Should Gays Be Ex- SHUT THE FUCK UP!

I'm not even going to link to the BBC "Have Your Say" thing on Uganda. Seriously, that shoddy-ass gutter-press bullshit ain't worthy of anyone's eyeballs. Should blacks be lynched? Should women be raped? Should Jews be gassed? Should BBC employees be forced to watch their loved ones being tortured to death?

For fuck's sake.

Have this instead, a link to a news story about how fucked-up those ex-gay nutjobs are.

And better still, this, an interview with the survivor mentioned in the article:

Notes on Worldscape

So, after an entry by Larry over at OF Blog of the Fallen in which he referenced this discussion of setting and worldbuilding, I got my theoretical hat on again. Setting and worldbuilding are both nebulous, so it's no suprise they get conflated, it seems to me. While the latter term was coined as a descriptor for distinctive approaches of the secondary world fantasy writer in the largely pre-literary stages of (sub)creation (map drawing, etc.), enough of this process also takes place visibly in the text that the term has come to be used -- the gerund working as a noun -- for an epiphenomenal construct that overlaps with setting, not the act of creation but the end result considered as a quality of the text, like voice. If we want to understand the relationship between setting and worldbuilding, we need to break them down.

Note: I'm going to try and not reiterate stuff I've gone through before, so if terms like "mimetic weft," "credibility warp" and "quirk" don't make sense to you, go read this entry. Don't worry, if it uses even more poncy terms like "alethic modality," it does so with lemurs. And it's really quite short for me, honestly.

So...

Staging: At the scene-level there's staging written into the text, a construct of glimpses offered in words and phrases like "in the kitchen," "out on the marsh," "under the bed." In the reader's imagination these shards of place and time woven into the mimetic weft cohere into a sense of location, layout of objects, orientation of characters within that immediate frame -- at night, on a street corner, where a side-street joins a wide thoroughfare.

Dressing: Framing in time and place is seldom enough to generate a sense of "setting" though. Cultural signifiers will also largely be required -- e.g. street-urchins, a horse and cart, a gin-sodden drunk -- to dress the location and render it an effective locale -- e.g. a street-corner in Victorian London. Even dialogue or the voice of the narrative itself may double as dressing -- "Gor, blimey, guvnor!" and all that.

Locale: Staging and dressing together constitute locale and their absence will render it "vague" or "vapid" -- though a writer might, of course, pare away the requisite details deliberately, in the same way they might pare away features distinguishing voice. Locale is immediate. Other locations may be referenced or implied but until they are represented they are unrealised locales.

Locale Layout: Different locales may be laid out as we see a character, for example, driving along a road through the mountains, stopping at a motel, parking in the lot, entering the reception. At the scene-level, locale layout may be continous and fluid or a matter of integrated but discrete locales. As we scale up and encounter the disconnected locales of different scenes, the reader constructs a mileu.

Milieu: Separate locales cohere across the suturing of scenes -- e.g. in one scene the character is on the road; in the next they are booking into the motel. As they do so a fictive milieu is constructed. While references to and implications of off-scene locations are not part of the layout, they effectively pencil in an exterior framing of (as yet?) unrealised locales; this is part of the milieu. Dressing also creates milieu from the offset -- e.g. the Victorian London that steet-corner is in. Milieu is sufficiently abstracted from locale layout, in fact, that dressing and general staging may override specifics -- e.g. the milieus of two contemporary realist novels could be functionally equivalent despite the fact that one locale layout is mapped closely to Liverpool while the other is mapped closely to Glasgow.

Setting: The ambiguity of the term "setting" rests in the fact that it could be applied to locale, locale layout or milieu. A distinction can and should be made between locale layout as figure and milieu as ground.

Mimetic Milieu: The reader could be said to have an experiental milieu, constructed from their life rather than fiction. Where a fictive milieu is sufficiently consistent with this that no credibility warp is introduced, it can be classed as mimetic. In terms of consistency, whether locales and locale layout map to real-world locations is irrelevant, since we are mapping fictive milieu to experiential milieu, not to reality itself; hence the milieu of Thomas Hardy's Wessex is mimetic, despite the non-existence of key locales.

Milieu Recognition: With different specifics of comparable locales elided, a fictive milieu may be recognised as essentially matching the experiential milieu of the reader -- e.g. where the fictive milieu of a novel set in Liverpool resembles the experiential milieu of a reader living in Glasgow. Even where the same reader finds, for example, a South American village milieu foreign rather than familiar, that very unfamiliarity indicates gaps in the reader's experiential milieu into which the fictive staging and dressing can be inserted as an imaginative surrogate for experience -- recognised in the sense of accepted.

Semiotic Milieu: A fictive milieu may be mimetic in part because a writer has drawn directly on their own experiential milieu, but much of the collage of staging and dressing will likely be clipped from sources or created from whole cloth. The writer being also a reader is likely to be working with an experiential milieu partly constructed from imaginative surrogates. As a construct of staging and dressing, even the most mimetic milieu remains a system of signs; it is always already also a semiotic milieu. Where mimesis is breached and the figurative function of the semiotic milieu foregrounded, the result may be a radical schism from reality.

Alterior Realities: With some works, staging situates the narrative beyond the range of any practical experiential milieu. The fictive milieu is expressly ulterior: "existing beyond what is obvious or admitted; intentionally hidden; beyond what is immediate or present; coming in the future." The ulterior milieu is an alterior reality. Even without quirks, credibility warp is introduced here; the narrative is itself a quirk, asserting an incredible status as a narrative of the beyond. Its artifice made blatant by this unequivocal alterity, the semiotic milieu is offered as an overt act of figuration rather than representation.

Pre-Modern Contextual Dewarping: Historically, with the reader's experiential milieu limited, ulterior mileus (alterior realities) could be situated as spatially exterior to the audience's known world (as with the traveller's tale,) or as temporally exterior, beyond the known past (as with folklore & myth.) The foreign staging and dressing could be afforded a mock-recognition as an imaginative extension of the experiential milieu; the dislocation becomes a justification for credibility warp -- the use of quirks that challenge suspension-of-disbelief by contradicting facts and principles of the experiential milieau -- and thereby a mechanism for countering it.

Modern Contextual Dewarping: Such conventions persist, but with the increased scope of post-Enlightenment experiential milieus, such mock-recognition is less likely to be afforded in the face of credibility warp; the unknown world and the unknown past are expected to conform to the same principles. The beyond has therefore been reformulated: sf situates the ulterior milieu in the future, positing it as an evolution of the experiential milieu; alt-history situates the ulterior milieu as temporally parallel to the experiential, positing it as an alternative track of causality; secondary world fantasy situates the ulterior reality in an ordinate reality, entirely out of the plane of the experiential milieau, not "grounded" in the same metaphysical principles.

Interstitial Realities: A special case is found where staging situates the narrative within the spatio-temporal scope of the reader's practical experiential milieu, but beyond the capacities of their experience. The ulterior milieu is situated as a system of alterity dispersed throughout reality, hidden in the interstices between what is known. The reader's willingness to insert fictive staging and dressing into gaps in their experiential milieu is exploited to posit events that contradict facts and principles of the experiential milieau but do so covertly -- e.g. conspiracies operating secretly throughout history.

Worldscape: In these sort of works, the collage of staging and dressing must construct a (distinctly semiotic) milieu on the scale of the world, one characterisable by the significance (extent and meaning) of its difference(s). The more deliberately this type of milieu is fashioned from the foreign, the more the process of composition can be considered a craft in its own right. The term worldscape seems apt for a milieu which has, to some extent, ceased serving simply as ground and come to function as figure in its own right.

Worldblazing: A bottom-up process whereby the writer constructs the worldscape in the process of writing, generating the milieu from staging and dressing improvised as required, with the implications of a conceit being explored through that milieu, the alterity generated often feeding back into the narrative, functioning as trigger and/or key to resolution. Any flavour of quirk -- novum, chimera or errata -- may be exploited in this way.

Worldblocking: A top-down process whereby the writer constructs the worldscape prior to writing as a basic conceptual framework of key facts and principles. The basic topography of the milieu may be designed -- e.g. in a map -- even before the first scene begins locale layout. Dressing may be methodically developed, independent of staging, in a meticulous specification of the alterior reality and its culture. Adherence to theories of how our world and various systems in it work may imbue the worldscape with a sense of authenticity.

Worldbolstering: Where dressing is familiar to the reader, recogniseable from an experiential milieu, this adds to the mimetic weft of a narrative. Exhaustive detailing of locales and mundane actions of narrative agents in those locales may therefore be used to compensate for credibility warp with a sense of verisimilitude.

Worldgilding: Where dressing is foreign to the reader, not recogniseable from an experiential milieu, it may be imbued with a sense of the strange that adds to the overall warp of the narrative. The use of quirks purely to create an aesthetic veneer to the fictive milieu is a complement of worldbolstering and may be used in conjunction with it, in the aim of furthering reader immersion. (c.f. Roberts's "worldbling".)

Worldbumphing: Faux documentation incorporated into the narrative, (as in a song,) or into the text, (as in a quote from a fictive scripture within the fictive milieu,) adds to the mimetic weft where such documentation is in a familiar form, (e.g. song or scripture,) but also serves to elucidate the milieu.

