Nick Bryan

LifeBlogging

So fresh! So clean! All new Nick Bryan website debuts!

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Hello. Been a while.

So, after what feels like an eternity but has actually only been around five months (oh, no, that is actually ages), I’ve managed to fully move over to my glorious new website. We are now live here at Nick Bryan Dot Com, the shiny new modern version with much less clutter and lots more plain white space.

The main point, though, was to bring it all up to date with what I’m actually doing nowadays, which meant a prominent place for all the comics I’ve written lately, including a few that never made it onto the old comics Tumblr from my time working with the great people over at The Comic Jam.

And yes, it also means winding up the Patreon I’ve been running for a few months – I took six payments, I commissioned six comics (the sixth will be with you soon, you might be able to see a preview in the image to the left), but I’d like to try and get into some longer not-all-free-online stuff, and so Patreon seemed a bit counter-intuitive.

Oh, and yes, there’s still a Hobson & Choi page, albeit a sleeker, shinier, lovelier one. And once I’ve made the final few tweaks to the print layout, you may even be able to pre-order book five. At the moment, you can see a frankly dazzling mystery-preview image in its place on the page.

But (for that reason), we’ll probably talk H&C more in a week or so. In the meantime, drink in the gorgeous new layout, enjoy the free comics, consider subscribing to my monthly newsletter thing that should be going out for April pretty soon – probably around the time I sort out those H&C5 pre-orders – and yes. Good to be back.

Thirty-Second Birthday V Hobson & Choi 4: Dawn of Moderate Fantasy Violence

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Hello!Since I keep saying I should do a blog here without a podcast attached, I thought I’d slide a quick one out today – because it is my thirty-second birthday! And I always seem to blog on this day, for whatever reason.

I’ve got to go out for my celebratory activity quite soon – more on that later – but here is some stuff. It’s been a while since the last substantial Hobson & Choi update, so let’s start there…

H&C4 – Coming To The Airwaves!

Yes, I have a complete not-shit draft of Hobson & Choi Case Four! Almost time to send it to the external editor, get some informed feedback and then take a big swing to try and make it publication-ready.

First, however, I have to read the whole text out loud to myself. I inflict this upon all my fiction-prose work before releasing it to an external audience, because I find it really helps with the flow of the writing. However, it is boring as shit, and no amount of knowledge that it’s useful seems to change that.

I did a whole blog post on this task a while back if you’re interested in more, but the current-upshot is: H&C4 is coming along, it should be with you… if I had to guess, I’d say around the third quarter of 2016. I am hopeful that it won’t slip into the fourth, but no promises.

Weirdly, looking back on my thirty-first birthday post, this is almost exactly where I was with H&C3 at the same time last year. However, I’m hoping it won’t take until October to get this one out, as I don’t have the distraction of moving across London this time.

So anyway, it’s coming soon. If you want to check out any of the first three, you should absolutely do that. The first case remains free on digital. All links and info on the main H&C page.

Moderate Fantasy Violence website and the Birthday Activity

My pop-culture-chat podcast Moderate Fantasy Violence, the focus of every other post on this blog so far in 2016, continues apace. For my birthday activity, we’re going to see the widely-criticised film Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Then we’ll record our fourth episode tomorrow and see if we can add anything to the critical conversation.

Yes, the film’s reviews are bad, but it sounds like it might be an Interesting Failure, and those are absolute catnip to story-talky-people like myself, so I’m still excited.In other MFV news, we now have a proper separate website at ModerateFantasyViolence.com where you can see and listen to all the podcast stuff so far. Kudos to my co-host Alastair JR Ball for doing most of the hard work setting that up, it looks great.

As well as the main episodes that I’ve been posting here, you can hear some deleted tangent-conversations that were cut to get the shows under an hour. Check that out, and if you fancy subscribing to or reviewing us on iTunes, even better.

So how are you in yourself, Nick?

Alright?

Kinda struggling to get another writing project going thanks to ideas not quite coming together or seeming as beautiful on the page as they do in my head. Once H&C4 is off to an editor, I’m going to take another swing at that. I think I’ve probably become a bit complacent thanks to spending so long working almost exclusively on Hobson & Choi, which is a world I love, know and can write easily. Maybe a short story or something to make it less intimidating?

