Nick Bryan's Blog, page 7
September 25, 2015
The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf - FREE AT LAST (on digital)
The first Hobson & Choi book, The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf, has been around since early 2013 in various forms: on Jukepop Serials, podcasted, in the self-published book and recently in serialised form on Wattpad.
Well, as the H&C Empire begins gearing up for its third installment (and I've already written the first draft of Case Four), I'd like everyone to at least give my grim-yet-fun urban crime book series a shot so I can have some chance of buying that heavily armoured central London fortress.
For that exact reason, the very first H&C case is now free on all major ebook platforms that I could upload and set it as free on.
So if you've been meaning to try the series but held back by money, it now costs nothing. How long this price will last, I don't know - I am a man, not a publishing machine - but at least the rest of 2015, I think.
I considered announcing this on Tuesday with the cover reveal, but because I didn't get it set up in time wanted to maximise the impact of the strategic announcement on the internet content media #landscape, here's the freebie news a few days later.
If you've already read the first H&C story arc in one format or another, consider grabbing the freebie anyway for Book-One-only bonus short story The Left Hand Is Always Right, which I enjoyed writing muchly.
Anyway, that's enough text considering all I'm announcing is The Free Thing Is Free. Below are the buy-buttons, begin yoinking from your ebook retailer of choice. And if you enjoy it, you can move quickly on to Case Two and (soon) Three, feeling good about your real contribution towards my fortress.
September 22, 2015
Hobson & Choi III: Trapped In The Bargain Basement - COVERS & PRE-ORDERS
After a long editing process, the third book in the Hobson & Choi series is absolutely happening! My darkly-comic crime series in which a world-weary private investigator and his curious teenage sidekick confront the dark side of every modern institution I can think of!
It's grim, it's fun and I like it more than most other things - yes, even Batman. (Sorry, Bruce.)
In this third book, our heroes stumble into an evil shopping centre. Yes, even commerce is wrong now, but how is it awful? Find out on October 6th 2015, when Trapped In The Bargain Basement opens for business in print and ebook form!
Of course, a new H&C declaration means a new lovely cover from Design For Writers, the great folk behind the last two. Without any further burble, here's the cover alongside the blurb, and below that, some pre-order links and review opportunities.
Trapped In The Bargain Basement - THE TRUTH
“You've heard of conspiracies within conspiracies? I wish conspiracies WOULD hide inside each other, instead of turning up everywhere I go."
Angelina Choi returns for her final day of work experience at the Hobson Agency - is there a job waiting afterwards? Should she walk away for her own good?
While she mulls it over, they're hired by the massive EastVillage shopping centre to investigate a spate of muggings. But do the management know more than they're letting on?
As Hobson and Choi wrestle with commercialised corruption, will Angelina finally squeeze in her first date with Will the Hot Receptionist? Can anything emerge from the smoking crater of Hobson’s love life?
Trapped In The Bargain Basement plunges grimly comic London crime series Hobson & Choi to new depths, after climbing to #1 in Dark Comedy on Amazon and breaking records on Jukepop Serials.
Also included: Wuff! - The Markus Tail, a book-only bonus short story. Discover the bone-gnawingly tense origin of H&C’s furriest, friendliest character.
Want to pre-order now?Want to secure your copy before they... run out of books or something? Here are the places you can already get your order in! As ever, there will be a print edition too, but I can only get pre-orders working on ebook for whatever reason.
Amazon UK!Amazon US!Apple iBooks!Kobo!Google Play!Smashwords!If you want to formally declare your intentions to read the book, you can add H&C as want-to-read on Goodreads too.
Lastly, if you have a book blog (or other outlet) and want to review Trapped In The Bargain Basement, get in touch with me at nick@nickbryan.com and I'll set you up.
September 14, 2015
NickNoWriQuart - One K, Once A Day
I stopped blogging regularly about my writing a while ago, felt I was running out of new/readable ways to say the same things - certainly, nothing I couldn't say on Twitter more concisely. However, I'm embarking on a Big Writing Exercise shortly, so I'm throwing it a post.