Worldbuilding: The ambiguity in the term "worldbuilding" resides in the fact that it was coined for the craft of creating ordinate realities in the manner of Tolkien's highly methodical "subcreation," largely a matter of blocking, bolstering, gilding and bumphing, but has come to be applied not just to worldscapes generated by worldblazing but to any sufficiently foreign and/or complex fictive milieu, even to milieus that are largely mimetic. While it might well be interesting to examine historical fictions in terms of worldscape and alterity, (do they use worldblocking? if distant enough, do they function as alterior realities?) the term "worldbuilding" is entirely inappropriate where we are simply talking about an effective locale layout.

Intrigue: Worldblazing requires the specifically literary skill of developing milieu from staging and dressing, and where it binds milieu back to narrative action at a basic level it renders it the root of intrigue. Where the narrative is aimed to function mainly as a conceptual exploration of a quirk's implications, we may expect to see less bolstering as the alterior reality is argued via that exploration; in some cases -- some future and ulterior realities, for example -- the fictive milieu may be argued directly from the start point of a recognisable mimetic milieu. Which is to say, the milieu only becomes alterior as we read. Where gilding and bumphing are employed, we may see a deliberate thematic import to these, with the former used to imbue the worldscape with a relevant aesthetic, and the latter used as intratextual commentary.

Immersion: The skills involved in worldblocking, on the other hand, are largely organisational, and the narratives that takes place in a milieu generated by worldblocking are often quite separable from it, structurally speaking, reiterable Romance with a straightforward epic/adventure/mystery/thriller/noir/horror narrative grammar, played against an estranged but interchangeable backdrop; the most central quirk may be functionally no more than a MacGuffin. Where the narrative is aimed to function mainly as an immersive Story, authenticity and verisimilitude may be held more important than even basic literary skills. The substance of the text is only a means to an end and may be so sublimated into the imaginative experience that readers ignore craft deficits irrelevant to their experience. Meanwhile, bolstering, gilding and bumphing that would be considered extraneous by a worldblazing writer may be valued for enriching the immersive experience. Since bolstering and gilding only require the addition of dressing, they also involve little in the way of literary skill; clumsy description will still bolster, while clichéd tropes will still gild. Ultimately, an obdurate insistence on the capacity of the worldscape to function as an imaginative playground and an indifference to the actual craft of writing may lead a writer to coin a term like "the clomping foot of nerdism."

Atrament

Still a while till INK comes out in the Czech Republic (February next year) but the cover is so pretty I had to share:

Fergus Bannon

Just thought I'd give a bit of pimpage to some-time member of the GSFWC, Fergus Bannon. As Gary Gibson describes him:

"Fergus Bannon, when not performing neurosurgical interventions with the aid of a hacksaw, dowsing rod and amphetamine-soaked surgical mask, has been known to write for publications such as Interzone, Territories, West Coast Magazine and Shipbuilding. He has written one novel, Judgement, and presents it here in a final heroic gesture towards achieving absolute anonymity.

He would also like to assure you that when the zombie apocalypse comes, he'll be much too busy saving himself to watch your back."

I gave him a wee testimonial on his blog too:

"I may never have been a writer if it hadn't been for Fergus Bannon. I don't recall exactly when we first met, back in 199_, when I was a young student at Glasgow Uni, drawn into the seditious sphere of the GSFWC; but I know I was only an innocent lad at the time, newly arrived from the small town of Kilwinning, a wide-eyed naïf in my chicken-bone necklace and green face-paint. (Iraq War protest or one too many viewings of Apocalypse Now? You decide.) Just as one leather-jacketed, slouching renegade by name of Jim Steel took me under his musical wing, to open my ears to the glories of The Stooges, The Ramones, Radio Birdman and suchlike, it was one surgical-gowned, growling reprobate by name of Fergus Bannon who opened up my eyes, searing his scribblings on the inside of my skull -- right at the back, by the medulla oblongata, the snake-brain.

"(When I say "growling," by the way, I mean literally growling, his years as a bona fide seadog -- Norwegian trawler? African gun-runner? Chinese pirate? he never specified -- rendering his voice as rough as a barnacle-crusted boat. And when I say "opened my eyes," I mean literally opened my eyes. He said something about an experimental development of the Ludovico Technique that he needed "control" subjects for. I was young. I didn't realise what I was in for.)"

So, if you want to read about the Experiment that made me the man I am today, go follow that linkee. It's 101% true, I shit you not.

A Scruffian Christmas

So I just sent out a wee bonus story, "A Scruffian Christmas," for anyone as has supported the Scruffians Project with donations up till now.First off then, this here's a heads-up to yez all, in case I missed anyone off the email. Give it a sensible time for any aetheric shenanigans as that email might get up to on its way, then if it still ain't through, drop us a line from whatever address yer Paypal is linked to, and I'll say "D'oh!" loudly to myself and fire a copy out to yer. Secondly, though...

Well, see, this story won't be going up for download, I'm afraid, as it's a pressie and all, but I'll be including new donors up till Hogmanay, so if yer donates for the current story, "An Alfabetcha of Scruffian Names," yer gets "A Scruffian Christmas" alongs with it yeah? But since it don't seem very Christmassy to make it all about the money, I figured in the spirit of the season, I'd allow for them as ain't got no dosh what they can afford to donate, and for them as would rather donate that dosh to a worthier cause than some scallywag fabbler like meself. Like a charity for littl'uns, eh? So, I reckons as anyone what gives summat on me Christmas List, gets a copy of "A Scruffian Christmas," yeah? That Christmas List being:

1. Guinness. Obviously yer has to be in Glasgow for this to work.
2. Linkage on yer blog / LiveJournal / Twitter / whatever. Don't need to be nothing special -- I ain't bribing yers for a rave review -- just enough to get the word out. Email or comment below to point us at it; and don't forget tell us where to send the story.
3. Terry's Chocolate Orange. Cause it ain't Christmas without a Terry's Chocolate Orange.
4. Guinness. What? I likes Guinness.
5. If yer can draw, why, an home-made virtual Christmas card, on a Scruffians theme, like -- that'd be peachy. We likes pictures, us Scruffians. Especially with us in em. Just stick it up on them interwebs or summat and send us a link.
   
6. If yer can write... well, ye've read at least the preview of the Alfabetcha, ain'tcha? So tell us your Scruffian name, and a little bit about yerself. Ye've gotta play the game right, thoughs -- one hundred words 'xactly, else the cracks in the pavement'll open up and the crackodiles as lives in em will get yer!
7. Guinness. What? I told yers I likes Guinness.
8. A Paypal donation to yours truly, for the Alfabetcha. Natch.
   
9. A donation to a charity as we thinks would be appropriate. Forward me that confirmation email thingy what they sends when yer donates to either Great Ormond Street Hospital or Barnardo's. The confirmation as I got through meself from GOSH didn't have no card details or nothing, so there shouldn't be no worries with privacy. Barnardo's ain't set up for me debit card, the silly sausages, so I can't check; but if there's any details as ye don't want me to see, just delete em.
   

Anyways, yer gets the idea, right? If yer going for the charity thing -- or ye wants to know where's to send the Chocolate Orange! -- ye'll find me email if yer clicks on the "view profile" link under me mugshot. And if yer skint as a scamp's knees in Summer, remember there's always 5 and 6. So yer can't draw or write for toffee? Well, it's the thought that counts, ain't it?

That's what Christmas is all about!

Upcoming Events

Read Raw Website

In my general busy-bee-ness over the last week or so, I completely forgot to mention the Read Raw Website, where I'm the Featured Author.

There's an interview up there, but there's also a story -- "The Toymaker's Grief" for any as hasn't already read it.

Tis the Season to be Merry

Want to get even with the Salvation Army
for discrimination in Jesus' name?



Click here to find out how!

The Lucifer Cantos

Remember that limited edition from Papaveria Press, I was talking about a while back?

It's taking shape right now, and man it's looking good.

New BSC Review Column

Down in the ghetto of Genre, in the SF Café that is our literary salon, in this scene of zines and forums, conventions and clubs, there’s a Great Debate that kicks off every so often. The diversity of the clientele maps to a diversity of opinions — convictions, even — and few of these are as contentious as those addressing the differences or lack thereof between science fiction and fantasy...

Busy Busy Busy Busy

Yeah, I've had a busy week with a couple of cool gigs. One I went along partly to catch up with Rafe of the sorely-missed G-Plan, who'd kindly agreed to help us out with scoring a fiddle refrain for Nowhere Town, and partly just to catch his new band, Tattie Toes, who were awesome. Even better, when I caught up with Rafe before the gig in Stereo, he introduces us to the other band members, and as the lead singer turns around I recognise an old friend, Nerea, who I was on a photography course with in... oh... 1994 or 1995? Haven't seen her for five years or so. So that made the gig super-extra-awesome. The next night it was Three Trapped Tigers in Nice 'n' Sleazy's, which was also awesome, the band's epic sound being... well... kinda reminiscent of prog, I thought, (I mean, anything with four chords or more is prog, far as I'm concerned, mate, but this was like... three keyboards or more, yeanno,) but without the lyrics about space wizards and shite like that.

Anyhoo, yeah, so now I don't have time to write anything particularly exciting and interesting, cause I have a column to finish for BSCReview, and a 600 page MS to read and report on as part of my first foray into the world of professional MS critiquing services. So, until such time as I have actual content, scroll down to the previous entry and go pick up some free Scruffians stories (if you haven't already.) You Americans have some Tanksgiving sale on today, right? Well, these are free! (Apart from the latest, but that costs as little as you want to pay, and doesn't involve getting crushed in a stampede. )

Or alternatively, (or also,) just go and look at Jeff Ford looking crazyFREAKINGCRAZY!

