A Scruffian Survival Guide

A Scruffian Survival Guide is a ~116 page illustrated chapbook collecting / collaging four new works of dark queer fantasy in the "Scruffian" mythos of writer Hal Duncan--author of various works including the internationally renowned debut novel Vellum, nominated for the Crawford, Locus, BFS and World Fantasy Award, and winner of the Spectrum, Kurd Lasswitz and Tähtivaeltaja.

Waifs stolen from homes & streets down the centuries, Scruffians are fixed as ageless and indestructible by a magical Stamp for use as child labour, but with spirits as resilient as their flesh, they're underdogs more likely to bite back than submit. In the rhymes and "fabbles" by which they remember their secret history, they're always already rallying and resisting, a fierce sodality of the abject determined never to let marginalisation mean victimisation. Though nodding to classic children's fiction like Barrie's Peter Pan or de Larrabeiti's The Borribles, this is fiction wielding whimsy in the service of satire and LGBT themes, aimed squarely at an adult audience.

A Scruffian Survival Guide follows on from and expands upon works previously published in the author's short story collections, Scruffians! and The Boy Who Loved Death, but is intended to work as a stand-alone volume, accessible to new readers as well as those familiar with the mythos. Self-published via Lulu under the author's own New Sodom Press imprint, it will be released in August in limited edition hardback and trade paperback.

"Hal Duncan's cheeky and charming Scruffian stories hide a steely shiv of inspection that digs uncompromisingly into the ribs of  the establishment. This latest volume, populated as always with wonderful characters old and new, deepens that exploration and brings it bang up to date. I loved every word of it." -- Neil Williamson, author of The Moon King