Because, yes, it's autumn, the end of the year is poking its head over the door, leaves are brown and it's cold in a Winter-Preview kinda way, all that can only mean one thing - Writers Doing Calendar-Based Word Count Challenges!
Obviously, I'm a little ahead of everyone else here - most are waiting for November to embark upon the epic NaNoWriMo quest. But I'm doing something a little different and I'll now attempt to explain it...
Read more »September 6, 2015
ADMINARAMA - H&C on Wattpad! Competition answer! BOOK THREE LOOMS!
The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf on WHAT pad?
If you want to read The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf, the first book in my darkly-comic crime Hobson & Choi series, without shelling out cash, I'm currently serialising it on Wattpad, the popular story-sharing site. Plus you can read H&C old-school, serialised with cliffhangers, a format I still have a huge amount of affection for.
Chapters are going up every other day (next one tomorrow) and there's only fifteen of them, so it should be all there fairly soon. Check it out and if you have a Wattpad account and feel like throwing in a vote or comment, go for it.
Phantom of the Space Opera - Competition ongoing!
Remember my competition from last week? The one where you had to guess which chapter I wrote in the team-written book from Nine Worlds? Well, no winners yet, so because I feel like it, rather than tell you the answer, I'm going to just leave it hanging.
Once one human being (not one of the ones who has told me they got the answer in a way other than reading it) emails the correct answer to nick@nickbryan.com, I'll send them a copy of The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf, signed or unsigned as per their will. Maybe some other gift as well, I've got a few spare comics and stuff hanging around.
Once that happens, I'll post the right answer here. Check the original blog post for the full details of what that's all about.
Trapped In The Bargain Basement soon to be released!Last and definitely not least, the third Hobson & Choi book Trapped In The Bargain Basement is finally more or less ready to be released into the community! It's taken some work - specifically, a set of rewrites so massive that I've had to remove the original webseries version from the internet because it embarrasses me.
But we have a final text, nearly a final cover, it's all very close. I'm not going to say anything specific like a date yet, but Trapped should be with you by this time next month, let's put it that way. So even sooner than that, there might be a cover reveal. Gosh.
However, if you have a blog and would like a review copy so you can post something near the release date, do email me or something and I can probably get it to you reasonably soon. If you definitely have a blog/other outlet for reviews and desperately want to cover the whole series, I may even be able to supply all three.
September 1, 2015
Veronica Mars seasons 1 & 2 - Belated TV review time!
Veronica Mars is a US TV high school crime show from the mid-2000s, in which a teenage girl in the crime-ridden town of Neptune solves a load of mysteries - both smaller ones to help out her classmates and big-time criminal incidents involving gangs, murders and the like. Helpfully, she's the daughter of a local private investigator, so she knows the business. I've long been aware that this is a very well-regarded show, and as a fan of Buffy, I'd probably like it, but only just got round to watching properly.
I've now seen the first two seasons - the third will follow, along with the recent Kickstartered film continuation, but considering this are mammoth 22-episode American network TV seasons, I figured I can probably find enough to say about the first 44 eps to fill up a blog post.
So, let's investigate this detective.
Read more »August 18, 2015
OUT NOW: Phantom Of The Space Opera - a novel team-written in 75 minutes at Nine Worlds! Guess my chapter and WIN STUFF!
Lovely cover by Sally Jane Thompson!As mentioned during last week's Nine Worlds 2015 round-up, a highlight of the convention was NaNoSessionMo, in which myself and twenty-eight adventurous co-authors wrote a book in only seventy-five minutes! Not as catchy as an hour, but we needed every second we could get.
After compilation by the excellent people responsible, the resultant masterwork has now been released onto the internet! Along with a photo showing me apparently drawing inspiration from my forearm! And a lovely cover by Sally Jane Thompson which you can see to the right! It's called Phantom of the Space Opera!
