Podcasts

Stephanie Saulter Interview

~ Cheryl

Last September I did a Skype interview with Stephanie Saulter for Women’s Outlook to promote her new book, Regeneration. As is usual with such things, Stephanie and I talked for far longer than I could possibly broadcast. As the book is being published in the USA this month I thought this would be a good time to dig out the full interview and publish it.

Obviously the discussion is a little old, but as far as I can make out the only thing that is dated is our discussion of Marlon James’ chances in the Booker. I’m delighted that he won, even though that meant I had no chance of getting an interview.

I have a bunch of other SFF-related interviews from Ujima shows that I really need to get online because the Listen Again links have vanished. All I need is a little time, right?

January Fringe Recordings – Nick Walters & Will Loram

~ Cheryl

The podcasts for the January edition of BristolCon Fringe have gone live. This was a comedy special featuring Nick Walters and Will Loram.

As Will had been eaten by aliens, or by the Welsh, or by Bristol’s traffic, Nick kindly agreed to take the mic first. Nick had arrived hotfoot from a training course on project management, which is perhaps ideal preparation for reading from a novel in which the Earth is menaced by alien bureaucrats. Fortunately a certain Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart will arrive to save the day, though not in the extract that Nick reads.

Fortunately Will did finally make it to the event. His reading is from a novel in which… well, maybe it is best to let him explain that. But there are pirates, OK? And dragons. And lots of bureaucracy, because there’s nothing that the British like more than making fun of bureaucrats.

Finally our readers for January were asked to explain themselves, which was almost certainly a bad idea because you should never try to explain comedy. I tried hard to make project management sound amusing and failed dismally. Nick explained ASBOs for the benefit of foreign readers. Will explained more about the world of his book. We narrowly avoid mention of fluffy cushions.

The next Fringe event will be on May 16th and will feature Paul Cornell and Martyn Waites. Full details here.

This Week’s Women’s Outlook Show

~ Cheryl

Sorry this is a bit late. I’ve been rather busy with doing trans awareness training and various LGBT-related meetings in Bristol. Here’s what we had on Wednesday’s show.

The first hour was mainly my interview with Guy Gavriel Kay about Children of Earth and Sky. Guy and I talked for almost an hour, and I managed to boil that down to three 7-8 minute segments. I’ll post the whole thing on Salon Futura later. The discussion will be of particular interest to Croatian readers. There are brief mentions of Mihaela and Iggy.

After the second ad break I talked a bit about Prince, and other black musicians who died recently. Any recommendations as to what Papa Wemba songs I should play would be gratefully received. I also chatted brief with Olly Rose about musical heroes, “dad music” and the like. (Or in my case more like grandma music.)

You can listen to the first half of the show here. Thankfully it is audio only, so you can’t see me playing air guitar along with Nils Lofgren.

The second half of the show begins with me talking to Olly Rose about their fabulous sf audio comedy, Ray Gunn and Starburst. Series 1 is well worth a listen, and if you want to contribute to the crowdfunding campaign for series 2 you can do so here.

My final guest this week was Paul Cornell. We talked mainly about his new Shadow Police novel, Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? Because Paul and I know each other rather well the conversation went a bit off the rails in places and there was giggling. Paul will be reading from the book at BristolCon Fringe later this month, and at a book launches at Forbidden Planet London and Bristol a few days later.

You can listen to the second half of the show here.

The playlist for the show was as follows:

  • When Doves Cry – Prince
  • I Feel For You – Chaka Khan
  • Manic Monday – The Bangles
  • Purple Rain – Bruce Springsteen
  • Let’s Go Crazy – Prince
  • Little Red Corvette – Prince
  • How Come You Don’t Call Me? – Alicia Keys
  • 1999 – Prince

All of the songs were written by Prince.

I’ll be back on air on May 18th, with Mike Carey. Mike and I are doing two interviews that day: once on the radio and once at Waterstones in the evening. I’m currently reading Fellside and am very impressed.

Fight Like A Girl – The Audio

~ Cheryl

I have the Fight Like A Girl audio online now. First up are the three readings, which are by Lou Morgan, Sophie E. Tallis and Danie Ware. They only got five minutes each. If you want to know what happens next, you’ll have to buy the book.

In addition there is the discussion panel, which I moderated. The panelists are Joanne Hall, K.T. Davies, Gaie Sebold and Dolly Garland.