And outside that, the new flat in Lewisham seems to be working out, realising my long-held dream of doing a podcast is a lot of fun and I don’t even mind turning 32 because it seems a lot like 31. So cool. Good work. See you back here next year, I suppose?

(I will attempt to blog at some stage before my thirty-third birthday.)

ADMIN FOR THE ADMIN GOD – Video reading! Guest blog! Thought Bubble!

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Hello! Yes, it’s been a few weeks since the last brief admin post and now here’s another one. Sorry. Got at least one thing to blog about, but I have to get a train to Leeds in about an hour for reasons you’ll discover shortly, so it’ll have to wait.

But! I have managed to write a guest blog post for someone else entirely (because I secretly hate you etc), so at least there’s something to read. This is on the excellent If These Books Could Talk blog and is me musing about prose serialisation (yes, my pet topic), complete with recent examples and the inevitable bodily fluids joke at the end. It’s a good post, check it out.

Outside the written world, I also did a reading at the lovely Big Green Bookshop (where you can now buy all three Hobson & Choi books in print!) as part of the Novel London series. If you couldn’t make the reading due to only hearing about it now, that’s okay, as Novel London filmed it and the result is now up on YouTube and also embedded below. Note the delicately beautiful product placement of H&C3 in the background.

Thanks to Safeena of Novel London for setting all that up, and if you get the chance to read at or attend a future event, give it a go. It’s fun.

Last of all, I am off to Leeds shortly to both visit my godchild (also called Nick, it’s weird) and attend one day (Saturday) of the Thought Bubble convention, which I hear on Twitter and many podcasts is one of the best comicon type events in the UK. Excited for that. Do say hello if you’ll also be there, I am wandering around by myself so may look scared. I also have a copy or two of The Gathering: Noir anthology featuring my published corporate noir story, so that’s exciting.

That is it! I hope to manage a more meaningful blog post next week. Or at least before the end of November.

Nine Worlds 2015 – Ten Highlights, One Bookpile

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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.

Ten Most Paneltastic Panels in Panel-Town

KNIGHTMARE MADE SOME VALID POINTS

Firstly, yes, Nine Worlds remains an impressive, sprawling convention. I definitely came away feeling pretty inspired by a lot of the discussion, especially on the Books track. (Sorry, ‘All of the Books’.) They managed to improve on an already-strong 2014 – I could have sat on Books events for the entire con and not had a bad time.

However, seemed lazy not to sample the range available. I also went to a few panels on the Creative Writing track, who didn’t get my attention much last year, but put on quite a few hard-to-resist items this time. Also a shout-out to the Young Adult track – only went to one of their’s in the end, but there were definitely a couple I wish I could’ve made. So much good stuff, I didn’t make it to a single Comics event. And I really like comics.

I was at the con all the way, from Thursday evening until Sunday evening. If I listed every event I attended like last year, this blog post would be novel-length and a bit dull. So here are Ten Highlights:

