A Treatise on the Correctitude of Glass Bottles (For the Edification of our Savage Heathen Neighbours)

GOOD:

  

EVIL:

  

 

GOOD:

  

EVIL: 

 

 

GOOD: 

 

ABOMINATION:

 

GOOD: 

 

BETTER BUT STILL NOT THERE:

 

ONLY ONE OF THESE IS RIGHT: 

 

WHICH ONE? CAN YOU GUESS? CORRECT:

WFC Schedule

Thursday 0935: Is chilled red still drinkable? BA flight from Glasgow to Gatwick. The panel members explore whether the red wine provided with snacks in-flight is palatable despite being inappropriately chilly. Is there any way to warm it? Can you fit two into a one hour flight? Join Hal Duncan as he attempts to answer that question.

Thursday ????: Hello! We're here! Come to the informal icebreaker entirely unarranged and hosted by no one in particular, commencing fuck knows. All we can say for sure is that at some point things will be kicking off in the hotel bar. Or at least, having kicked already, I expect, I'll come daunering in and go all excitapuppy over folks I haven't seen in yonks. And then there will be beer. Oh, yes. There will be beer.

Thursday 1700: Oh, I actually have an actual panel...

Does Anybody Still Read Genre Poetry? (Cambridge) Seriously, outside an ever-dwindling circle, does anybody really care about genre poetry in the 21st century? Is it an art form that as had its time, or is there still an audience out there for people scribbling away in their garrets? Panel: Shimon Adaf, Alan Ashley (mod.), Jenny Blackford, Hal Duncan, Jo Fletcher.

I'm reliably informed by Amal El Mohtar that the answer is "YES!" so this shouldn't take long, and hopefully I'll be back at the bar right sharpish for MOAR BOOOOZE!

Thursday ????: Hang on! I got an incredibly generous offer of hospitality from the awesome Neale Grant, bless him, so I'll have to get my stuff to his flat at some point between arrival and dinner, so I might be away from the bar for a bit. Still, it remains the best place to look for me if you want to sign up for a...

Beerblether: Slots available all weekend! No waiting list! No fiver for coffee and custard creams! Just turn up at the bar and say hi. It's like a kafeeklatsch, only it doesn't make you want to say Gesundheit! whenever someone says the word! Spend aaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllll the time you'd ever want with THE.... Sodomite Hal Duncan!! himself. I'll even sign your books for you, if you don't want to wait for...

Friday ????: The Mass Signing. Oh, just look at the programme thingy for where and when. I'll be there somewhere.

Friday ???? + ????: The bar? Room parties? A drunken haze outside the hotel having a quick ciggy? Fucked if I know. I'll be wherever the festivities are at. If I'm not, come find me and TELL ME WHERE THE FESTIVITIES ARE AT!

Saturday... oh sweet lord Jesus Fucking Cock...

Saturday 1000: The Best of All Possible Worlds (Cambridge) So you've come up with a cool plot, you've created some characters that the reader will really empathise with, and now you're ready to put it all together in a location of your imagination. Edgar Rice Burroughs had his Barsoom, J.R.R. Tolkien had his Middle-Earth, H.P. Lovecraft had his Innsmouth and J.K. Rowling had her Hogwarts. So just how do you go about creating a believable milieu with its own history, culture and politics? A panel of world-builders will tell you how it's done… Panel: Hal Duncan, Robin Hobb, Ellen Kushner (mod.), Patrick Rothfuss, Robert Silverberg, Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Yeah, they put me on a panel at ten in the morning. OK. I can do this. I can be sensible at ten in the morning. Or I can be awake at ten in the morning, at least. I'll do my best not to be a completely incoherent shambles in the depth of my hangover. But if anyone knows where to find a glass bottle of Irn Bru in Brighton, do let me know.

Saturday ????: From here on in?

Expect carnage.

Caledonia Dreamin'

Some of yez may have caught this already on Faceboak. But for those of you who didn't, here's the awesome cover for the upcoming anthology, CALEDONIA DREAMIN':

And as it'll look folded:

And If You Want More....

I got a wee parcel of SCRUFFIANS! ARCs through the post the other day. Lookit! Lookit! Ain't they pretty?

The Taking of the Stamp -- OUT NOW

UPDATE: Now available on Kindle edition. Click below:

Caledonia Dreamin'

Glaikit, mockit, droukit, drouthy, couthy, scunner, thrawn – the Scots language is rich with words too gallus not to glory in, dialect terms that deserve better than to be boxed away as precious oddities. For us, those words aren't quaint parochialisms of a past preserved in amber; they're wild wee beauties, straight razors slashing keen to the quick of meaning. So we sent out a solicitation for stories that wielded such words as weapons for today, for tomorrow. We asked writers from around the world to pick up one of these words and flick it open to gleam in the light of the 21st century. To play with it, work with it, give us a story that riffed on it with relish – the sound, the sense. Run wild with it, we said, ye ramstouger rannigants.

The result? Seventeen tales from writers Scottish or not-so-Scottish, with not a hint of tea-towel twee in there. No Shaggy Kelpie Stories here; this is strange fiction as it's meant to be: testing the boundaries; pushing the envelope. From Neil Williamson's riff on "wersh" to Anna Tambour's exploration of "boak," I think you'll be impressed; I know I was.

Or to order direct from the publisher, Eibonvale Press, click here.

Table of Contents

Sweeter Than, Neil Williamson

Maw, Wendy Muzlanova

Maukit, Brian Milton

Fallen through a Giant’s Eyes, T.J. Berg

Newayr, Douglas Thompson

The Bouk Puppie Show, Preston Grassman

The Laird of Nagasaki, Tom Bradley

Palais 1930, Rob McClure Smith

The Losers, Angus McAllister

Drive the Warlike Angles into the Sea!!!, Nick Mamatas

Widows in the World, Gavin Grant

I am not (), Phil Raines

Studying Honeybloods With the Queen of Exotica, Kirsty Logan

Mary, Thomas and Joe, Stravaigin, David McGroarty

For Your Guising, Gio Clairval

Nae Greeance o’ Bane, Tim Jarvis

Bowfin Island, Anna Tambour

Strange Fiction, Weird Reading

Just a quick post to let you know that I have a wee story (500 words wee) in this:



Also, on the 7th November, I'll be at Bloomsbury's Horse Hospital, doing a wee reading. Which is all very nice and all, in and of itself, but you should know I'll be doing this with other writers too, writers like... you know... M. John Harrison. Just so you know. Here's the full (provisional) line-up:

18.40: Doors
19.10: Robert Kingham (Talk on Weird Bloomsbury)

19.30: Break

19.40: Lisa L. Hannett
20.00: Helen Marshall

20.20: Break

20.50: Hal Duncan
21.10: K.J. Bishop

21:30: Break

22:00: M. John Harrison
22:40 [approx.]: Q & A [All readers.]

So, yeah, tickets are available here. Come along. It'll be grand.