You may have noticed that I was particularly brainless that day. The Indian queen whose name I was trying to remember was Rudhramadevi. Gaie Sebold and Gail Simone are two separate people (and both awesome). The frequent references to boxing were because Marc Aplin of Fantasy Faction, who is a boxer, was in the audience.

If you want to see the video of girls doing fighting demos you need to check out yesterday’s post.

My apologies for the occasional bits of background noise on both podcasts.

You can find a review of the book, and full contents list, here.

And finally, here is the awesome cover by Sarah Anne Langton which, we discovered at the launch, glows under black light.

Fight Like A Girl - Roz Clarke & Joanne Hall (eds)

Hannu Rajaniemi & Daryl Gregory at SF in SF

~ Cheryl

I might not be able to visit the Bay Area again, but I can now listen to some of the SF-related event there. The excellent SF in SF readings series is now podcast once again. Their March meeting featured Hannu Rajaniemi & Daryl Gregory, and you can listen to the entire event here.

December Fringe Podcasts

~ Cheryl

I have got another set of BristolCon Fringe podcasts online. These are from the December meeting.

First up we had Simon Kewin who read a short story about strange goings on in Westminster and the opening chapter of a fantasy novel set in Manchester.

Next we had Sarah Ash, who read us an extract from her 2003 novel, Lord of Snow and Shadows. The book was full of snow and danger, whereas Bristol was being unseasonably warm.

Finally we had the traditional Q&A. We were keen to know which member of the Cabinet is so demonic as to have inspired Simon’s story. Sarah confessed her love for Russian and Finnish classic music. There were suggestions that Christmas might be just around the corner.

Now that the LGBT History Festival is over I might be able to find the time to get up to date on this stuff.

November Fringe – Tom Parker & Lucy Hounsom

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The podcasts from the November meeting of BristolCon Fringe are now available online. Here they are.

First up is Tom Parker, ably deputizing for poor Stephanie Burgis who had been kidnapped by publishers bearing cake. Tom read us a couple of stories from a horror collection that he is working on. The first one is definitely not recommended if spiders upset you. The other one is just about how horrible Christmas can be.

Our second reader was Lucy Hounsom. I was expecting an extract from her novel, Starborn, but instead Lucy read a couple of chapters from the as yet unfinished sequel. That makes this a very rare opportunity to learn a bit about the new book. There are no spiders in this one, though a few people do get knocked about a bit.

In the Q&A we talked about the very different natures of horror short fiction and epic fantasy. Tom talked about the fact that the power of story in the world appears to be growing rapidly, though he blames Amazon rather than Anansi. Lucy talked about a blog post she had written but had been advised not to publish in case it offended some men. Naturally we bullied her into publishing it, and you can find it here.

In the announcements we mentioned that Jo Hall had won an award for the grimdarkness of her writing. Tom mentioned an event he would be hosting in the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft. The podcast from that, which features Jo Hall and Pete Sutton, can be found here (warning, autoplay).

The January Fringe went off well last night. The readings included a guest appearance by Robin Day and some general warnings on the evils of bureaucracy. But before I edit those I have to get the December event done.

There were several interesting things in the announcements last night, including the launch party for Fight Like a Girl, which promises to be a fabulous book.

2015 Stats

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Somewhat depressingly, it continues to be the case that I get most views here when I have a rant about something. That generally means Puppies or a trans rights posts. Here are the top five most viewed posts from 2015.

  1. The Wages of Sin
  2. Puppygate — Winners & Losers
  3. Cis People Know Best, They Tell Us
  4. Leelah – The Establishment Closes Ranks
  5. On Mary Sues

The top five countries from which you folks come are as follows (in order): USA, UK, Sweden, Finland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Germany, India.

By far the majority of my traffic comes from search engines and Twitter, with Facebook lagging in third. Special thanks are due to Mike Glyer whose File 770 provides the most traffic outside of search engines and social media.

As I’ve been doing a Bristol Fringe podcast post today I also had a look at the stats for that site. I am delighted to report that by far the most popular post, with just shy of 50% more listens than anything else, was Emma Newman reading from Planetfall. If you haven’t heard it yet, here it is again.

