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.