Readings

June Fringe – Stephanie Burgis & Justin Newland

~ Cheryl

The recordings from the June BristolCon Fringe event are now online. We did things slightly differently that month. Firstly thanks to a technical hitch we had no microphone on the AV system. That meant we had to record people direct rather than off the AV system, which caused a few problems with the sound. In addition Stephanie had to leave early to catch a train back to Abergaveny so we had her read first, then did her Q&A, all in one session.

Stephanie read from the opening chapter of her novel, Masks and Shadows, which I reviewed here. It being an historical fantasy featuring secret societies and a eunuch, I had a lot of questions to ask her. The opera connection is very important too.

Our other reader for June was Justin Newland, better known as “the man who asks questions” from our Q&A sessions. Justin read a short story set during the building of Hadrian’s Wall, and the opening chapter of his novel, The Genes of Isis.

Stephanie was able to stay for the reading but had to leave during Justin’s Q&A session. We had a short break while she left, but when we came back no one had any new questions so we just did announcements, which have been tacked on to this recording.

The September Fringe event takes place tomorrow night. The readers are Cassandra Khaw and Jonathan L Howard. I should be there, though I am supposed to be in Cardiff during the day for a Trans*Code event and the Severn Tunnel is closed so travel will be a bit unpredictable. Also I have to get my body functioning again after a couple of days of being dead of cold. I have no idea what will happen tomorrow.

May Fringe Podcasts – Martyn Waites & Paul Cornell

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

It is that time of the month again. If you are in Bristol this evening do come along to the Shakespeare Tavern on Prince Street for 7:30pm to hear Scott Lewis and Jo Lindsay Walton. In the meantime, here are the recordings from the May event featuring Martyn Waites and Paul Cornell.

The event was a crime fiction special in honour of Crimefest, our local crime fiction convention which was due up the following weekend. Martyn does have SF credentials, of which more later, but his fiction is straight crime. In addition to his own books he writes as Tania Carver, and it is one of her books that he reads from here.

Paul, of course, read from Who Killed Sherlock Holmes, the latest in his Shadow Police novels.

And then of course we had the Q&A, which was epic. I, of course, wanted to know the story about how Martyn came to write as Tania. As you will hear, the position of women writers in crime fiction is very different from that in SF&F. Martyn gave me an idea for a panel at BristolCon.

Along the way Martyn also revealed his various SF&F credentials, including publishing a Doctor Who fanzine and featuring in a Robin Hood TV series. We also talked about a book called Great Lost Albums in which Martyn and friends invent famous albums that never were. I was particularly taken by the idea of a Kraftwerk Christmas album.

Paul talked more about the Shadow Police series. Naturally there is discussion of Holmes, and Paul’s recent episode of Elementary. There is also mention of his comic series, This Damned Band. There is, inevitably, some discussion of science fiction television series, which leads to some well-deserved praise for The Expanse.

Fringe Tonight

~ Cheryl

For those of you within easy reach of Bristol, there will be a BristolCon Fringe event tonight. The readers will be Thomas David Parker and Tim Lebbon. We will get going at the Shakespeare Tavern (68 Prince St.) at around 7:30pm, but people will be there before then for food. Hopefully I will see some of you there.

April Fringe (contains me)

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

The April BristolCon Fringe night is, by tradition, an open mic where they let all sorts of people read, even me. Lots of better writers turned up as well, and we ended up with 12 readers divided into three sessions.

Session 1 features three novel excerpts. Justin Newland and Amanda Huskisson both have fantasy novels set in the ancient past. Jack Anderson’s novel is from Roman times, and is a straight historical tale. The session ended with Jackie Rogers who read two pieces of fantasy flash.

Session 2 got us going on the explicit tags. Kevlin Henney opened up by killing off almost everyone on the planet. Pete Sutton’s magpie story, “I Butler”, was somewhat more restrained but does feature a serial killer. Jo Hall read us a piece from a new novel that she has just started working on, Gods of the Grey City. People die horribly. And finally we have “Zombie Walk” by Myfanwy Rodman. Only three people die in that, but the zombies are already dead and there are lots of them. We very much needed a break after that one. You have been warned.