August BristolCon Fringe Podcasts

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Oh my, I have got so far behind with these. Sorry folks. Editing audio is a very time-consuming business. Thankfully with the year winding down to a close I have been able to make a start on catching up. The August Fringe readings are now available to listen to, and with any luck the October ones will be available early in the New Year. I can’t go much faster than that because of capacity limits on the Podbean account.

The first reader for August was David Gullen who entertained us with a tale of monkeys, keyboards and works of literature, complete with sound effects (and rather a lot of swearing on behalf of one of the monkeys). I really like this story.

Following David we had Gaie Sebold who gave us three pieces of flash fiction. The first was a re-imagining of Little Red Riding Hood; the second involved an encounter with fairies; and the third a great deal of scrubbing and polishing. Also she had great shoes, and aquamarine hair.

Finally we had the Q&A session. There was talk of intelligent monkeys, fairy tales, growing old, and living in a two-writer household. We said Happy Birthday to Kevin.

There was also a lot of talk about this year’s BristolCon and Bristol Festival of Literature. Sadly those are now long in the past, but you can always look forward to next year. Pete Sutton mentioned the Fantastically Horny anthology. I’m not quite sure where they are on that one — the website says they are still open to submissions — but as far as I know my story, “Camelot Girls Go Wild”, has been accepted.

The next Fringe will be on Monday. The readers will be Simon Kewin and Sarah Ash. Details here. Hopefully I’ll see some of you there.

Planetfall Drops

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Talking of Planetfall, it is officially published today. I’m hoping that Forbidden Planet Bristol will have copies tomorrow as I’m in town to do the radio show. If you haven’t got the message about this book yet, why not listen to Emma Newman read the first couple of chapters at BristolCon Fringe.

Serah Eley on StarShipSofa

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The latest edition of the StarShipSofa podcast includes an interview with a trans woman, Serah Eley. Tony Smith kindly gave me a preview of this one and I found it fascinating. Unlike me, Serah came into her understanding of her trans identity quite late in life. Her experience is just as valid as mine, but it is one that is only rarely seen in media coverage of trans issues. So well done to Tony and Serah for doing this interview. I hope it helps dispel some stereotypes.

Sarah Savage Interview

~ Cheryl

Last night in Brighton Sarah Savage and Fox Fisher had a launch party for the book that they have written. Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl tells the story of Tiny, a child whose family has moved home, and who therefore needs to go to a new school. The other kids at the school can’t tell whether Tiny is a boy or a girl. Some of them cope with this better than others. Tiny remains ambiguous throughout. This being a kids’ book, the whole thing is beautifully illustrated by Fox.

Obviously I’m not a great expert on children’s books. However, from a trans point of view I was very impressed with the book. I gather that Sarah and Fox have already sold their initial print run and are looking for a publisher who can help them get the book into stores. There’s an interview coming up in the Independent sometime soon.

Last month Sarah was in Bristol. I interviewed her for Ujima. We talked about the book, about her time on My Transsexual Summer, and about Brighton’s Trans Pride, which just happens to be taking place this weekend. So I figured that this was a good time to put the interview out as a podcast. Here it is.

I’ll be heading down to Brighton tomorrow afternoon. I plan to report on the event, and will be doing some interviews for Shout Out.

May Fringe Podcasts

~ Cheryl

Got there at last. The podcasts for the May BristolCon Fringe meeting are finally available online.

First up was Sophie E Tallis who is an excellent illustrator as well as a great writer. If any fantasy writers out there are looking to have maps drawn for their books, I suggest getting in touch with Sophie. Her reading is from her latest novel, White Mountain, which is published by Grimbold, an imprint of Kristell Ink. That makes Sophie a stable mate of our Jo Hall. Sophie was very nervous before the event, but I’m sure you’ll agree that she did a fine job.

Next up was Ben Galley, who is very well known online as a self-publishing guru. Ben’s latest series is a fantasy western, and his reading is from the start of the first book, Bloodrush. One of the incentives to get the podcasts online now is that book 2 in the series, Bloodmoon, is being published on Friday. I figured Ben could do with something to use in the PR campaign.

By the way, if you are checking Ben out, do take a look at the graphic novel version of his book, The Written. The artist, Mike Shipley, turned up at Fringe to see Ben, and I think it was the first time the two of them had ever met in person. It’s a really nice-looking book, so well done both.