Yes, there's a play on words in the title. I approve. Keep reading for a few more words about the experience and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to guess my chapter and win stuff!
Read more »August 10, 2015
Nine Worlds 2015 - Ten Highlights, One Bookpile
Nine Worlds! It came! I went! Did that sound weird?
Anyway. This weekend just gone was the third annual Nine Worlds convention at Heathrow, an event that is such a geekfest, it is called that on Twitter. This is a single con attempting to devote at least some programming to as many difference aspects of geek-beloved media as possible, all the while remaining as diverse, inclusive and people-friendly as possible.
If you think that's a huge and challenging remit, you'd be right. I went to the con last year as well, how did the 2015 effort stack up? What were the best panels this year? Did I manage to take a photo of anything other than the view from my hotel? Well, as you can see on the right, I've certainly equalled that, at least.
Read more »August 2, 2015
Nick returns from the digital wilderness to find... - Hobson & Choi update! Sandman! Spectre! Comics on eBay! OTHER!
As threatened in my last blog post with that podcast appended, it's been a very quiet month in Content terms, as I have been moving house from Walthamstow to Lewisham, into a charming fourth floor flat where myself and my self-publishing empire will hopefully be very happy together.
As traditionally happens whenever anyone moves house in the modern world, this was accompanied by an annoying gap in internet access. We only got online yesterday, and I must admit, I'd forgotten how amazing the world wide web can be.
So, here are a few things I have seen, experienced and planned during my month away. Some have already been mentioned on Twitter, but most I couldn't be bothered to tweet because my only Twitter access was my four-year old phone and loading the app is a chore.
Read more »July 7, 2015
Hobson & Choi Podcast Special - Writers' Huddle Interview with Ali Luke!
Like a bolt from the blue, the Hobson & Choi Podcast is back on the scene!
I've moving house in the near future and will be without wifi, so internet content from the Nick Bryan/H&C Media Empire will be thin on the ground. But before disappearing into irrelevant meatspace for a bit, I recorded an interview for Writers' Huddle, a subscription-only writing forum run by the excellent author and blogger Ali Luke.
Listen now to hear me talk about H&C, serialisation, self-publishing, writing characters different from yourself and whether I ever considered putting Hobson & Choi into first person. Plus a little news about the status of upcoming H&C books in the outro.
So, download the episode here using the power of browser rightclicking!Or use the embeddy player below, or if you're faithful enough to still be subscribed to H&C in iTunes, it should be there too...
Hobson & Choi Podcast Special - Writers' Huddle Interview with Ali Luke! by Nick Bryan on Mixcloud
Thanks to Ali for hosting the chat and letting me put it out to the wider internet. Be sure to check out her blog at Aliventures and her own self-published fantasy book Lycopolis. Plus she's on Twitter (obviously) as @aliventures.
If this interview got you interested in my Hobson & Choi darkly comic crime books, you can read more about them at HobsonAndChoi.com. Sounds by zagi2 on Freesound as before.
And that, for now, might really be it for a wee while...
June 9, 2015
Five ways my book plans collapse upon contact with the real world - A Metaphorical Disaster Movie
At this stage, I've written a lot of novels, and started even more than that. Every single one started with a plan of some form - sometimes a couple of ideas scribbled on a pad, other times thousands of words of ideas, followed by a chapter-by-chapter outline and then individual scene breakdowns within those chapters.
But either way, the plans always come a little unstuck when exposed to the writing process. As I've been doing a lot of first drafting lately, so spending a heaping helping of my time dealing with plans not corresponding to prose.
So, to inform and reassure anyone in a similar place, I've broken my Plan Vs Reality problems into an internet-friendly Buzzfeed-style five-point list. Yes, only a thin membrane separates some of these feelings, but I've spent enough time staring at my plans in despair to know they're all distinct. If you've experienced all five of these, you can award yourself a prize when you reach the bottom!
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