Session 3 began with Steve Tanner who read from the first book in a fantasy trilogy. Then it was my turn. I read the start of a short story called “Snow White’s Wedding”, which I’d originally written for the Upside Down anthology (it didn’t get in). Next up was Will Macmillan with “Hatchet”, a cautionary tale about the dangers of living with a writer, and indeed being one. Finally Jonathan L. Howard read from an unpublished novel called Heart of Empire. That’s something he calls “tea punk”, which appears to mean very polite British people having very dangerous adventures and remaining calm throughout.

During this session we were visited by the Fringe Ghost. A mysterious voice began emanating from the pub’s speaker system during Steve’s reading and continued off and on for the rest of the evening. The speaker system was turned off. Various theories were proposed, and the one that seems most likely is that the speakers are picking up the radio transmissions of ferry boats in the harbour. Thankfully the Ghost doesn’t seem to have spoiled the recordings.

In the Q&A I asked Jo a bit about her forthcoming books. The Summer Goddess is now scheduled for September and reviews are starting to appear online. Pete Sutton launched A Tiding of Magpies while I was in Finland so it is now available from good bookstores everywhere. Will talked about reading stories from memory. Naturally we all wanted to know where Myfanwy got her gruesome ideas from.

In case you are wondering, there is no audio from March. I was in Canada and the folks back in Bristol had tech fail.

The July Fringe event will be in a week’s time on July 18th. It is a horror special, and will feature Tom Parker and Tim Lebbon.

February Fringe (and June tomorrow)

~ Cheryl

Tomorrow sees the June meeting of BristolCon Fringe, so it is about time I got more audio online. Here, therefore, is February. Well, some of it.

As you may recall, in February I was absurdly busy with LGBT History Month. As a result of this I was very tired at the Fringe meeting. This led to my messing up the recording of the first session. Huge apologies to Will Macmillan Jones for this. He is in the Q&A, and I’ll have more from him available soon.

However, we do have a reading from the fabulous Gareth L. Powell. No monkeys this time, and consequently a considerable reduction in the swearing quotient. Instead Gareth treated us to the opening two chapters of a new space opera novel. There’s no firm information on when or where it will be published yet, but I think that after listening to it you will be keen to get hold of the whole book just like I am.

Because I knew that I had messed up recording Will I asked him for a bit of poetry at the beginning of the Q&A. I knew he’d deliver on that. I asked Gareth about poetry because he has a character in the story who is a not very good but very successful poet. I do not accept any responsibility for the results.

We didn’t get any recordings of the March event, mainly because I was in Canada, so the next batch of material I will have for you will be from the open mic event in April. March was Pete Sutton and Myfanwy Rodman, both of whom also read at the open mic (and Myfanwy’s story was brilliant). Will also read at the open mic, so you’ll get to hear all of the people who we missed. Of course the open mic also includes me.

As for June, that will feature Justin Newland and Stephanie Burgis. Justin will be familiar to you as one of our regular question askers. Stephanie is the author of the Kat Stephenson trilogy for younger readers, and more recently of Smoke and Mirrors. Given that the new book has a eunuch as a main character, you can be sure I will have a question or two to ask. If you can be in Bristol tomorrow night, the event will be at the Shakespeare Tavern on Prince Street and will start around 7:30pm. I hope to see some of you there.

Fringe, Dead Sherlock & Writing as a Woman

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Last night’s BristolCon Fringe was really good. The podcasts will be available in due course, but you can hear Paul Cornell read from Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? at his previous Fringe appearance in March last year.

Martyn Waites chose to read from one of the stories he had written under his Tania Carver pen name. Naturally I was interested to know how writing as a woman worked for him. After all, we hear endless stories of how women in SF&F have to hide their gender in order to get published, or because they fear that their books will be ignored otherwise.

Again Martyn’s full explanation of the story will be in the podcast, but I wanted to highlight a few things here. First up, the whole thing came about somewhat by accident. His editor was bemoaning the lack of a hard-edged British female crime writer and Martyn, being a former actor and wise to the ways of freelancing, immediately said, “I can do that, gis a job”.