The One Week Reminder...

... since donations have tailed off, that the Scruffians Project is still going, three stories free to download now. We're only a couple of Guinness-worth from Story #4 being brought into the fray, so if you want more and haven't got round to chucking some dosh in the busker's hat, well, it wouldn't take a whole lot more to reach the secondary target for "How a Scruffian Starts Their Story".

Just saying.

Famous in Finland, Fixture in France

So, yeah, now that I'm back and settled, pretty much up to date with emails and suchlike, I finally get a chance to say, Finland and France were fucking awesome! Man, you shoulda been there. Or if you were... cheers! I had a fucking brilliant time.

I arrived in Helsinki on the Wednesday night, got picked up at the airport by my Finnish translator, Nina Saikkonen, and knew we were going to hit it off as soon as I spotted the Soundgarden patch on her army surplus / parka style coat while we stood outside the airport having a fag. It was just fricking excellent to meet Nina. I know just how hard she worked on the translation -- know even more now that we've met and talked in person. Like, how it nearly drove her round the twist at times, how her left arm stopped working so she had to type one-handed, how everyone involved fell ill at some point, how it was touch and go whether the book would be ready for the Helsinki Book Fair, how Nina discovered, with wonder, that translators can have the same weird thing that writers get -- where it's no longer you writing, but the character talking through you. She had that with Seamus Finnan, she said; at times it just stopped being a laboured translation process and instead she was reading the English and the Finnish Seamus was just dictating his lines to her. Heh, we were joking that since there's less of Seamus in INK, she can always slip in a few extra scenes, since Seamus talks through her now. (Though I'm not sure Nora Varjama at Like, would appreciate an increased word count in a sequel that's already a fair bit longer.)

Anyway, there was just time to check into the hotel (and a fucking nice hotel it was too!) before being huchled off to a wee restaurant called Manala for food, wine and an interview with Jussi Ahlroth for Helsingen Sanomat, the big Finish broadsheet, their equivalent of the London Times. This was only really meant to last an hour or so, but I think my blathering stretched it to an hour and a half or longer. Hey, Jussi knew his stuff -- and my stuff, of course -- so the whole interview started a good few places on from the dreaded "So you right this sci-fi stuff, yes? Or is it fantasy? Are we talking aliens or elves?" No, Jusi was asking the sort of questions I love to get me teeth into, so the poor photographer who was meant to take my mugshot for the article had to sit and wait for us to finish gabbing before he had his chance to exploit my inner media slut. (I suspect I make for a good subject; I'll pose for as long as you want, wherever you want me, shameless attention-seeker that I am.)

So after some quick shots out on the streets of Helsinki, it was into the pub next door to Manala -- Urho's -- where a good few of the Finns I'd met at Åcon and/or Parcon were already waiting -- including the awesome Moominhanna, as she will henceforth be known to me. I have to confess that night is something of a blur, not because I was wasted but because I was high on seeing everybody again. So it smooshes into the following night, which was the SF Society's fortnightly meeting in the same pub, and I can't honestly say who I caught up with on Wednesday and who I caught up with Thursday. Toni? Jukka? Maija [sp?]? Nini? Juha? Sari? Too many friends! Too many names and faces! My little pickled brain can't handle all that input, I'm afraid. To be honest, it was such a whirly wondrous week or so of catch-up overload that I'm not even going to try and keep track; I'll just hope I don't offend anyone by failing to mention them. (As soon as a gathering gets into double figures, I'm screwed -- even leaving aside that thing of unfamiliar names with phonemes that aren't quite the same as in English being really fucking hard to keep track of. Oh, for the Singularity and an HUD that can remind me, three hours of blether later, the name that just didn't quite take in my buzzing brain.)

Anyways, I can't even really remember how that first evening came to an end, but after a good night's sleep in my swellegant hotel room came my first visit to the book fair, a wee double-header interview thing -- with Finnish writer J. Pekka Mäkelä being interviewed by Nora and meself being interviewed by Nina -- more photographs and a chilled-out interview (over beer, of course,) with Toni Jerman for Tähtivaeltaja. I hooked up for dinner with the folks from Like (mmm, reindeer!) in a wee restaurant close to the book fair, then headed off to Urho's again. Originally there was a plan to just spend a wee while there before heading round to a book fair soiree of some sort, but of course once settled in a pub with some very nice stout on tap and all my Finnish friends to chat to, well, I was just having too much fun to leave. Johanna Sinisaolo was there too, which was awesome, though I didn't really get a chance to talk with her till late on. Did I mention how good Troll: A Love Story was? DId I forget completely or did I just drunkenly reiterate it over and over again ("Issh a fuggin aweshome book!!")? I have no idea. Either way, it all ended up with a bunch of us snaffling some red wine from Moominhanna's and heading back to my hotel room to drink it (or -- *ahem* -- spill it) in a re-enactment of the åwesome Acon (including Toni asleep on the floor, popping up occasionally at the side of the bed like a vampire meerkat.) It were ace.

Of course, I suffered for it the next day, when I had a TV interview first thing, an interview which I can't imagine them getting much usable footage out of, given the way my hungover mumbling indubitably exacerbated the incomprehensibility of my accent. I doubt I said much worth listening to, but if I'm lucky they couldn't tell. Hell, their best bet would have been to get Nina to "translate" it into actual answers rather than zombie-talk. I was so whacked that it didn't really register on me that the board of press clippings had two big-ass articles on little old me, that the Helsingen Sanomat had given me basically the full front page of their culture section. Thankfully, I had time to catch a nap and recover before another interview (with Jussi Ahlroth) on stage, before the biggest crowd I've talked to so far, I reckon; then there were signings at the Like book stall, and another interview with Nina again, where we got to talk about the whole gnarly subject of translation.

At some point we passed by the Like stall again, and they'd sold out already. The book, it seemed, was doing pretty fucking well. How well? We passed by again later and there were more in stock, but only a dozen or so; from the sounds of it Like were having the most excellent problem of barely being able to keep up with demand. It was probably around this point that the reality made its way through the dissipating fug of hangover. Cause, yeah. Front page of the Helsingen Sanomat culture section. Their equivalent of the London Times. People were, so I'm told, pointing me out on the fricking tram. When we ended up in Bud's bar in Kallio, the "seedy" boho district of Helsinki, to have a drink with some friends of Nina's -- e.g. the most hospitable Ville, bless him, and Mikko the film-maker who must've had a hell of a job trying to understand my increasingly rattling prattle as we talked about art and the investment of self you put into it -- people were actually asking to have photographs taken with me. Like an actual famous person. It's a concept I find completely crazy, cause I'm just... well... me. ("But it's great that you see yourself on the same level as us," said someone at one point. "But of course I fucking do," says me, "cause I am!") But, yeah, by the end of Friday night I actually felt like a bona fide celebrity -- Hal Duncan, famous in Finland. The whole thing was as silly as it was swell for me, cause I totally can't take it seriously, with the old Scots saying of "Aye, ah kent his faither" always ringing in my head. Still, doesn't stop me from enjoying the attention, like a kid who got the star part in a school play. It's great fun when you get to play at being famous for a night.

From that night on I was crashing with the wonderful Moominhanna, friend from Åcon, friend for life, who'd kindly offered me a sofa bed if I was ever in Helsinki. When news came through that the trip was in the offing, I'd been straight on the email to her, blinking my wide eyes innocently. Oh, Hanna...? You know how you were saying...? And so we'd arranged an extended stay, with me hanging on for the full weekend rather than leaving on the Friday or Saturday when all my offical duties were over. This is, I now know, the Moomin way.

Having never read any Moomin books as a kid, my only experience being with the animated cartoons (which everyone I talked to there roundly dismissed,) I was unaware of the anarchistic awesomeness that is the Moomin philosophy -- the open door for visitors, a warm welcome for wastrels like meself. Now I've seen it in practice, and yes, it is a truly glorious thing -- a sense of hospitality any Glaswegian would be proud of. Part of what was most awesome was getting a little break from playing International Author on the Saturday when -- after an interview with Jukka whose-second-name-I-can't-spell at the SF Society stall, and a brief stint signing more books at the Like stall -- we headed to the gallery opening of young painter, Topi Ruotsalainen. Not only did I get to be the one having stuff signed for them for a change, but I got to meet Hanna's family and friends. Hell, I got to admire Topi's work. Particularly in some of the larger canvasses which aren't up on that site there's a subtle injection of the strange into the domestic that I just love. And as I understand, he's hit that point of being able to survive on the sales, so it was great to see his paintings up close and personal, at the point when his talent is really paying off. That was one of the highlights of the trip, actually -- being a friend of a friend, kicking back in the warm glow of someone else's success.

That night it was more reindeer on the menu, and lingenberries, in a swish restaurant with Toni, Hanna, Juha and his girlfriend, then off to a pub to catch up with the SF crowd again, to drink whisky and salty liquorice liqueur. I got an awesome birthday present from Tero in the shape of an ingenious kid's book called This Is Finland, funny as fuck and educational too! There was beer and blether and more blether and more beer. There was another pub, by which point we were all very, very drunk. There was much manly hugging when it came to the goodbyes at the end of the night, and while I do (vaguely) remember the walk home, I suspect my brain sort of switched off at the door of Hanna's flat; I was no sooner inside than I was in bed and asleep.

