Vellum, Vélum, Pergament

In the process of spring cleaning the study -- and yes, it appears my flagrant disregard for the diurnal cycle has scaled up to the seasonal; Calendar, you may now join your brother Clock in kissing my hairy arse -- it's become obvious that I have, well, rather a few copies of editions of this book or that in various languages other than English. Like, enough to build a small book fort with and have the toy soldiers I got in one of the Four Piñata of the Apocalypse (War, duh,) at my birthday bash last year defending an Ink-style Haven from the onslaught of a (relative to them) giant statue of the Virgin Mary repainted in Whore of Babylon scarlet and purple -- representing Phreedom, I guess, and thereby comprising a dramatic rendition of apocryphal storylines taking place in the twenty years between the two books. Not saying I've actually done this, but I kinda could.

So, having set my brag shelf copies on my brag shelf in said study (and... um... my public brag shelf copies on the public brag shelf in my living room... cause I'm shallow and vain and all "LOOKA MY BOOKS! LOOKA! MY BOOKS!") I casually half-joked on Twitter the other week that if anyone wanted to buy a signed copy, just let me know. I wasn't really expecting a response, but a couple of people did actually take me up on it. Which was nice, even aside from the wee bit extra dosh, in clearing out the space occupied by those copies and the boxes used to send them. (I'm one of those people who can't just throw out a box or a padded envelope cause they might come in useful, you know... even if it's five years later and they haven't actually come in useful at all.)

Anyways, I figured, what the fuck, why not just do it properly and have a wee virtual garage sale -- offer up the foreign editions, signed and sent off to the address of your choice, for anyone who cares to buy one. So what do you have? I hear you say. Well, what we have going is:

• A shitload of the US edition of INK (seriously, I've got, like, two dozen of the fuckers)
• 2 hardback UK first editions of INK
• 4 French (Denoël) editions of VELLUM
• 3 French (Denoël) editions of INK
• 5 French (Folio SF) editions of Escape from Hell!
• 3 Finnish editions of VELLUM
• 3 Finnish editions of INK
• 4 Finnish editions of Escape from Hell!
• 3 German (Heyne) paperback editions of VELLUM
• 3 German (Heyne) paperback editions of VELLUM
• 2 Spanish editions of VELLUM
• 2 Spanish editions of INK
• 7 Bulgarian editions of VELLUM

Given the way I worked with, respectively, Florence Dolisi, Nina Saikonnen and Hannes Riffel on the French, Finnish and German editions of VELLUM and INK, and given the accolades those editions have received both formally and informally, with awards/nominations and just plain readers-coming-up-to-me-and-saying-this-is-an-awesome-translation, I can safely say that those translations are fucking top-notch. The French and Finnish are also gorgeous in terms of art and design.

So yeah, if you fancy helping me clear some space in my study (and helping Phreedom bring down the Haven of Fort Babel where, deep in the Hinter, the evil Duke Snuffkin Plushy rules with an iron fist over his domain, with Team Rock Star Karate Action Heroes -- Iggy and Elvis -- locked away in his darkest dungeon, awaiting their rescue!) drop us an email at hal@halduncan.com. All copies are in straight-off-the-bookstore-shelf condition, so they'll be priced accordingly, with postage & packing on top, but I'm not going to slap on some huge sum over the odds just for my scribbles. So it should be, I hope, worth it.