The important point, however, is that it worked. Tania’s first book was heavily promoted and became a best seller. The question is, why? How does this sort of thing work in crime but not in SF&F?

Martyn has some ideas. I do too. One thing that particularly fascinated me was Martyn’s assertion that women like gory crime stories. So why is there this impression that they would not like equally gory fantasy?

On the spot I came up with a panel idea for BristolCon. Obviously the idea has to be approved by MEG and pass the audience interest test, and participants have to agree, but hopefully we can make it work. I’d want to chair it, and have Martyn on the panel. I’d also want Sarah Pinborough who is one of this year’s Guests of Honour and a purveyor of gory horror tales, and Sarah Hilary who is turning out to be exactly the sort of crime writer that Martyn’s editor was looking for when they invented Tania. I think the panel also needs a publisher representative, and probably a male one for panel parity reasons. Any volunteers?

Fringe Tonight – Paul Cornell & Martyn Waites

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

If you are anywhere near Bristol this evening then make your way to the Shakespeare Tavern on Prince Street for the May edition of BristolCon Fringe. This is a crime special, and our guest readers will be Paul Cornell and Martyn Waites.

Paul should be familiar to all of you. He’ll be reading from his forthcoming novel, Who Killed Sherlock Holmes, which I talked to him about on the radio the other week. It is, of course, the latest in the Shadow Police series, and I enjoyed it a lot. Paul is doing launch events for the book at Forbidden Planet in London on Thursday and Bristol on Saturday.

Martyn is more of a straight crime guy and has an impressive track record. He’s also a former TV actor, and he’s definitely One Of Us. I want to talk to him about this book. He also moonlights as crime writer, Tania Carver. There are not many male authors around who use a female pen name, so I’ll be interested to ask about this when we get to the Q&A.

All of which can be taken to imply that yes, I will be hosting the event as usual. 7:30pm start. See you all there.

Mike Carey Reminder

~ Cheryl

Fellside - Mike Carey
This is mainly for Bristol people, but there will be radio coverage too.

Next Wednesday (May 18th) Mike Carey will be in Bristol to promote his latest book, Fellside. He will be on the radio with me at lunchtime, and in the evening we’ll be doing an event at Waterstones. So poor Mike gets to be interviewed by me twice in one day. I hope he doesn’t get too bored.

I, er, promise not to ask him about the next Felix Castor book more than once per interview, OK?

Anyway, it should be great. If you are in Bristol, please do come along in the evening. You can book (for free) here. If you are not local, I’ll be posting the Listen Again links to the show. I’ll try to get audio of the thing in Waterstones too, but I can’t guarantee I’ll get anything of decent quality.

Oh, and Fellside? Gripping.

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.

Mike Carey and Me in Bristol

~ Cheryl

As many of you will know, Mike Carey has a new book out: Fellside. Mike is doing a promotional event at Waterstones in Bristol on the evening of May 18th. I am delighted to have been asked to interview him. The event is free, but the store would like people to sign up on EventBrite so that they have some idea of numbers. It will be awesome.

And with any luck, as it is a Wednesday, I will have Mike on Ujima as well. That’s dependent on his travel arrangements, but hopefully we can make it work.

By the way, I’ve just bagged a great interview with Guy Gavriel Kay for the May 4th episode of Women’s Outlook.

The Ghost of the Shakespeare Tavern

~ Cheryl

Last night’s BristolCon Fringe went very well. We had 12 readers in all, two of whom were reading in public for the first time and did really well. You will doubtless see people on social media muttering about “the eyeball”. I’m afraid you will have to wait a while to hear why as I’m still a bit behind on the audio.

We also had a ghost. Part way through the evening we started hearing a voice coming out of the speakers in the bar. Jonathan Howard kindly went to talk to the staff and ask them to turn it off, but they pointed out that the speakers were indeed turned off. The ghost continued to interrupt the readers at random intervals.

The explanation that the bar staff came up with, is that the ferry boats that ply up and down the river have quite powerful radios, and occasionally their chat gets picked up by nearby electronics.