In the Q&A session I got both Sophie and Ben to talk about the inspirations for their work. Sophie, fairly obviously, talked about Tolkien, but also about Eastern mysticism and the legend of Shamballa. Ben talked about how the Scarlet Star trilogy is steampunk alternate history with fairies. It has trains in it, so I guess I should try Kevin on Bloodrush.

The we got onto a discussion of the pros and cons of being self-published, or published by a small press. There was quite a bit of talk about the problems of getting your books into Waterstones, and why it is so much harder now than it used to be. There was also much love for independent bookstores, as there should be. Sophie managed to earn us an explicit tag for that episode. Of course most of the things that were talked about in the announcements at the end are now over, but there is some interesting news about the Bristol Festival of Literature that isn’t until October. You’ll be hearing more about that in the months to come.

A special guest for the evening was Jo’s dog, Lyra, who was remarkably well behaved, all things considered. Author readings are not really good doggy entertainment.

Last night’s Fringe featured horror fiction from Nick Walters and Ken Shinn. I’m hoping to get those online a little bit more speedily than this lot. Just in case I don’t, those of you living in Edinburgh, or going there for their Fringe, should check out The Accidental Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which features our good friend Tom Parker as Doctor Watson and Jasmine Atkins-Smart as Holmes. (Feòrag – hint, hint)

The August Fringe event will feature Gaie Sebold and David Gullen. If you got to meet Gaie and David at Archipelacon, you won’t want to miss the podcasts of that.

Coode Street at Archipelacon

~ Cheryl

While I was at Archipelacon I was invited to take part in a recording of the Coode Street Podcast. Gary Wolfe was a Guest of Honor at the convention, and he wanted to do a podcast with fellow GoH, Karin Tidbeck. I guess I was invited along as an expert on Nordic fandom or some such. Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and the podcast is now available online. You can listen to it via the Coode Street website, or via Tor.com. I’m not sure whether the versions are exactly the same — I’ve only listened to the former.

So what did we talk about? Well, there was a lot of discussion of tranlsation, so I figured I should provide a reading list of books, etc. that I mentioned. Here you go:

In addition we talked about YA literature, dystopias, the Barcelona and Dortmund Eurocons, Nordic crime fiction, fiction in indigenous peoples, what Swedish people think of the Thor movies, Sense8, stereotyping of nerd culture, and of course Karin’s writing.

Enjoy!

BristolCon Fringe – The April Open Mic Evening

~ Cheryl

I have just uploaded the podcasts for the April BristolCon Fringe (yes, yes, I know it is late May). This was an open mic session, so we have lots of different people for you. I MC’d the event, and also contributed a story.

Part I featured the following:

  • Pete Sutton – who managed 5 stories in his 5 minutes (“Overdue Book”, “Werewolves are Hairy”, “Rumbled”, “Zoophilia” and “The Memory of Light”)
  • Dan Pawley – extract from “Worlds Together” (published in Jupiter #41)
  • Joanne Hall – extract from “Arrested Development” (unpublished)
  • Philip Purser-Hallard – trailer for The Locksley Exploit

Nothing untoward happened, except for Jo destroying the microphone stand, which I have edited out.

Part II featured these people:

  • Thomas David Parker – “The Shell” (which he didn’t quite get to finish)
  • Richard Bendall – not sure what this one was called
  • Wgl – Is that the correct spelling? People do have some strange pen-names.
  • Jack Anderson – an extract from Meet me by the Gallows (more about it here)

Just before Richard was due to go on Cord asked us if it was OK to stream the rest of the evening to Poland live over Skype. Naturally we said yes. Sadly the Internet let us down after a while, but we are delighted to have an international audience and hope that our Polish friends will now get to hear the whole thing.

Part III comprised the following:

  • Justin Newland – “The Fool of Abbots Leigh” (longer version available here)
  • Cheryl Morgan – extract from “Gunpowder, Treason & Plot”
  • Thomas David Parker – the rest of “The Shell”
  • Cord Frazer – “Tutti Fruiti the Nightmare”

Justin managed to kill off the entire population of Clifton in his story, which is impressive even by Fringe standards.

My own story was the first couple of pages of something I had tried to write for Long Hidden, but had to give up on because the characters really needed more space than I had space for in the submission guidelines. It is told from the point of view of a young trans woman in Elizabethan England. Sorry about the awful accents.

Cord’s story was, I think, the star piece of the night, and not just because he spent most of the evening translating it into English, having originally written it in Polish.

