BristolCon

Airship Ball - Brass & Bone

This recording is a dramatisation of Joanne Hall's story, "Brass & Bone", from Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion. The cast is as follows:

• The narrator: Joanne Hall
• The Unfortunate Mrs. Angela Porter: Myfanwy Rodman
  
• The Dastardly Mr. Howard Porter: Ken Shinn
  
• Dr. Charles: Désirée Fischer

The dramatisation is by Deborah Walker.

The presentation took place at the Airship Ball held in Bristol to celebrate the launch of Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion.

Airship Ball - John Hawkes-Reed

This is a recording of John Hawkes-Reed's presentation on how to hack a steam-powered war elephant. The sound quality is a bit poor, and can't show the pictures that John put up, but the full, illustrated text is available here (PDF).

The presentation took place at the Airship Ball held in Bristol to celebrate the launch of Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion.

Bristolcon Fringe: March 2014 - Q&A

Scott Lewis and Roz Clarke kindly stuck around for the regular interrogation session, which this month turned into a discussion of novel writing technique. We learn about the problems of second chapters, and the usefulness or lack thereof of outlining. Kevlin Henney shocked everyone by mentioning the F-word: "finish".

BristolCon Fringe is a monthly reading series produced by the BristolCon Foundation. For details of future events, see our website.

Bristolcon Fringe: March 2014 - Roz Clarke

Our final reader for March was Roz Clarke. She divides her time between Bristol and London, and has recently completed a 2-year stint of corporate problem-solving, leaving her to focus fully on the important things in life: writing, gaming, the impending apocalypse, and bicycles. She is a graduate of Clarion West, and has had short fiction published in magazines including Black Static, as well as the Dark Spires anthology and Andy Bigwood’s The Sixty. With Joanan halls she edited Colinthology and Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion. She’s also a member of the BristolCon team. You can find her at www.firefew.com or on Twitter: @zora_db.

Roz also read a chapter from a novel in progress. As we reveal later in the Q&A, it is set in an alternate world version of Bristol.

BristolCon Fringe is a monthly reading series produced by the BristolCon Foundation. For details of future events, see our website.

Bristolcon Fringe: March 2014 - Scott Lewis

Our second reading for February was from Scott Lewis. Scott is a Bristol-based journalist, writer, photographer and casual adventurer who has only recently started dabbling in fiction, and will eventually manage his time sufficiently enough to get his first novel finished. Until then he intends to amuse himself by writing more short stories, chronic procrastination, rummaging around old book stores and libraries for obscure myths, legends, and folklore, and gallivanting off to far-flung parts of the world on ‘research trips’.

Scott read the first chapter of the aforementioned novel, which involves a gunfight in a brothel and a rickshaw chase. Please note that in the Q&A at the end of the evening Scott makes it clear that Dash is by no means the hero of the novel.

BristolCon Fringe is a monthly reading series produced by the BristolCon Foundation. For details of future events, see our website.

Bristolcon Fringe: March 2014 - Rosie Oliver

Our first reading for February was from Rosie Oliver, who is a regular attendee at BristolCon.

After gaining a maths degree from Oxford University, Rosie started her 30-plus years career in engineering. She is now what they call a systems engineer. As a child, she discovered the shelves of yellow hardback Gollancz science fiction books at her local library, and she was hooked. When she ran out of books to read, she started writing it. This led onto her doing an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. (Well, it is an ‘engineering solution’ to improving one’s writing!) Rosie has had several short stories published in various magazines and anthologies. Her series of novelettes about a self-learner robo-cat, simply called C.A.T., is e-published by TWB Press… mrrooowww! You are welcome to read her blog at rosieoliver.wordpress.com.

Rosie treated us to a short story, a fragment from a novel, and a preview of a new C.A.T. story. As she had to catch an early train home, we did her Q&A immediately after her reading.

BristolCon Fringe is a monthly reading series produced by the BristolCon Foundation. For details of future events, see our website.

Bristolcon Fringe: February 2014 - Q&A

Finally from the February meeting we have a Q&A session with our authors. Ken talks about his fledgling writing career. Jonathan explains to Cheryl who Johnny Vegas is. We discuss the current revival in the worship of the Aesir. And Snorri tells a joke about Finns, as Vikings are prone to do.

BristolCon Fringe is a monthly reading series produced by the BristolCon Foundation. For details of future events, see our website.

Bristolcon Fringe: February 2014 - Snorri Kristjansson

Our final reader for February came all the way from Iceland, via London where he now lives and works.

Snorri Kristjansson is a former actor and stand-up comic turned author whose debut novel, The Swords of Good Men, is attracting a lot of favorable attention. As the publisher's blurb says, it’s got a mad king determined to bring the White Christ to the masses, a mysterious and beautiful woman drawing the souls of dead warriors to her cause, a gentle blacksmith with dangerous blood and a young hero, who has a lot to learn about the cruelty of the world.

Snorri's performance includes the first ever public reading from Blood Will Follow, the second book in the Valhalla Saga, which is due for release this summer. As the books are about Vikings, a certain amount of drinking, murder, pillage and general mayhem is involved. Also beards, but no horns on helmets.

BristolCon Fringe is a monthly reading series produced by the BristolCon Foundation. For details of future events, see our website.

Bristolcon Fringe: February 2014 - Jonathan Pinnock

Our second reading for February was from local writer, Jonathan Pinnock, who was new to most of us but quickly established his geek cred by reading poetry in reverse Fibonacci format. He also knows far too much about what really happened in Bath at the end of the 19th Century.

Away from science fiction, Jonathan Pinnock runs a software company and writes mostly short fiction, much of which appears to win mainstream prizes of various sorts.

BristolCon Fringe is a monthly reading series produced by the BristolCon Foundation. For details of future events, see our website.

Bristolcon Fringe: February 2014 - Ken Shinn

With Scott Lewis having been called away to rescue people from the Somerset floods, Ken Shinn kindly stepped into the breach in our February event. He read from his story, "A Case of the Vapours" from Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion.

Ken Shinn was born in London in the later years of the 20th century. Since his childhood, he has regarded the world of speculative fiction with envious eyes, and slowly and surely he has laid his plans against it. Almost half a century later, following residences in Liverpool and Norwich and their respective SF communities, he is now resident in Bristol with his two cats, and is very pleased to be so. “Case Of The Vapours” is his first professionally-published fiction, and will not be his last. (He also owns his own top hat.)

Our apologies to Ken for some sound problems during the reading.

BristolCon Fringe is a monthly reading series produced by the BristolCon Foundation. For details of future events, see our website.