Hal Duncan's Blog, page 8

Die, Vampire, Die!

Actually there’s a few things that are pretty damned lethal – basically anything with a sufficient concentration of carbon in it. And it took me – what? – a few months to find that out. The elders still think the worst they have to worry about is some mad Hun with a sharpened table-leg...

In a darkly comic monologue, 12K words of black satire, a vampire scientist leads his somewhat flighty

Coming Soon to Kindle

Yeah, I think I accidentally hit on a sort of retro gay porn novel look when I was designing the cover, but hey, it's a contemporary rock opera take on a Restoration Farce, so fuck it; while I'm updating the filth of the past for a contemporary audience, I thought I may as well go all in, and dance blithely into another era entirely. Oh, and that's the pert and pretty ass of Peinte's Orphée

Nowhere Town

Nowhere Town: A Punk-Ass Musical, the Book and Libretto



Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.

I bid you welcome, from a drunken poet, to a cruel world.

Be seated, take your coats off, just kick back.

We have a tale for you tonight, my friends, the tale of Jack.

This is a tale of Love and Death.

This is a tale of those two thieves of breath.

This is a tale—we hope—to make your hearts

Whatever the Fuck You Want

When Orlando strides in as the new kid at Arden High, Ross falls for him
in an instant. A brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel and a recluse,
Orlando is the Breakfast Club all rolled up into one, Ross’s perfect
man. Unfortunately, when they meet at the football try-outs, Ross is in
drag to spite his draconian dad, Coach Fredericks, and it’s “Rosalind”
that Orlando falls head-over-heels in

Need We Say More?

An Unfortunate Rake

So I was watching the second season of Ripper Street t'other night, and it reminded me of that scene in season one where all the coppers sing "The Unfortunate Rake," which sadly isn't on YouTube, although if you need a reference this is:




With the song running through my head, and it being that time of the year, suddenly something clicked, and I realised, wait, I know that rhythm, those

Publishers Weekly Starred Review

A nice wee heads-up from Steve Berman at Lethe Press brings me this, to make my weekend:


The Arthurian legend of the Fisher King, the myth of Orpheus,
Shakespeare’s Tempest, comic book superheroes, and Twilight are just a
few of the tales that Duncan (Ink) deconstructs through a prism of queer
sexuality, youthful rebellion, and rage against authority, in this
thrilling, funny, and moving

Manuscript Critique Service

I normally offer this service through an online agency, but there's nothing coming in from there at the moment, so I thought I'd open up a direct channel, and offer what I look at as a sort of literary MOT.

So here's the skinny:

Who am I?

I'm an internationally-renowned, award-winning professional author; a novelist, short story writer and poet; songwriter, playwright and critic; translated

More Kindle Stuff

These have been up for free for yonks, but I figured I'd whack them into Kindle Direct ebooks and punt them on Amazon anyways.

A Scruffian Christmas Carol 4

What folks don't know these days is that aktcherly that Burl Ives song about Santy Claws coming to town... it were a rewrite of an older Scruffian song as weren't about Santy Claws at all. It were about Bold Nick Scantilaw, the Rake as all em groanhuff legends were based on. We used to sing it all through the streets, see, in the run-up to Christmas Eve, so's all em groanhuffs what owned