Price Slash on Escape from Hell!

The Kindle edition of Escape from Hell has been price-slashed, just so's ye know. The Kindle Countdown Deal I ran at the start of December boosted the sales by a not insubstantial factor, so I was intending to lower the base price after anyway. There's a fourteen-day lock on the price though after such a deal. That lock is now over, so it should now be available to buy for £1.53 or $3.02 (I think, basically $2.99 + tax.)

Just click through for links to the relevant Kindle Store:

 

Watch this spot for news of a Kindle Countdown Deal on the ebook of Errata. The price has to stay the same for 30 days for it to be eligible, but that period started on the 29th November, so there might well be a wee January Sale in the offing. 

In Other News...

RHAPSODY: NOTES ON STRANGE FICTIONS, my non-fiction book exploring strange fiction, its culture and nature, will be coming out from Lethe Press in April next year. If you've been reading this blog over the years, if you followed my Notes from New Sodom columns over at Boomtron, you'll have some idea what to expect, but don't be looking for a simple collection of accreted essay material. I've gathered together the core of those writings and reworked the material pretty damn thoroughly in best literary cubist manner. There's the figurative sociography, for want of a better term, of the SF Café. And there's the literary theory of narrative modalities, my unified field theory of genre, to all intents and purposes. But I'm out to make this as bugfuck mentalist fierce as VELLUM and INK. Think Disch meets Delany in a dark alley and shit gets real. Keep your eyes peeled here for a peachy cover to be unveiled.

Meanwhile...

ERRATA is now available not just in the print edition of the chapbook but also on Kindle Direct, from the UK store and the US store and most any of the stores there are, I believe. (Sorry, I'm too lazy to link them all.)

Collecting for the first time, and revising for this edition, all four stories in the Errata sequence-"The City of Rotted Names," "The Prince of End Times," "The Whenever at the City's Heart," & "The Tower of Morning's Bones"-this chapbook is a cubist collage of wordplay and worldblazing, a mosaic narrative of the battle for the city of the soul. Here, fans of Vellum & Ink can delve deeper into the mythos of The Book of All Hours, while new readers will find a stand-alone story, a wild ride into the world of a work described as "the Guernica of genre fiction."

I've set the MatchBook thingy on, so anyone who bought the paper edition from Amazon should theoretically be able to buy the ebook for free. If this does/doesn't work for you, do let me know. I'm not sure if I've got it set up right, so it'd be good to know either way. If you bought it direct via Lulu, send me a proof of purchase, and I'll send you through an epub.

ESCAPE FROM HELL! will be on a Kindle Countdown Deal from midnight tonight (i.e. the 30th November) until the 7th December, with a hefty price reduction. I forget exactly how hefty, duh, and can't seem to check it on Amazon, so I'll update later with the details. But it's fricking cheap. Again, you can get it from the UK store and the US store.

A hitman, a hooker, a homosexual kid, and a hobo suicide make the ultimate prison break...escape from Hell itself! But when news of their attempted escape gets out, the souls of the damned are transformed into a rioting mob, and all Hell truly does break loose. It's Escape from New York meets Jacob's Ladder, by one of fantasy's rising stars.

Enjoy.

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.

Escape from Hell!

Escape from Hell!

A hitman, a hooker, a homosexual kid, and a hobo suicide make the ultimate prison break...escape from Hell itself! But when news of their attempted escape gets out, the souls of the damned are transformed into a rioting mob, and all Hell truly does break loose. It's Escape from New York meets Jacob's Ladder, in an action-packed adventure with more than a little satirical bite.

"Imagine a portrayal of hell too grittily realistic to be satire, too funny to be straight adventure romp. This is what Hal Duncan offers... a gripping and stylish read from one of the most talented new fantasy writers to emerge in a long time." Keith Brooke, The Guardian

Or to buy direct from the publisher, Monkeybrain Books, click here.

Escape from Hell!

Oh, man! Check out the eye-scorchingly awesome cover for the French translation of Escape from Hell! (éditions Folio SF) by Daylon and Lasth:



And click through for some great shots of the stages of development.

This is gonna look so fucking good in the flesh. And with Florence Dolisi translating, I know it's going to rock just as much on the inside, in the text. Don't know when it's due yet, but I'll keep you posted.