Hopefully, because it wasn’t directed at the mic the noises won’t get picked up very strongly and they won’t have spoiled the recordings. If they are clearly audible I shall take that as evidence that we had a real ghost. Possibly one with an eye missing.

Fringe Open Mic on Monday

~ Cheryl

The April edition of BristolCon Fringe will take place on Monday. April is traditionally our Open Mic event, which means that anyone can turn up and ask to read. The only limitation is that you have only 5 minutes.

I am planning to read from a new, unpublished story. It is the one I wrote for the Upside Down anthology (but didn’t get in).

It is also my birthday. There are rumors that there may be cake.

As usual the event takes place at the Shakespeare Tavern on Prince Street in the Harbourside District. Readings will start around 7:30pm, but people are likely to be there well before that. See you there.

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)

Fringe Tonight – Will Macmillan-Jones & Gareth L. Powell

~ Cheryl

There being no rest for the wicked, I will be off to Bristol again this evening for the February Fringe event. It is an all-Welsh affair, featuring Will Macmillan-Jones & Gareth L. Powell, and me doing the introductions.

Further details are available on Facebook, and on the BristolCon website.

I uploaded the audio from the December event this morning, but I probably won’t have time to do the posts until tomorrow.

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.

Fringe Tonight

~ Cheryl

Tonight will see the first BristolCon Fringe event of 2016. The readers will be Will Loram and Nick Walters. Nick will apparently be reading from a new Doctor Who tie-in novel featuring characters from UNIT. Presumably he’ll be doing his best Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart impression. It will make a pleasant taste from stories about bad horror movies. Mind you, the Scrunge Worms would make great Doctor Who villains.

Anyway, I will be there to host. We’ll be at the Shakespeare Tavern as usual, with the event starting at 7:30pm. Hopefully I will see some of you there.

If you are wondering where the next podcast is, it is uploading as I type. I will have it available for your listening pleasure tomorrow. Be warned, it is full of spiders.

October Fringe – Joanne Hall & Jonathan L Howard

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Here’s a nicely horrifying way to start the new year: the Halloween special edition of BristolCon Fringe. It features some deeply creepy readings and a great deal of swearing (we love that explicit tag on iTunes).

First up is Jo Hall who is more generally known for being the Queen of Grimdark. There is no mass slaughter in this excerpt from her latest novel, Spark & Carousel, which was launched at BristolCon. Instead there’s something cold, calculated and ultimately horrible.

Next we have Jonathan L. Howard who launches his latest novel, Carter & Lovecraft. There are no tentacled horrors from beyond the stars in the excerpt that he reads (you’ll need to buy the book for them). However, there is a particularly nasty serial killer. The cops get very sweary.

Finally I get to put both of our readers to the question. Jo reveals her inner darkness, and Jonathan describes how Carter & Lovecraft came to be written.

This BristolCon Fringe event was staged as part of the Bristol Festival of Literature. There are quite a few announcements to do with forthcoming LitFest events, all of which you will have missed, but hopefully it will tempt you to find your way to Bristol this October. BristolCon is back in its normal date, so if you come a few days early you can catch some of the LitFest too.

Hopefully I will get the November readings online later this month. I’d like to say I’ll have the December and January readings up in February. It should be OK as far as Podbean bandwidth goes, but given how busy I’ll be in February I’m not hopeful.

Happy Solstice

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Uffington Hare - Dru Marland


Today, in the Northern Hemisphere, we will have the longest night of the year. Tomorrow will be the shortest day. After that, Gods willing, the sun will begin to return to our lands.

This year’s card is “Uffington Hare” by Dru Marland. Symbolically it is a bit of a mash-up, because hares are scared to Eoster whose festival is normally celebrated in the spring, but it is a lovely picture. You can buy greetings cards with this picture, and some of my aged relatives who still do the paper thing will be getting them next year.

My Solstice dinner has been postponed until tomorrow because some bright spark decided to hold the December BristolCon Fringe meeting on a religious holiday (War on Solstice! I demand an outraged article in the Daily Mail.) Still, it will be nice to spend the evening with friends and good fiction. Do come on down to the Shakespeare if you are in town. We have been promised mince pies.