#so like. to be fair. it was a pretty queer profession and era

[moriartyyouwhore]

on the one hand,,, I am queer and trans and autistic and disabled and mentally ill and would absolutely be dead in any other era

on the other hand. regency era pirate

[indielightuk]

Author Interview: Hal Duncan

First off, Tell me about yourself? Well, the homophobic hate mail labelled me “THE…. Sodomite Hal Duncan!!” (sic) and that seems as good an intro as any. I’m a queer writer, mostly known for science fiction and fantasy, but I do a fair bit of spoken word too, not exactly the shy and retiring type, so the sense of “The Outlaw Josey Wales” style swagger in that moniker does kinda tickle my fancy.

In terms of a broad bio: I moved into Pennyburn, Kilwinning, in the 1970s, grew up there through the birth of punk and Star Wars, the era of Mutual Assured Destruction, miners’ strikes and Margaret fucking Thatcher, of HIV and Section 28. Lost a brother in my teens and went a bit crazy for a while, but I came out of it basically stable; all the wanky adolescent angst kinda gets put into perspective when Death comes knocking on your door, so I’m pretty easy-oasy about most things, you know? So it goes, as Vonnegut put it.

I moved up to Glasgow for uni and I’ve been based there ever since, slogging away at the writing for a decade or so while working admin jobs, then retraining and working as a programmer. I got my big break in 2004 when Pan Macmillan picked up VELLUM, which made a big splash in the wee pond of SF/Fantasy, so I bit the bullet and went full time. It’s been a rollercoaster ride since then, a weird mix for a kid from the sticks, where you’re getting jetted off to Finland one day for a convention, then coming home to an empty fridge cause you’re broke as fuck. I’m very much a cult writer, as likely to do some anarcho socialist cut-up of the Gospels as something that will actually sell, so… well, it’s not the most stable of professions even for more commercial writers. I fucking love it though. I scrape by making shit up for a living, without a boss to answer to.

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