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.