My thanks to Heather for the Ticking Strawberry of Doom. Even if it wasn’t very good at keeping time it was an awesome thing to have on hand.

Now I need to edit the May readings, right?

March Fringe – Chris Cutting & Paul Cornell

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I have just uploaded the audio from the March BristolCon Fringe events. I suspect that this will provide our most listened to podcasts yet, by a long chalk.

We start out with Chris Cutting, who does more theatre than prose and always threatens to destroy my recording equipment when we work together. He has the loudest voice I have ever heard. My apologies if the audio is slightly distorted due to having to make it less LOUD. On the other hand, I think I have edited out all of the pauses caused by Chris having the story on his recalcitrant phone. I have to tell you about that because otherwise you won’t understand some of his comments in the Q&A.

Chris’s story isn’t exactly speculative, but it can be described as horrifying, and may have a slight tinge of steampunk to it.

Next up is the very wonderful Paul Cornell, who should need no introduction to the readers of this blog. Excitingly, we have an exclusive extract from his next Shadow Police novel. The book won’t be out until the end of the year, but once you have heard Paul read from it I’m pretty sure you’ll be wanting to read the rest to find out what the heck is going on. The title of the book will be…

No, I’ll let you listen. Paul announces the title during the reading. You are not going to believe whose murder his heroes end up investigating.

Finally there is a Q&A, in which we discuss all sorts of interesting things. Chris has a play to promote, which is all about vampires and social media. There are some terrible puns. We talk about Victorian fiction, including Dracula and Sherlock Holmes. We discuss the possible murderous tendencies of Neil Gaiman and George R.R. Martin. Paul drops another fascinating tit bit about the new book, and talks about a whole lot of exciting new projects he is working on.

Now I just have to work out how to get an advance copy of the book out of Paul, because I for one do not want to wait until December.

Last Day for GlitterShip Kickstarter

~ Cheryl

We are fast approaching the final day for Keffy Kehrli’s Kickstarter campaign for GlitterShip, the LGBT SF&F fiction podcast. Keffy has easily smashed his initial funding targets, and as a consequence episodes will be 4 per month rather than 2 per month. There was a stretch goal to allow for 2 episodes a month of original fiction rather than reprints, but as that looked quite far off Keffy has added an easier goal for just one episode of original fiction per month. That looks achievable. Go pledge now!

February Fringe

~ Cheryl

March has been a bit of a blur, but I have finally got the February recordings from BristolCon Fringe online.

First up we have John Hawkes-Reed, who treats us to another tale about steam-powered, programmable war elephants. Well, part of a tale anyway. To get the rest of it you’ll need to get hold of North by Southwest, a fine anthology by local Bristol writers, and edited by the fabulous Jo Hall. The book is illustrated by Clare Hutt, who also started BristolCon Frine and drew the logo.

The second reader was the mysterious lone cowboy known as Stark Holborn, who treated us to a deleted scene from the fabulous Nunslinger. Cunningly Stark recruited a couple of volunteers from the audience to read some of the parts. However, they seem to have forgotten that in order to be on the recording you actually have to speak into the microphone. Let this be a lesson you, folks. Apologies to listeners. Maybe we can get Stark & Co to do this again at some point.

Finally we have the Q&A, in which Jo asks John where he gets his ideas from, and Stark reveals the origins of Nunslinger. Along the way there is mention of the amazing Bass Reeves, who is also a major character in Elizabeth Bear’s Karen Memory. I had to cut several of the questions, again due to people not speaking into the microphone.

Apologies once again for the poor sound quality. Now I need to get to work on the March event, because I am sure that you are all keen to hear an excerpt from the forthcoming Paul Cornell novel.

Launching the GlitterShip

~ Cheryl

Here’s another Kickstarter project that I have backed recently. GlitterShip is a science fiction and fantasy podcast series that will focus solely on stories with an LGBTQ theme. It will be produced by the very splendid Keffy Kehrli. The campaign has already funded, but it is very close to a stretch goal to run 4 episodes a month rather than 2, so it could do with a little boost.

Keffy is able to do this fairly much on the cheap because he’s planning to only run reprints. There is a stretch goal for original fiction, but that’s quite a way away so I’m not holding my breath. I hold out some small hope of one day being able to send him a story, though of course I first have to sell one to a print venue. Maybe the story I have submitted to this will get accepted.