Sunday was a day of chilling out. Moominhanna and I had a nice long lie in till an eminently sensible hour of the afternoon, then took a trip to the Amos Anderson Museum to see an exhibition of 30s Finnish artists and a kick-ass installation, as recommended by Topi -- the Gottberg-Kåhre Project. I won't say anything about it, cause the artists don't themselves on the accompanying flyer, preferring for people to come without expectations; all I'll say is if you're in Helsink, go. I only wished I knew Finnish or Swedish, so I could have watched the documentary on the top floor about the collaboration between these two artists, one a painter, the other a sculptor.

I had my usual utter indecision when it came to talk of teatime and Hanna asked me what I fancied eating. My mind immediately goes blank in such situations, and had it not been for a casual mention of a new Spanish place I'd have had us wandering around for hours probably. As it was, as soon as the word "tapas" was mentioned, well, it was, "Why do I always forget tapas? I love tapas!" So tapas is was, then a wee beer and a few phone calls later we ended up in Chaplins, a nice little laid-back place with some cool sounds on the stereo and some even cooler folks to chat with -- mainly comics guys, as I recall, one of them over from Germany. The quiet night did end up with us drinking till last orders in DTM, Helsinki's main gay club, which meant me dancing my ass off to the Black-Eyed Peas, but it wasn't that wild a night, honestly.

We had a quick visit to the Like offices the next morning to meet the team, then a jaunt to the warehouse to sign some books. See, all my official duties were meant to be over, but by then, of course, it was obvious to all concerned just how well the book had done at the fair. First edition sold out. There couldn't have been more than fifty left in the warehouse, most of them earmarked for bookshops, I believe, so it was already being sent off to the printers for another print run before I left. And Nora, knowing I was still in town, had organised a signing in a bookshop and a last-minute interview with a press agency for the next day, before I left. Sweeeeeeeet! as they say. Do I have a problem doing extra PR malarkey becuase the book is doing so well? Do I fuck!

The rest of the Monday was relaxation anyway, wandering round Helsinki, lunching in a delicious pizza place. I caught up with Juha again -- giving Moominhanna a much-needed respite in which to buy groceries and not be punishing her liver -- and we headed for a rather lovely beer bar, a brewer's bar kind of place with their own brand of smoky beer and chocolatey beer both of which were exceedinly yummy! Not to mention the giant toasties! Nina and Jukka joined us later and we sipped lovely beer at a leisurely pace until closing time.

And then, after that last minute bookshop signing and interview the next day it was off to the airport. I said me goodbyes to Nora and co at the bookshop, and to Jukka Halme, who'd dropped by on his way to work, hugged my wonderful translator Nina out at the taxi rank and tried to make it clear just how great it was to meet her and hang with her -- but even gushing doesn't do it justice. I ain't ashamed to say that I was feeling all emotional at that point, so when it came to saying goodbye to Moominhanna at the airport, well, remaining gruff and manly was just a lost cause; I genuinely had to wipe the tears from me sentimental Scottish eyes. Still had a big-ass lump in my throat as I sat at the departure gate, waiting for my flight to be called, thinking about what a time I'd had.

But with an armful of Moomin books as a birthday present, to see me through the flight, and remind me always of the friendships I've found in Finland. It was halfway between Helsinki and Heathrow, I think, as I read the scene where Snuffkin uses hattifatters to distract the Park Keeper while he tears down all those nasty notices that say "Don't sit on the grass" and suchlike, that I knew exactly why Moominhanna was so sure that I "must read this." And absolutely 100% right.

But there's gotta be a horrible come-down after that, right?

Well, no, actually. Cause I only had one day in Glasgow before flying out on another international jaunt, this time to Nantes, for my second Utopiales. And that meant arriving at the hotel just as Ian Mcdoald and his lovely wife, Enid, were getting back from dinner, which meant hitting the hotel bar and chinwagging before even dumping my stuff in my room. Which meant happily calling bonsoir! as French friends from Imaginales and the previous Utopiales swung by -- like the ever-lovely Jeanne-A Debats. I don't really do the whole British reserve thing, you know, so I just love that kiss-on-either-cheek greeting thing; when you haven't seen someone for half a year or a year, it's so much more expressive.

Nantes felt like just a flying visit though, I have to say -- only two full days and a smidgeon either side. Still, I managed to fit a fair bit in. Friday morning I had a group excursion with some of the other guests and their wives to the Jules Verne Museum, and to the local library to see some authentic manuscripts -- which was pretty damn cool, fascinating for the drafting and editing method he used, and the red pen comments of his editor. Better still, when I made it back to the con I pretty much immediately started bumping into all the folks I was hoping to catch up with -- like the Swiss posse, for example, Sébastien Cevey, Lucas Moreno, et al., and awesome illustrateur, Zariel, who as you'll see here put together a wee paper for the festival, with a story from Yours Truly. Most importantly though was my "definite tu," Annäig, who was my official interpreter and shepherd at Épinal and pretty much the same -- only not officially so -- in Nantes.

And -- imagine this in an excited kiddy's voice -- Annäig took us to see the giant mechanical wooden elephant of Nantes!!!

The what? you say.

The giant mechanical wooden elephant of Nantes, silly. It's awesome. Richard Morgan and me missed it last year, see, so Annäig promised she would take me, and she'd been talking to Robert Reddick on Facebook, cause he's a really nice guy who it was most excellent to meet and hang out with, Annäig having adopted him as well, and anyway, he didn't know about the giant mechanical wooden elephant of Nantes at all, but had just heard people talking about the elephant and not known what they were on about, so Annäig told him she had a surprise for him, and I had to not tell him where we were all going in Annäig's car, and then we drove away and he asked how far it was to Annäig's home town because I think he thought we were going there, only we weren't, and he had no idea so when we arrived at the place with the giant mechanical wooden elephant of Nantes he was, like, totally, WOW, and then we went into the workshops and, and, and, and I got to sit in a giant mechanical wooden blowfish, and pedal, and pull the chain that made it's flipper flip, and steam came out its mouth and everything, and it was awesome!!!

(I did feel a bit sorry that Robert didn't get picked by the young guys who were demonstrating les Machines, when he was just as keen as me to have a go in one, maybe even more so; but I reckon that just means he has a damn good reason to come back.)

Anyways, we made our way back to the festival by way of a bar, for a wee beer and a blether, and then a supermarket, so's I could pick up some beer for the room party I was reckoning as a necessity that night, given that the hotel bar in Novotel closed at half twelve the previous night. Back at the festival, I started spreading the word and it was then, I think, that I found my French translator, Florence Dolisi had arrived, which was cause for more celebration; though it wasn't much more than a quick wee drink because by then it was pretty much time to get something to eat, myself, Annäig and some friends heading round to l'Usine. That kangaroo was most tasty, I must say, perhaps even more tasty because of Annäig's horror at the consumption of cuteness, heh -- also because I found a co-conspirator in one of Annäig's friends, Muriel, a fellow red-wine drinking, bloody-meat eating carnivore. (I think Muriel was the right name. Apologies if I'm mixing people up here.)

So, yes, there was the room party after that -- or was it two, or even three room parties? See, we started off in my room, drank all the beer (I should have bought more, I realised fairly quickly,) then took the wonderful Catherine Dufour up on her invite to her room party, only for everyone to be kicked out of there when someone came up from reception to say we were making too much noise; so we figured the best idea was simply to reconvene back in mine, since my room only had neighbours on one side. Whatever, a good time was had by all, and I go to chat with Florence a bit more, and Catherine, and to meet Pierre Jouan whose written some very nice things, I understand, about both Vellum and Ink.

The next day was the busiest for me, starting with a panel on whether or not the 21st century was spiritual -- which largely became, I think, a panel about what the hell spirituality is. There was a lot of interesting opinion there, but I don't think I contributed much, to be honest. It's the sort of subject where I am pretty opinionated meself -- opposed to anything which implies transcendance of the flesh, the whole Cartesian duality of soul and body -- but with the so much depending on how you define your terms, it's the sort of subject where people can be talking at cross-purposes at the best of times. Add the vagueness that comes from (albeit excellent) translation, and the fact that the translation would occasionally cut off for a second because my mic seemed to be interfering with my headphones, and I sort of didn't want to be throwing in my tuppence-worth based on miscomprehension of the points being made by others.

Also on the agenda was a round table thing with all the nominees up for the Prix Européen Utopiales, at which Ian Mcdonald made a shamefully -- shamefully, I say -- late entrance, prima donna that he is! And the signings, of course, where I met Aliete de Bodard across the table, and chatted with Ian, David Wingrove and basically whoever was sat beside me, in between making me scribbles on dead tree. I kind of like that multiple group signing sessions set up they have in Utopiales and Imaginales because it gives you that chance to chat with other writers you might not know that well. I mean, I know Ian from many cons over the years, but had mostly been sat at the other side of the table from David whenever we were in the bar; and the signing sessions are pretty much how I got chatting to Pierre Bordage last year, as I recall. The downside is maybe where people coming up to get books signed are basically approaching you on a whole... status differential that can make it a bit awkward. It throws things off, makes it all feel a little unnatural; so I would have liked to get a chance to chat to Aliete, for example, in more informal circumstances. It all feels a little too much like you're giving someone an audience for my liking, which always makes me worry about coming across as an arse, which in turn makes me all self-conscious and babbling, which makes me worry if I sound all patronising if I'm interested in the person on the other side of the table and.... argh! Does that make sense?

