[6][7] Occasionally he fashions himself as "THE.... Sodomite Hal Duncan" (sic) after receiving hate mail defining him by this expression, as reported on his personal weblog.

[11] Hal Duncan listed amongst his inspirations and influences such diverse authors as James Joyce,[5] William S. Burroughs, Alfred Bester, H. P. Lovecraft, Neal Stephenson,[1] Michael de Larrabeiti, Philip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein, Samuel R. Delany, Wallace Stevens, William Blake, Michael Moorcock, Harold Pinter and Jorge Luis Borges.

The story of the characters is linked to the Sumerian myth of Inanna and her descent to the underworld and to Aeschylus's tragedy Prometheus Bound.

[15] Vellum has been translated amongst others into German (by Hannes Riffel),[16] Finnish (by Nina Saikkonen),[17] French (by Florence Dolisi),[18] Spanish (by Luis Gallego Tevar),[19] Italian (by Stefania Di Natale)[20] and Polish (by Anna Reszka).

[22] Its two parts are linked to the two remaining seasons, winter (entitled "Hinter's Knights") and spring ("Eastern Mourning"), and it continues the narrative (and the style) of the first instalment.

[25][26] Ink has been translated into German by Hannes Riffel,[27] Finnish by Nina Saikkonen,[28] French by Florence Dolisi,[29] Spanish by Luis Gallego Tévar[30] and Polish by Anna Reszka.

[36] It has been translated into French by Florence Dolisi as Evadés de l'Enfer!, being published by Éditions Gallimard in October 2010,[37] and in Finnish by Einari Aaltonen.

[38] In May 2011 Duncan announced the publication of An A–Z of the Fantastic City, a "chapbook" for Small Beer Press,[39] initially due to be released in February 2012.

The volume, illustrated by Eric Schaller, deals with twenty-six cities, both real (Dublin, Guernica, Jerusalem, London, Washington) and imaginary (Erewhon, Camelot, R'lyeh, Tir-na-Nog, Urville).

Hal Duncan participated in the album Ballads of the Book with a poem, "If You Love Me You'd Destroy Me", put in music by Aereogramme.

[67] In 2009 he was nominated for the same award but in the category "Expanding Our Vocabulary" ("In recognition of writers whose fiction or nonfiction exposes readers to new words and, often, new ideas").

[70][71] In the event, organised and hosted by Literary Death Match co-creator Todd Zuniga, he was pitted against Doug Johnstone, Sophie Cooke and Katerina Vasiliou.