Notes from New Sodom

... rantings, ravings and ramblings of strange fiction writer, THE.... Sodomite Hal Duncan!!

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Free Downloads!

OK, so I decided to leap wildly into the age of t'interwebs distribution and Paypal and ePiracy and Creative Commons and direct-to-yer-desktop storification and all that malarky. What that means is, over to the left there if ye have a wee scroll down to below the book images, ye'll see two new headings with links of FREE DOWNLOADS!

Yes, that's right, FREE DOWNLOADS!

At the moment what ye've got is mostly what I already put out there, in the shape of the full MP3 audio files of the twelve-part sonnet sequence SONNETS FOR ORPHEUS, as read out by meself with my usual gruff and growly gusto. I posted links to these FREE DOWNLOADS a while back, but that post has disappeared into the archives, natch, so I thought I may as well put up some permanent links. Anyway, if ye want to experience these the way they're meant to be experienced, read aloud by a ranting Scotsman, feel free to download away.

But, wait! There's more!

Yes, that's right, if you look just below the Audio Downloads header, you'll see a Fiction Downloads header, under which is -- you guessed it -- a FREE DOWNLOAD! So what've we got here? Well, what we have is a previously unpublished novella, "Die! Vampire! Die!". It's 15,000 words (cause I don't do anything by halves) of black humour, featuring some characters ye might well recognise from VELLUM and INK, my gay Orpheus punk rock musical NOWHERE TOWN, and every other fucking story they refuse to let me write without them worming their way into it. We got yer Jack here. We got yer Thomas here. And we got a narrator who'll remain nameless but who ye might well clock to as a somewhat more cultured avatar of a certain Very Bad Man those two tend to get tangled with.

What else do ye want to know? Well, I'll tell ye that the whole story is basically aimed at taking the hoary old vampire trope out back and clubbing him into the ground with a baseball bat, clubbing him into the ground some more, and then some more, driving over him a little, reversing, parking on top of him, putting the handbrake on and doing a wheelspin just to smear the fucker into the tarmac a little more, and then sowing the fucking blood-stained fucking round with fucking garlic salt. If that sounds like it might be up your street, go ahead and download it; it's in PDF form and runs to 50 odd pages, and I'm putting it out under that Creative Commons thingumy which means you can even feel free to spread it across t'interwebs to yer ePiratical heart's content. Hell, if ye want to spread my scribbly-squick out into the wilds, I positively encourage it. Pass the file around, link to this post, whatever -- the more the better.

What am I asking for in return? Well, all I ask is that ye respect the "don't try to make money off it and don't fuck with the text" principle of the particular CC license I'm putting it out under. And if ye should happen to like it enough, well... OK... under those FREE DOWNLOADS ye'll see a Feed the Madman header and a wee Paypal donation button ye can use to make me a happy bunny. If ye don't like the story or ye can't afford to send anything my way, don't fret. But if ye do and ye can, if ye've got a spare quid or two to say "Thank 'ee kindly, fine sir!" it'd be much appreciated. There's no amount set on the donation; whatever ye're comfortable with is peachy keen. Hell, I'm not expecting much return from this, to be honest; mostly I just thought it would make for an interesting experiment in the whole online distribution thing.

So, yeah, fire in and help yerself, and if ye like the taste of it, all gratuities will be received with gratitude.

Enjoy!

6 Comments:

Blogger Teresa Neves said...

Damn good, Hal. I will certainly post about it in my blog and several other places.

Regarding vampire culture and society in here - what are your influences? I loved the Bathory touch (eh, anyone would...).

5:07 am  
Blogger Amber Ace said...

Damn and blast it! You know what this means, don't you? Instead of doing the screeds and screeds of essays that are required of me within the next week, I am now going to spend the entire morning engrossed in your vampirical evil monkeys and/or sonnets!

On a serious note, I'm a great fan of Vellum, Ink and your writing generally, and I love how you're examining the science of magic - for my probably-never-going-to-be-written fantasy debut I've come up with similar "laws".

so anyway, much appreciation for your downloads from this quarter. keep up the fantastic work!

2:51 pm  
Blogger Tris said...

Thank you - sounds wonderful!

5:52 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Hal! Just want to say I read Vellum over a year ago and loved it. I bought Ink the day it came out, but have not read it yet.
You may ask why. Why? Because I read Vellum as an ebook bought from Mobi or Palm. Can't remember. I also have the book. However, I'm on the go all the time so all my books are also ebooks. I guess what I'm asking is....can you please offer Ink as an ebook? I want to read it, but I don't want to ruin the mint condition of the book. I know that's weird.
If possible, can you send me an email showing me where to buy an ebook copy (if possible)? I'm at alex.nikolich@sbcglobal.net Even though I'll probably get hit with a bunch of spam for leaving my email address, I just wanted show you how important you are as a writer to me. Vellum ranks as one of the best novels I've ever read and I'm sure Ink will be the same. I hope others feel the same way and I hope you keep writing and writing and writing. It's so rare to find a new talent such as yours these days!! Thank you so much for entertaining me!

Your fan always,

Alex Nikolich

8:55 am  
Blogger Hal Duncan said...

Hi Alex. I've posted you this in an email, but in case you don't get it:

I don’t know if Del Rey have put Ink out as an eBook yet, but it looks like you can buy INK as an eBook direct from Pan Macmillan here:

http://www.panmacmillan.com/titles/displayPage.asp?PageTitle=Individual%20Title&BookID=382953

Best,

Hal

8:28 am  
Blogger Phree said...

Thank you beautiful man! I wandered over here thinking, 'dammit, I need more Hal,' and bam!

An aside, I've hooked another unsuspecting customer to your incredible prose, m'dear man. I talked her into "Vellum" and 4 days later she was back demanding "Ink". Fuckin hell I love my job.

5:39 pm  

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