I think one of the things I like about Utopiales or Imaginales or WFC in the US or Fantasycon in the UK, over a more traditional US/UK con, is where the higher proportion of pros, semipros and aspiring writers, editors, illustrators and so on, actually works against that division between Guest and Fan. Most guests, I suspect, most writers that you might want to chat with, actually don't really want to be the one holding court, attentive fans hanging on their every word. And when you only have a few pros around, in a lot of cons I've been to that seems to be how it pans out. Maybe fans are a bit reticent in the presence of a "real writer". Maybe writers feel like they need to earn their guesthood as a raconteur. Maybe nobody really wants it to be that way, but it just happens because there's that sense of a different status. Either way, I've found that the barriers seem to come down when you have a higher proportion of pros, because as soon as the guests don't necessarily know who's a guest and who's a fan, and the fans don't necessarily know who's a fan and who's a guest, well, everyone is just another citizen of Conventionland. Which is the way it should be, I reckon.

Anyways, there was a bit too much buzzing around for me to recall much other than Robert Reddick's impression of a bull elephant seal, a quick interview Annäig did with me for... ActuSF, yeah? Florence Dolisi and myself comparing tastes in men as we waited for the Priz Européen Utopiales to be announced. (It went to Stéphane Beauverger's Le Déchronologue, which sounds pretty damn cool from what I heard at the round table thingy earlier.) Getting a present of a big bottle of Leffe from a chap in a big black cape whose name I can't remember now, which is annoying because we met last year and it was really fricking cool of him to go out of his way to "repay hospitality" as he put it, and especially well-timed. I remember saying in Finland that not only did I not care if I lost the prize in Nantes, but they could actually publicly strike Vellum off the list, renounce it as pure merde, piss on it on-stage, and I wouldn't give a fuck cause I'd had such a good time in Helsinki. And yanno, having yon fellow come up after the awards ceremony with a bottle of Leffe in the name of pure sociability -- I can honestly say I was still having such a good time in Nantes to feel even remotely disappointed. I kinda feel really at home there, having got to know so many fine folks. I was totally chuffed when someone commented on the fact that with two Utopiales in a row and Imaginales in between, I was pretty much part of the scene now. That tickled me pink, I gotta say.

So. Then it was off for dinner at a very nice restaurant with Ian and Enid, my translator, Florence and Ian's translator, Jean-Pierre (ouai?), and our editor, Gilles. Mmmmm, oysters! The evening was rounded off nicely with a visit to a nearby pool hall and bar which turned out to be where most folk from the festival had ended up, so they could talk rather than shout over the thumping dance music (as I understand) that was going down at l'Unique. Much beer was drunk, some of it from the "Giraffe", a huge towering tube of beer with a tap at the bottom, both civilised and dangerous. (Well, at least consumption wasn't measured as in Pilsen, site of the sudden-death beer match between meself and Juha.) I chatted to Pierre Jouan a bit more there, got some good tips about French writers translated into English, and eventually, come closing time, staggered back to my hotel room where the survivors helped me polish off that bottle of Leffe. Had a great long chat with Roland Wagner that extended well after all alcohol was gone actually; so I bleieve I finally made it to bed sometime between six and seven.

And then... well, sadly, Sunday was the last day of my too-short trip. As if in sympathy the skies had opened up by the time I surfaced, and it was absolutely fucking bucketing down. I checked out of the Novotel and wandered around the festival bar to say my goodbyes, frustrated that there were so many folks I hardly felt like I'd had a chance to talk to at all -- Jean-Claude Dunyach, Benjamin Chaignon, and on, and on, and on. Hell, when the taxi outisde the Novotel at midday turned out not be mine, and ten minutes later mine still hadn't arrived, I was really quite OK with the idea of being stuck in France, throwing myself on the mercies of Annäig and Florence, giving them my best puppy-dog eyes (even if they are cat-lovers) and allowing myself to get soaked by the rain just to add an extra level of pathos as I trembled my bottom lip and said, "Oh, noes. I can't possibly catch my plane now. Whatever will I do? Wherever will I stay?"

But alas, nothing gold can stay, as Robert Frost once said. Book fairs or festivals, those wonderful holidays in Conventionland all have to come to an end, and before you know it you're on a plane out of there, or worse, in the departure lounge of that hub airport -- Schiphol or Heathrow -- listening to all the Glaswegian accents of those around you, and all you have left is that automatic ouai when someone asks you a question, or kiitos when the barman gives you your change.

You know, Glasgow is absolutely going to have to host another Worldcon soon, so's I can go with zero commitments whatsoever and just spend a week hanging out with my European mates. (Cause, hey, that would also mean I could try and crowbar my American amigos into coming over too, cause as much as I love Utopiales I'm pining for that WFC bar, dudes -- Chris Roberson, Allison Baker and meself pretty much parked there for the duration. Sigh.) I mean, I'm keeping me fingers crossed for even a slim chance of return trips to both Finland and France -- cause believe me, I'd jump at it -- but if Mohammed can't afford airfare to the mountain, can't the mountain get the ferry to him or something? Yes, that's utterly selfish of me, but I don't care. I want the chance to catch up with my mates even if I don't make it over again next year. Nay, I demand it! And the world must satisfy my whims! Or I will pout -- pout, I say!

Trust me, I will do my puppy-dog eyes. And you will weep. Yeah, verily even the cat-lovers will weep before the pathetic misery of my puppy-dog eyes.

Review of Wilde Stories 2009

In which very nice things are said about me own contribution to Steve Berman's Best of Gay Speculative Fiction:

... if you were to read down my annotated contents page you'd see a range of numbers between one and five, and then a heart and exclamation point against this title. There's a lot of strong writing in this collection, but Hal Duncan is my discovery of the volume ~ the author whose works I had to go out and start hunting down immediately. It's not just an excellent and powerful story, it's also spot on to my tastes, and had me completely entranced.

So, hurrah!

BSC Review Column

A bit later than the start-of-the-month date intended, (hey, I had drinking with Finns and French to do,) but better late then never, me latest column is now up at BSC Review.

It's about vampires. This may have been a terrible mistake, but it's about vampires.

Busy Busy Busy Busy

Got back from Nantes late last night, slept most of today and am currently playing catch-up with emails. Will be blogging shortly about it all, though I can't promise *how* shortly. Still got a column for BSC Review to finish too. And "Jack Scallywag" just broke the secondary target, which means getting another release lined up.

So in the meantime, have some Lego Sweeney Todd. It's awesome.

With Halloween on the Way...

How To Find A Masculine Halloween Costume For Your Effeminate Son

Home from Helsinki

And too whacked to say anything more than how awesome it was, and that from now on I am to be known as Moominhal. Cause trolls can be Scottish too, right? Or do I have to move to Finland to qualify? Cause, yanno, I didn't want to leave. There were tears at the airport; I shit you not. Ask Moominhanna.

Anyway, before I crumble into bed and sleep for... well... all the time I have before heading off to France, I thought I'd let you know that "Jack Scallywag" is also now available in epub, Word doc, and rtf.

At least, it should be if my brain isn't so pickled that those links don't work.

Jack Scallywag at Large

Yes, that last wee reminder seems to have done the trick. Got the final few donations needed -- the last one just coming through five minutes ago -- to tip us past the $200 mark. Which means that "Jack Scallywag" is now available for free download too. So go, take, read, and hopefully enjoy. And, yes, there's another story all set to go. If folks who were waiting to try before they buy step up and push the donations up by another hundred bucks, I'll happily make it available, with the usual preview, of course. But, yeah, in the meantime, have some fiction free and gratis; and if ye do like it but ye can't afford to bung us some dosh for it, well, spreading the word is always appreciated too.

Almost There

It's been a week since the last reminder, "Jack Scallywag" is real close to making the publication target now, (less than three pints of Guinness away, indeed,) and I'm off to Finland tomorrow, so I thought before I head off on me own adventuring, I'd throw out a wee reminder of the Grand Experiment, see if I can catch anyone what might still be swithering or might even have just missed what I'm trying out in online fiction terms. For the benefit of the latter: paid for by the Paypal donations of readers, a 3000 word short story, "Scruffians Stamp," is freely available in pdf form for download from that there linkee. Take it, read it, and if ye like it, well, there's more where that came from. Right now, all's you gotta do is chuck a few quids (or bucks) my way via the "Feed the Madman" button and you get a spiffy pdf of the 6500 word short story "Jack Scallywag" (preview here). No minimum donation, every donor gets a copy sent ASAP, and if donations reach the set target of, in this case, $200 (basically 2/3rds of the 5 cents per word pro rate set by SFWA,) then the story gets made available to one and all, to all and sundry even. You can, of course, hold off on the principle that others will chuck in that last three Guinness-worth what's needed, but if everyone waits, well, nobody gets. And since I'm testing out strategies here, one of em strategies might well be the odd story as incentive/bonus for them as donates. So go on. Ye know ye want to.

