were on Twitter too.

Wonder of wonders, Diane Duane is. To make it better, she actually tweeted back!!! So I found out that not only is there a new book in the series coming out next year (A Wizard of Mars), but that So You Want To Be A Wizard might become a movie soon.

OMG, OMG, OMG. I am now all excited... who will play Nita? Who will be Kit? Who will play bratty Dairine? Who will be archangel-in-the-guise-of-a-bad-boy Ronan, and who will be haughty prince Roshaun? What will Ponch the dog and Machu Picchu the archangel-in-the-guise-of-a-macaw be like on film? Remembering the book, I am sure the special effects will have to be something wonderful!

And oh yes. Serendipity is truly wonderful /wriggles happily/.