Hal Duncan's Blog, page 20

Comfort My Cunt

From Sodom! The Musical. To follow on directly from the previous post.

[The stage is dark. Soft music is played. A small voice, in a mournful key:]

    VOICE:
Unhappy cunt, oh comfortless,
From lavish slurps to sad distress,
Comfort my cunt.
Comfort my cunt.

Now shorn of ornamental hair,
And starved to gasp at empty air.
Comfort my cunt.
Comfort my cunt.

In exile from its dearest duck,
That

The Two-Timer's Waltz

And lo, with this following on directly from the previous post's debauched denouement, Scene One of Sodom! The Musical is complete!


"The Two-Timer's Waltz"

[BOLLOX and PUCKANELLO lie post-coitus.]    PUCKANELLOMy lord and sugar daddy dear,O royal master of my rear,Permission to speak freely here?    BOLLOX:Go on, you know you have my ear.    PUCKENELLO:The last time you were in that tombThe

All Things Under Heaven

My mind is a sewer. Yes, it is. My mind is a fricking sewer. Say the words "Sodom! The Musical" to it, and it proceeds to rewrite The Farce of Sodom and make it even more sordid. Cause, you know, Rochester -- assuming the attribution to Rochester is correct -- just didn't go far enough, not without at least a nod to felching.

Oh well. For those of you debauched enough to join me in my bawdy

Can't. Stop.

Dear world,

Further to yesterday's blog post re my mate sending me a link to The Farce of Sodom in an email exhorting me to do something with it -- like, a musical or summat -- I find myself compelled to request that heretofore you refrain from putting ideas like that in my head.

No, really. This is wrong. So so wrong. Seriously, my only defense is that all the wrongness is totally there in the

Sodom! The Musical

After it was mentioned on a BBC4 documentary on Restoration women the other night, it seems, a friend sent me links to the Wikipedia entry on and the full text of a Restoration play carrying the teasing title of The Farce of Sodom, or The Quintessence of Debauchery, possibly written by one of the great libertines of history, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. I was, as she correctly guessed, already

Apocrypha for the Cardinal's Coalition

 The Parable of the Presumptious Servant

And Joshua walked by the Sea of Galilee and came into Capernaum, and went into the congregation house, dark granite, oaken doors, a presbyterian interior of plain white plaster, brass plaque on the wall commemorating the dead of the Great War, cool Hebridean light slicing in through thin windows of clear glass. And he taught there, but the kirk elders

Tick Press

You know how I have a profound animus as regards vampires, how I will happily call the undead out for the manipulative leeching bastards they are. Mindless parasitic poisonous miasmas and all that.

It seems like Undead Press is aptly named.

Hark ye, aspiring writers, to the tale of Mandy DeGeit, whose story was accepted by an anthology from aforesaid publisher and thereupon royally fucked. A

BFS Awards Shortlist

The British Fantasy Society is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2012 British Fantasy Awards.
Determined by the 952 recommendations from BFS members and FantasyCon
attendees and overseen by the BFS Award Jury, the shortlist is:


Novel:
 
The Heroes; Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz)
11.22.63; Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton)
Cyber Circus; Kim Lakin-Smith (NewCon Press)
A Dance with Dragons;

Coming Events

As part of the Southside Film Festival, I'll be at a screening of the Scottish BAFTA-nominated Ballads of the Book documentary, as made by my good mates, Margaret Shankland, Claire McCluskey and Julie McCrone. I believe I'll be doing a wee reading at some point, and joining Mags, Claire and Julie for a Q&A session after the screening. Should be loadsa fun, not least cause none of them have done

My Favourite Monster

At Weird Fiction Review, a full version of the "Favourite Monster" piece:

I have to go with a classic, Frankenstein’s monster, because Shelley’s
creature doesn’t just exemplify monstrosity, it interrogates it. What
makes it visually monstrous is not a matter of cheap gimmickry. Shelley
doesn’t just snatch features from the animal world that naturally freak
us out — mandibles, pincers, horns,