More Musicality

Got pretty much the final recording for Nowhere Town done with Maestro Williamson tonight, so having cobbled together the rough mixes of the last three songs what were waiting to be done, I thought I'd share them with yez. So, we has Incubation, which if ye've read the libretto ye'll notice has quite different lyrics than are in that. It took me a long time of prevaricating, but I finally decided that I had no idea what possessed me to go for a godawful rap/metal style of shite and clearly that rap had a silent c in front of it. So I decided, fuck it, and rewrote the thing entirely. The old Incubation, it really just needed to be put out of its misery. So here's the new one with the aforesaid Neil W on vocals -- lacking a wee bit of funky backing from the Fates, but essentially there:




Then there's Junkie for the Sound, which may or may not be missing some additional vocals. It's certainly missing some extra voices, cause it's really intended for Puck, three Regulars at the Vinyl Fix record shop and Jack, and all's we had was Francis as Jack and one regular and poor Neil trying to be everybody else at once. Anyhow, this is how it was pretty much written, but I started pondering on whether it was really building the way I wanted it to, and ended up trying out some fancy malarkey with verse lyrics for Puck to sing in countermelody to the Regulars verses. Reckoned that was a bit too ambitious for the noo though, would take a fair bit of hammering out and might not work in the end anyways, so we went for the basic original version.



And finally, of course, it's the finale, the grand medley/reprise/ensemble number, Love Lost and Found, which has always been sort of my favourite, on account of it being so shamelessly... well... musical-theatrical. I mean, come on, who doesn't love a good medley/reprise/ensemble number? OK, don't answer that, those of you who have no souls. Anyway, yeah, here it is:



We'll make it to Broadway yet, I tell you. Broadway or bust!

Upcoming Events

The Helsinki Book Fair is getting very very close now, so I thought I'd post what I have of my schedule, though I think a lot of the times are still provisional.

Thursday 22nd

10-11 am I've got a press conference at the book fair apparently. Coooooool! "Press conference" makes me feel all presidential. I wonder if I can slip in "I can neither confirm nor deny that rumour."

From what I understand the rest of the day will involve interviews and touring at the Book Fair, so I guess that means, if you see me and I'm not blathering into a mic, feel free to come and say hi.

8 pm Book fair party. If you're there, again, feel free to come and say hi. I'm really quite approachable. I don't know how late this goes on, but I understand Helsinki SF Society is meeting that night, so we'll see if there's time to swing by after.

Friday 23rd

16.00 Interview at the stage Aleksis Kivi.

16.30 Helsingin Sanomat stage interview.

17.30 Like stage/signing.

And after that? Well, the cool news is I've got crash space for the whole weekend with the charming Hanna, so I'll be looking to catch up with all them what was at Åcon. Toni, Tero, Jukka, Sari, and so on -- you know who you are, and if ye don't get an email from me in the next day or so trying to organise some catch-up, it means either I've lost yer address or I just didn't get the time. Looks like I might be out and about at the Book Fair again on the Saturday though, so yeah, I'll really be hoping to see yez or at some point before I head off.

And after Helsinki, I have one day in Glasgow before flying out to Nantes for Utopiales! Hurrahs! Mostly, of course, you can expect to see me in either the con bar or the hotel bar (or outside smoking,) but in terms of official schedule, we has:

Saturday 31st

1.00 pm –Shayol area
The 21st century: spiritual or not?
With : Jacques Arnould, Pierre Bordage, Andreas Eschbach, Jean-Philippe Jaworski, Hal Duncan

4.00 pm – Miss Spock’s bar
Presentation of five named for Utopiales prize
With : Stéphane Beauverger, Andreas Eschbach, Hal Duncan, Jean-Philippe Jaworski, Ian McDonald

And there'll be various signing sessions in the dealer's area, of course. I'm fully expecting to be losing the Prix Européen Utopiales, natch, and to be drowning my sorrows in red wine, so come join me if ye spot me. :D

Anyways, that's it for the moment. Will update you with any additional info as and when it comes, if and when I can.

An Open Letter to Jan Moir

Dear Jan Moir,

We, the Elders of Sodom, are writing to you in the hope that you'll reconsider your response to the widespread criticism of your Daily Mail article, "Why There Was Nothing 'Natural' About Stephen Gately's Death" (subsequently retitled "A Strange, Lonely and Troubling Death".) We'd like to point out to you that when you say, "Some people, particularly in the gay community, have been upset by my article about the sad death of Boyzone member Stephen Gately," our own immediate response is, "No shit, Sherlock." When you say, "This was not my intention," our immediate response is, "Fair enough. This is where you say sorry, right?" When you say, "Stephen, as I pointed out in the article was a charming and sweet man who entertained millions," our immediate response is, "and... and... come on, you can say it... and was dearly loved by his family and friends to whom I apologise unreservedly for tarnishing his memory in their hour of grief by insinuating death-by-moral-turpitude."

We'd like to point out that this really isn't very hard to say. It's quite simple and straightforward, Jan. I. Ah. Pol. Oh. Gise. That's five syllables, Jan. I mean, I know you're a Daily Mail columnist and therefore find even two a stretch, but if you break it down into manageable chunks, concentrate very hard, and sound it in your head, I'm sure you can do it. And it really would be smart to do this before trying to justify yourself by explaining how your actual intention was to... well... to be honest, it seems your actual intention was indeed to insinuate death-by-moral-turpitude, so you might want to rethink those justifications too.

See, you start your defence by pretty much dismissing the criticism as the product of misreading or partial reading. When you say "the point of my column-which, I wonder how many of the people complaining have fully read - was to suggest that, in my honest opinion, his death raises many unanswered questions," you're trying to undermine the legitimacy of grievances by characterising them as at best missing the point and at worst (possibly, probably, maybe in many cases, you insinuate) no more than the mob mentality of morons jumping on a bandwagon, condemning you on the basis of secondhand accounts without actually reading your article.

We can assure you, Jan, that we've read the full article. We rather suspect that most of those complaining have too. Do a Google on your name and you'll find it rather high on the hits, which rather implies it's getting a whole lot of readers, dig? This is the 21st century, baby, and when you say something fucktarded -- particularly when you say something fucktarded in a prejudicial way, something gobsmackingly racist, homophobic, misogynist or whatever -- lots of people link to it, saying, "look at this fucktardery!" Then lots of other people click those links and read the fucktardery, and they create their own links, saying, "look at this fucktardery!" And that way you get a whole fuckload of readers mouthing off about your fucktardery, so many you might well be shocked. They can't all have read the article, can they? Trust us, Jan. If you're "wondering" how many of the people complaining have fully read the article, the answer is simple: most of them, dumbass; that's how the interwebs work.

But leaving aside that aspect of your asinine defence, Jan -- your attempt to dismiss the complaints as insincere, not even caused by your words but simply... dogs barking because other dogs are barking -- leaving that aside, when you imply that those complaining are missing the point, it really doesn't help that your explanation of your intention "to suggest that, in my honest opinion, his death raises many unanswered questions," is blithely oblivious of the fact that this is exactly what people are pissed off about.

You see, we got that, Jan. Gately's death raises "questions" for you. For you. For you it seems "unlikely... that what took place in the hours immediately preceding Gately's death - out all evening at a nightclub, taking illegal substances, bringing a stranger back to the flat, getting intimate with that stranger - did not have a bearing on his death." For you it seems "unlikely" that a pulmonary oedema, a heart failure leading to build-up of fluid in the lungs, would not be causally related to "dark appetites" and "private vice" -- which is to say, going out clubbing, getting a bit high, and hooking up with someone you've just met. For you, it seems likely, I guess, that when friends, family and doctors say he wasn't some party-to-excess wild child, but rather just someone who had a bit of night out, smoked some grass, fell asleep on the couch while his partner was having a wee fling with someone they brought home, and had a seizure as a result of a previously undiagnosed medical condition, well, they must be lying about the extent of his debauchery.

Never mind what the coroner says. Never mind what the medical expert says. Never mind what friends and family say about his lifestyle or about relatives suffering the same condition. Never mind that any purported marathon drinking session is, by all accounts, no more than unsubstantiated rumour, entirely out of character. Never mind that his drug-taking that night extended, as far as we know, to getting a bit stoned. Never mind that not having met the mother, grandmother and maiden aunts of someone you bring home for a one night stand or a threesome does not actually exacerbate the risk of heart failure. No. You know better, don't you, Jan? He was dancing, drinking, toking, might even have kissed some guy he didn't know very well, might even have kissed him somewhere other than the mouth. And all of this... "At the very least, it could have exacerbated an underlying medical condition."

Wow, yeah, Jan, that raises serious "questions."

If, that is, the simple notion of a gay couple inviting some cute guy back to theirs for a bit of fun automatically, for you, pegs them as wildly debauched libertines for whom a night out... well, that must mean getting shit-faced on scores of long vodkas, double-dunking ecstasy plls, snorting bottle after bottle of poppers, hoovering up lines of coke as long as your arm, of course, then sordidly latching onto the nearest sleaze-monkey and dragging them home so you can bring out the gimp mask and harness and have yourself the most depraved spit-roast ever. Cause that's what those gays do, right, Jan?

You see, Jan, it's precisely the fact that you read Gately's death in terms of "dark appetites" and "private vice" that led to the uproar against your article. What people object to is the fact that you jump to conclusions about his "damaging habits," lumping him in with your Heat magazine hit-list, your celebrity Dead Pool of "Robbie, Amy, Kate, Whitney, Britney," projecting rampant decadence, and all on the basis of "circumstances" you find "more than a little sleazy." Because obviously if him and his partner were "sleazy" enough to bring another guy home with them that night one can only assume a life of absolute abandon. Cause having an open relationship, yeah, that's basically the same as having an addiction to drink, coke, smack, prescription medication or all of the above.

