Nick Bryan's Blog, page 16

Hobson & Choi #70: "Market Lessons"

Hobson voyages deeper into the belly of the capitalist beast in this week's new, all-70th Hobson & Choi chapter.

Not much time for fun notes this week, but yes, we're at chapter #70, which is good isn't it? We've basically reached #100.

Game of Thrones: A Review Of Sadness

After a week off, back to the Thrones reviews on Dork Adore. And yes, as the internet may have already told you, a lot of sadness in this one.

(The episode, not my review of it. My review is filled with purest joy.)

All You Can Eat Media - Nick vs Netflix, Man vs Marvel Unlimited

In the last few weeks since my birthday, I've catapulted myself hard into the world of unlimited on-demand media. Yes, I already had things like BBC iPlayer, 4OD and American equivalents, but this was the next level: Netflix for TV and the Marvel Unlimited service for comics.

After years of only watching carefully selected shows and targeted media, going back to having a wide range of stuff I might like available and choosing from it has been a strange experience. It's like when I was young and I used to read TV guides and consider watching new stuff.

Only with comics too, which is where the comparison breaks down.

Anyway, after two months in the new world of everything-you-could-ever-want rampant consumption, here are the observations I've made.

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Devil Deal Novel Draft #3 Word Count - By The Numbers

All on target this week, as I sailed through the final stages of Novel Draft The Third. This will be a familiar tone to regular readers of this blog, most writing updates in the last month or two have broken down to: "Today I reached another book milestone!"

But just to reiterate what it all means: I am now at the point where I will show my book to some other humans. I've recruited a few volunteers from my writing group and personal life, now just gotta email it over to them. Once I've plucked up the courage to tackle Scrivener's sometimes-horrific ebook compiling options.

Anyway. In a bid to keep the blogs interesting, I'm going to run some actual stats for the whole project, to see how much I cut, where it went, what it all means, etc. Will the numbers tell me anything of worth? I don't know, as I haven't generated any of them at the time of writing this intro. Better go do that now.

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Hobson & Choi #69 - "Follow That Man!"

A little bit of meat-and-potatoes detective action in Hobson & Choi #69! Who is the Yellow Man and can Choi keep him in sight?

Despite the chapter number of 69 (snickersnicker etc), I couldn't find an excuse to insert some sex. Sorry guys. I promise I did at least try. For about ten to fifteen seconds.

More importantly, it is the final chapter of May, so if anyone hasn't caught up on reading/voting/ideally both for a while, now would be a very beneficial time to do it. Just a casual thought.

Even more usefully, why not review Hobson & Choi on Web Fiction Guide, thus enticing more readers to the serial and taking the voting pressure off yourselves, the existing readership?

Enough shilling for one week. I am off to celebrate finishing my third draft - more details in a blog post tomorrow hopefully. And I really do mean details, you'll see.

My Writing Music - Songs to mash the keyboard to

Some writers don't listen to music while they work, needing constant silence to produce their genius. However, I require an endless rolling soundtrack to drown out the screaming choirs of my own insanity (10 points for knowing where I stole that last phrase from), so I get through a lot of tracks.

A lot of the choices go in phases - new records come out, or I fancy immersing myself in the music of one artist, so I load my phone up with their albums. Then I listen to this person exclusively for a while, until I'm sick of them and don't want to hear anything they've done for months.

A few songs/sounds do survive the gap though - elevate themselves above the flighty phases and become evergreen presences. Here, then, are my perpetual audio companions. Apologies if a few of them turn out to be part of temporary phases and I'm just blinded by momentary love.

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"Why are there so few superheroes in the superhero TV shows?" - A thinkpiece

Many A True Nerd has just relaunched in a more monthly-magazine type format, so there's a load of new articles up. Check them out.

Sadly, my hilarious photo captions didn't make the cut, so you'll just have to imagine them. The one under the Flash picture was: The Flash - Master of running. He has all the runs. Just wanted to make sure posterity didn't miss out on that.

Round table interview plugging A Chimerical World! Contains brief snatches of me!

This is probably one for the Nick Bryan completists (who I still hope exist), but I participated in a round-table interview to promote the A Chimerical World: Tales of the Unseelie Court anthology, in which one of my stories appears.
And if you just want the hard facts about the actual story, here are the details of those particular anthology appearances. The Unseelie Court story is probably the strongest of the two, if you want to check one of them out - although the other one is much longer.

How many drafts? Definitely more than zero...

Today, after considerable striving, I finished one of the many readthroughs I am doing on The Novel. This was one part of a raft of edits, which together constitute a third draft - more details on those here if you're interested - and I'm hopefully within a week or two of finishing the whole damn lot. After that, I may let some other people read it.

The whole draft-counting system is a very personal thing really - you'd think the criteria for a first, second and third draft would be easy to define, but in reality you might as well ask a writer to define the concept of being. In fact, that might be quicker. (But I would say that, I have a Philosophy degree.)

In general, I'll use whatever approach works for me at the time. One numbering idiosyncrasy I've never quite found a use for, though, is Draft Zero.

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Hobson & Choi #68: "Lay of the Land"

Heavy fish out of water action in the latest chapter, as Hobson struggles with the ultimate modern temple: an enormous shopping centre.

Phew. The new case is moving along now, it only seems like yesterday it started. The end of the month isn't a million miles away either, so do vote for us if you have a few minutes spare. Once per chapter, every single one helps. Cheers.

Meanwhile, the H&C self-publishing effort is in a bit of a holding pattern while I wait for my text back from the editors. That's going to explode all over the place when it does return though.

In the meantime, if you're enjoying the ongoing serial, sharing it with your friends via social media/blogging/threatening them at parties is always much appreciate. Have a good week.