What caused the backlash is exactly what you identify as the point of your article, Jan. It's the fact that no matter what anyone says, you remain suspicious, cast aspersions. The fact that his family knew him well enough to say his death had to be natural even before the toxicology reports were in -- to you this is them "perhaps understandably" seeking to maintain a public image which you assume is false. The fact that the coroner's verdict was pretty cut and dry and came in pretty fast (which is hardly surprising if pulmonary oedema runs in his family and Gately's sudden death was, in fact, just as simple as that) -- to you this means it's all been "handled with undue haste," which frankly sounds like you're impeaching the coroner's integrity, insinuating that they've too-quickly written off the causal factor of... um... wayward living in a death you insist is not natural. What pisses people the fuck off is you opening your fat mouth to say the whole story has been "shaped and spun"; you characterising the bereaved as at best manipulators of the truth, at worst outright liars, "sugar coating" the "bitter truth"; you making this all about the "ooze" of a "dangerous lifestyle" that has "seeped out for all to see," when in fact it's only a certain type of person -- people like you -- that project that "ooze" into this sadly sudden death.

Let's get this straight, Jan. It's you who's putting a spin on this story, shaping it into your own sick little fantasy of death-by-moral-turpitude, twisting it into an example of the terrible fate that goes with a "dangerous lifestyle." To you this is an event from which "lessons could have been learned," and the key lesson seems to be one of how those gays just put the lie to the "happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships" with all their partying and their causal sex. You can wave your hands about it as you do in your response, claim that you're only saying those civil partnerships "have proved just to be as problematic as marriages," but that's not the focus of your article. See, here's where you really put your big foot in your big mouth:

"Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships," you say, cause, yes, us faggots are always, endlessly, interminably being so uppity as to demand an ounce of fucking respect; so we're always saying our relationships should be afforded equal status, "arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages." That's the story shaped and spun by those gays, right? As you put it: "Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael." Not that you'd be so homophobic as to deny this outright. "Of course," you say, "in many cases this may be true."

May be true. (Or may not?) In many cases. (But not all, not most?)

Anyway, that's the case made by those gays, but unless the following sentence is a complete non sequitur, the lesson you want us to learn from Gately's death seems to be that this just ain't the way it is. "Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened."

And why exactly is Gately's death even comparable to McGee's suicide? How exactly do the accounts of McGee's self-destructive coke addiction relate to the picture we have of Gately? Unless, of course, you take this one little "sleazy" detail of Gately and his partner bringing someone home from a nightclub as validation of the entire fucking stereotype of gays as being lecherous drug-fiends with no control over any of their "dark appetites" at all?

And that, Jan, is what you're doing. That, Jan, is why people are complaining loudly about your fucktarded article. Because your prurient, prudish projections of "private vice," of that "very different and dangerous lifestyle," are all too clearly born of a preconception -- a prejudice -- you yourself apparently don't even recognise. Gately was gay. He had sex with guys. Might even have had an understanding with his long-term partner that allowed for a bit of playing outside the relationship. And for you that invalidates any assertions that he wasn't a party animal, renders suspicious all the testimony of friends, family, even an official coroner's verdict.

Let me put this bluntly, Jan. You don't know shit. You don't know shit about Gately's lifestyle other than a few dodgy rumours and an overwhelming mass of sincerely shocked statements from those who knew him that he wasn't at all comparable to Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger or any of those other celebrity self-destructors you lump him in with. You don't know shit about what he and his partner might or might not have actually got up to with that guy. You don't know shit about whether this was a regular thing or a one-off experiment. You don't know shit about whether he had a bucketload of long vodkas and ten bongs of squishy black or a few glasses of red wine and a couple of tokes on a joint. You don't know shit.

So shut the fuck up, bitch. Cause frankly, your response simply compounds the offense in the utter absence of an apology and in the utter obliviousness of what exactly it is people are complaining about. Worst of all, though, is your closing line. Yes, that final sentence where you have the temerity to claim vicitm status for yourself, to characterise the outrage as "clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign." Cause that backlash couldn't actually be spontaneous and sincere, right? When people read your fucktardery and call it fucktarded, it couldn't be because hey think it is fucktarded, right? No, it has to be a bandwagon of fools who haven't actually read the whole article, fools who haven't understood the article properly, and -- Jesus Fucking Dolce and Gabana! -- an actual malign conspiracy of Evil Forces deliberately pulling their strings, pushing their buttons, orchestrating the outrage. Yes, Jan, the Elders of Sodom strike again!

How many times do we have to tell you people, Jan? How do we get it through your thick skulls so you can actually retain it in that little pinheaded pointy bit? We do not lurk in the shadows waiting for some fucktard to accidentally say something that we can twist into a slur on all faggotry. We do not latch onto every unintentional hint of a slight, just for the pleasure of tarring and feathering some poor innocent soul who didn't actually even say the wrong thing anwyays if you only read it properly. We do not orchestrate internet campaigns to ritually humiliate journalists just cause they write for a rag like the Daily Mail. We are not fucking puppet masters, we Elders of Sodom, setting hordes of unthinking peasants upon you for no reason other than malice, and when you play the victim card by casting the outcry raised by your article in those terms, as an "orchestrated... campaign," this is just evidence of how deep your fucktardery is writ into your being.

Wake up and smell the 21st century, Jan. It's called Twitter. There's no orchestation here, no organisation, no conspiracy. We, the Elders of Sodom, don't need to manipulate people into a mob, baying its empty outrage. You just open your big fat mouth, put your big fat foot in it, and the more fucktarded the things you say, the more people notice them. You're just going to have to deal with that, and the best way of dealing with it, in the first instance, is not with ill-considered self-justifications that make no apology, dismiss the validity of criticism, repeat the offence, and compound it by casting yourself as the victim of an organised attack. The best way of dealing with it, in the first instance, is by shutting the fuck up.

Stop. Think about what you said. If you should happen across this letter, think about how we're telling you -- sincerely, honestly -- your article and response read to us. We've done our best to outline why and how people are seeing it as homophobic. Don't just jump to the "I'm not homophobic" defense because you think homophobia means a Westboro Baptist level of hatred. What we find repugnant in your article is not some "burn all faggots" rhetoric of revulsion; it's this ugly little preconception of a prejudice, this blunderingly tasteless and tactless presumption of "sleaze," these suspicions and insinuations that seem sourced in little more than your inability to imagine that a gay couple bringing a stranger home from a nightclub doesn't automatically equate to drug-fuelled orgies to put Caligula to shame. It's the fact that by voicing those suspicions you were, to all intents and purposes, calling the bereaved liars before Gately's body was even in the ground.

Do you get it now, Jan? Can you face up to the idea that the outrage was not just spontaneous and sincere but entirely founded in what you actually said, in the very point you think everybody must be misreading? Cause if so, well, you can always have another shot at that response. And if not... just shut the fuck up, Jan. Just shut the fuck up.

Love and kisses,

The Elders of Sodom

Talking of Virtual Fiction...

... the Paper Cities e-book, Kindle edition, has now gone live on Amazon.com:

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Direct Distribution Experiment

Hmmmm. As I suspected would be the case, Paypal donations for "Jack Scallywag" have been substantially fewer than those for "Scruffians Stamp." There's plenty of freebie downloads of "Scruffians Stamp" going on in the meantime, but that clearly ain't converting into support. Yes, you get enough folks donating that it works as a one-off, but it's not looking terribly sustainable, I gotta say. The second story hasn't done too badly, but it's a good way from being made available to the public, so while I've got another three stories done and dusted, ready to be let loose in the world, it's not looking like this is a viable way to release them, to be honest.

Anyways, while I consider potential ways to give the whole thing a kick up the arse, those of you what have downloaded "Scruffians Stamp" without donating, those of you who's tempted by "Jack Scallywag" but hoping that others will make it reach the target so you don't have to pay, and those of you who're just a bit too used to the Age of Free Fun... well, go read Amanda Fucking Palmer on the subject of artists asking their audience to pony up. Anyways, those of you who's wavering, do bear in mind that there's no minimum donation.

As you were.

Last Drink Bird Head

I've been meaning to pimp this for ages, cause: a) I'm in it; b) it's for a good cause, a literacy charity; c) I'm in it; d) there's lots of other people in it too, really cool writers like Daniel Abraham, Michael Arnzen, Steve Aylett, KJ Bishop, Michael Bishop, Desirina Boskovich, Keith Brooke, Jesse Bullington, Richard Butner, Catherine Cheek, Matthew Cheney, Michael Cisco, Gio Clairval, Alan M. Clark, Brendan Connell, Paul Di Filippo, Stephen R. Donaldson, Rikki Ducornet, Clare Dudman, Hal Duncan, Scott Eagle, Brian Evenson, Eliot Fintushel, Jeffrey Ford, Richard Gehr, Felix Gilman, Jon Courtney Grimwood, Rhys Hughes, Paul Jessup, Antony Johnston, John Kaiine, Henry Kaiser, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Tessa Kum, Ellen Kushner, Jay Lake, Tanith Lee, Stina Leicht, Therese Littleton, Beth Adele Long, Dustin Long, Nick Mamatas, JM McDermott, Sarah Monette, Kari O’Connor, Ben Peek, Holly Phillips, Louis Phillips, Tim Pratt, Cat Rambo, Mark Rich, Bruce Holland Rogers, Nicholas Royle, G Eric Schaller, Ekaterina Sedia, Ramsey Shehadeh, Peter Straub, Victoria Strauss, Michael Swanwick, Mark Swartz, Alan Swirsky, Rachel Swirsky, Sonya Taaffe, Justin Taylor, Steve Rasnic Tem, Jeffrey Thomas, Scott Thomas, John Urbancik, Genevieve Valentine, Kim Westwood, Leslie What, Andrew Steiger White, Conrad Williams, Liz Williams, Neil Williamson, Caleb Wilson, Gene Wolfe, Jonathan Wood, Marly Youmans, and Catherine Zeidle; e) I'm in it; f) it's now available for pre-order!

So, yeah, I've been meaning to pimp it for a while, but I'm limited to interwebs in cafés at the moment (which is doing wonders for my productivity, it seems, in terms of writing, yes, actual fucking fiction (or OK, recording forty-odd verse sea shanties.))

Anyway, yes, consider yourself hustled. Go on, you know you want a copy. For any number of reasons -- the least of which, actually, is the fact that I'm in it. Cause... yanno... Michael Bishop and Gene Wolfe? Nuff said.

Mind Meld, Matelotage and Mutiny

The latest Mind Meld over at SF Signal is on the book that introduced you to fantasy. I've got me own contribution up there, a general raving on the wonder that is THE BORRIBLES. This may not come to much of a surprise to them what's read the book(s) in question, especially not if ye've read "Scruffians Stamp". And even less so if ye've ever heard me rant about these books in person (and there's a lot of you who have, I'm sure.) Cause, yeah, these Scruffians are pretty openly influenced by Michael de Larrabeiti's Borribles, and I ain't ashamed to admit it. Hell, soon as I can think of how and where I'll be working in a little tip of the cap to de Larrabeiti in one of the tales.

Talking of downloads, I got an unexpected request the other day from someone who'd come across "The Ballad of Matelotage and Mutiny" in a web search on "matelotage" -- which, as any Scruffian of the Seas should know, is both a) a weird form of art/craft made by knotting of frayed rope-ends, and b) the gay marriage of two mateys, as practiced by those of the piratical persuasion. Anyways, this chap turns out to be a collector of bawdy ballads, and he asks if by any chance there's a recording of it. Well, no, I thinks, but after all the work I've been doing on NOWHERE TOWN it occurs to me that GarageBand might exist in the manifesting of such musicality. So I spent the other night getting into the spirit of it with a hearty amount of grog and snout (well, OK, it was red wine with the fags, but it does the job,) and came up with a version of it.

A thirty-five minute version of it.

Well, I suppose it is forty-odd verses long. Still, this is probably at the idiosyncratic end of my output. Four hundred thousand word, two volume magnum opus of cubist fantasy? Check. Forty thousand word irreligious John Carpenter homage? Check. Gay punk Orpheus musical? Check. Forty-odd verse, thirty-five minute long sea shanty? Check. Hey, predictability is for physics experiments.

Anyway, I stuck it up on the fileshare site I normally use, for this chap to download, so I thought I may as well, punt one of the embedded doohickey things up here, for anyone what's cracked enough to want a copy, or who has a spare thirty-five frickin minutes to listen to me play at being a pirate. I mean, I suppose it does constitute a reading and all, given that the ballad is highly narrative, basically a wee story told in song. So, yeah... enjoy?



You know, actually I do sorta wish I knew a folk-punk band who could do a proper version of the music, and some crazy animator folks who were up for making a 35 min movie just for the sheer WTFery. Cause listening back to it meself, I couldn't help thinking that you could make a kinda cool wee short.

Jack Scallywag

Well, cool! Allowing for one pledge what ain't quite come through yet, but which is from someone as I know will be chucking the money in shortly, it appears as how "Scruffians Stamp" has made the pro-rates mark of $150. Which means to things: 1) at least some folks will (can afford to) still throw some cash into the hat. (And those who maybe can't afford to contribute (and trust me, I know times is tight all round,) if you enjoy the story, you can always do yer bit by giving it a nod on yer blog, LiveJournal, Twitter or whatnot.) and 2) it's time to, as agreed, make another story available for all who donate from here on in.

Now, this one's chunkier, at about 6400 words. Actually if you exclude the titles, it's exactly 6400 words, same as "Scruffians Stamp" is exactly 3000 words. Cause those little sections are all 100 words exactly. No, don't ask me why I does it that way; buggered if I know, I just find that mad constraint somehow working for me. It's the same with "The Disappearance of James H__" and "The Toymaker's Grief". No, really, I don't know why. Some weird formalist impulse? Some poncy Oulipo malarkey? It just works for me, OK?

Anyways, at 5 cents per word that length works out at $320, which is a substantial chunk of money, right? So, I reckon for the moment, I'll stick with the approach adopted with "Scruffians Stamp," setting the initial target at two-thirds pro-rates. In other words, if donations reach $207, this story goes up on a fileshare site, for all to download. In the meantime, all those who donate will get a pdf sent through to them toot sweet. I've got to admit, I'm not at all sure the higher target will be reached, given the fact that I'm not expecting contributors of larger sums for "Scruffians Stamp" to repeat those sort of donations. But part of what I'm curious here is to see the limits of this sort of approach. So sod it; let's give it a shot, eh, and see what does happen?

So what's this story? Why, this is only the tale of "Jack Scallywag", the finest Scruffian what ever lived. EVER! But rather than blathering about it, as before, here's the opening as a wee taster:

Jack Scallywag

Hal Duncan

Ace Jack, King Jack, Queen Jack, Fool.

Poor widow's son got beans for a bull.

How many beans did the Scruffian get?

One, two, three, four, you are het!

In Which Our Hero is Interduced

Once upon a time, there were a poor widow's son what lived out in the forest with his mum. He didn't have nothing to his name -- couldn't have nothing to his name on account of he didn't have a name. See, his mum were so awful sad at her husband's death, all's she ever called him from the day he was born was Poor Dear. You want fed again, she'd say, Poor Dear? How'd you get the busted lip today, she'd say, Poor Dear. The other boys calls you a bastard, do they, she'd say, Poor Dear? Yer don't say?

•

Mostly though, what the other boys called him -- what everyone in the village called him -- was Parish Fool. Cause his mum didn't have no money to dress him in aught but a suit of rags, stitched up from scraps of handmedowns and castoffs what had been worn to nothing and chucked away. A right motley it was, in every sodding shade under the sun. Every shade what's been faded and filthed to a shade of dirt and dust, that is. So they calls him the Parish Fool for it, shouts, Where's yer bells? and, Tell us a joke! Fucking cunts.

•

But we don't call him Poor Dear or Parish Fool, us Scruffians. Don't call him none of those names the groanhuffs use in their stories about him neither. Cause what do groanhuffs know? All's they've done is heard our tales and passed em along in a game of Chinese Whispers, getting em all mixed up, like. Peer-a-Door and Pierce-a-Veil, they calls him! Dozy twats. Still, we gots to call him summat. Hero needs a name, don't he? So we Scruffians calls him Jack, cause that were a word for any Scruffian-to-be in those days.

•

Anyways, one day, Jack's out poaching rabbits in the wild woods when these knights ride up, all grand on their gallopers, armour gleaming in the sunlight. Jack, he ain't been schooled, so he don't rightly know what an angel is, but he's seen pictures and carvings in the church, right? Fine looking fellers with breastplates and helmets, swords and shields, you know? So Jack, he falls to his knees, thinking it's Judgement Day itself, praying for mercy. Course, the knights all have a right good laugh at that. No, says they, we're knights, lad, noble-born but mortal as you.

In Which Our Hero Aspires to Greatness

Huh? You hush yourself, scrag. Yeah, course I'm leaving bits out. These is fresh Fixed scamps, and they ain't in need of hearing things what they won't understand. So let's not confuse em with details about where the knights was headed and how's they'd decided to have some fun on the way. Besides, it messes up the story if you starts bringing in crusades and pogroms and Jack's mum getting -- whassat? A pogrom? Well... it's sort of... a monster they had in them days. Yeah, a bit like a dragon. See? Just lemme tell it simple, like, eh? Right then...

•

Jack, he ogles these mortals. If knights look so grand, says he, by buggery, he'll be a knight himself. The nobs near split their sides, them being nobs and all. Parish Fool, says they, there's squires and serfs, and you're no squire. Bollocks to you, says Jack. Off into town he skips. I'm gonna be a knight, says he. Parish Fool, says everyone, there's knights and knaves, and you're no knight. Fuck you, says Jack. Off to his mum he skips. I'm gonna be a knight, says he. Poor dear, says she, there's paladins and peasants, and -- Whatever, says Jack.

•

No, Jack won't have nobody tell him what he can't ever be, even if he weren't born with a silver spoon in one end and an Harley Street hooter up the other. He ain't secretly a prince, ain't got no sword what was his father's. And he ain't gonna make much of a knight without a sword and such. But Jack ain't bovvered. Come morning he sneaks out, whiles his mum's snoring off last night's gin, with a pot for an helmet, a stick for sword, and his trusty old slingshot. Bollocks to them all, he thinks. I'll show em.

•

Now, being a Scruffian at heart, even if he ain't Fixed yet, Jack ain't the most responsible type, so thieving a horse does strike him as an obvious option. But being a Scruffian at heart, he ain't the most reputable type neither, so it also strikes him as all the groanhuffs in the town would likely finger him straight off. And he's been near enough hanged for an apple, never mind an horse. So, no, he reckons, he'll have to get it legit, like. But it ain't like his dear drunk mum'll miss the old bull in the meadow, eh?

************

And so it goes. So, yeah, chuck whatever you feel comfortable with my way, and I'll chuck yer a copy of the pdf with the full tale of Jack Scallywag. And we shall see how it pans out this time.