  • Cheese & Cheese – Readings of cheesy books with a supply of IRL non-metaphorical cheese to eat. The only event I attended on Thursday night and a great way to get into the con spirit of affectionate laughter. Might have overindulged in cheese, though, as I tried some cheddar today and was repelled. Whoops.
  • “Waiter, you spilt some sci-fi in my fantasy!” – Despite the silly name, this was an excellent panel on different genre-bending books and how to deal with the heave-ho between the different kinds of story as you bash them together with a hammer. Very funny (especially the gravity-rage of James Smythe) and relevant to my personal creative interests.
  • Knightmare Live – Yes, Knightmare, the classic CITV gameshow in which a child walks through a CGI maze with a bucket on their head, guided only by their friends talking in their ear and a few actors pretending to be fantasy characters. Here’s a video if you want an idea of the style/tone/level of camp. The stage show is a well-judged mix of affectionate homage and gleeful panto and I laughed myself silly. I believe they’re still touring around, so if you have any fond memories of the TV series, find a tour stop. It’s hilarious. Even better, as seen nearby, I got a photo of myself wearing the Helmet Of Justice. Also pictured: my Rachel & Miles X-Plain The X-Men t-shirt featuring fellow bucket-head Magneto.
  • The End Of Author Mystique – A discussion of social media (especially Twitter, inevitably) and how it has changed the author/reader relationship. Great combination of fun chat and genuinely potent questions, especially around the issue of responding to criticism. (Probably best not to.)
  • NaNoSessMo – At this event, so intriguing it was covered in The Guardian, we tried to write a novel in 75 minutes. Due to only having 29 people and taking around half that time to plan the book, will likely be more of a novella. Still, the creativity flowed like blood at a vampire party. Nice to exercise the active part of my brain after two days of mostly listening. I believe the resultant epic will be published for free online, and I may write more about it when that happens.
  • Death In Genre – A fun panel talking about both genre fiction’s use of death and its occasional personification of the concept as skeleton in cloak, perky goth girl or gigantic crushing hammer. It’s a strong topic, all the panelists were on form and it was a con highlight for me. Even though I discovered seemingly-charming author Paul Cornell killed off Dr Spiller in Casualty, which moved me to tears as a teenager.
  • The F-Word: Sex in Fantasy – From one universal constant to another, another excellent panel combining serious discussion of handling sex in your writing with thoroughly amusing/disturbing recounting of, um, specific occurrences. You can never have too many mentions of the penis-dunking beaker, it seems. May sound like a joke, but I bought Snorri Kristjansson’s book after he reminded me of that beaker.
  • TV vs Books vs Comics vs Games: FIGHT! – Another panel which sells itself on concept alone, but all the combatants turned up with serious points and brutal trash talk to elevate the pitch. Peter Newman deservedly won the day for books, though. Or maybe his argument that books are awesome because they work through our imaginations and we’re obviously amazing just tickled my ego.
  • Writing Support Groups – A panel about writing groups, and I like writing groups. Chat with Claire, Kirsty and Lizzie of the Big Green Bookshop group (of which I am a member), as well as representatives from the T Party and Super-Relaxed Fantasy Club (which I also sometimes attend). Talked about why writing groups are awesome and looked into the practicalities too.
  • Critiquing Critique – Last panel of my weekend, almost didn’t go due to exhaustion, but I’m glad I did. Partly because Val Nolan and Roz Kaveney gave an extremely accessible yet thoughtful talk about the art of reviewing, which will always be close to my heart. Also because listening to them dissect someone else’s story helped me make some big realisations about one of my own. Lovely end to the weekend.

And that was the #content of Nine Worlds 2015! But we’re not quite finished yet.

Free Books and The Bar

Not posed, I swear, the lanyard fell there naturally.

The main appeal of Nine Worlds for me is the focus on interesting discussion over signings and/or advertising, more so than other London-based conventions. So the above panel-chat is my main reason for going but it isn’t the only aspect.I also got some free stuff! To the right is a picture of the books I obtained over the weekend and I’m looking forward to every single one of them! Also smeared coffee and chocolate cake over my new copy of Nunslinger at the Super-Relaxed Fantasy Club panel, but never mind. Sometimes life happens.

And beyond that, yes, the social aspect. I am a shy, shy human, but managed to catch up with a few people, from my regular supporting cast and beyond. I live in hope of one day being better at that sort of thing – maybe trying to do it more than once a year might be a start? Might attend a few more London-based events, even see if any other conventions look fun.

As many have already said on Twitter, the hotel bar was frustrating at times due to mega-queues. When you’ve got hundreds and hundreds of people in for an event, only one or two bar staff at peak times seems silly. See also: the coffee outlet, which took so long that I found I could get my steamy brown caffeine quicker by walking two hotels over to Starbucks.

Also, a few occasions where events featuring bigger names were in comparatively small rooms, leading to a tight restrictions on access. I get that there are a lot of events on, but if the con continues to grow and attracts more A-listers across different track areas, maybe it needs a bigger venue? With a better bar?

In short, no room for complacency and we can always improve, but I’ll almost certainly be going to Nine Worlds 2016. Despite a few growing pains, it was another really fun year, with a friendly, relaxed atmosphere and a lot of really good discussions. Finally, I’d like to thank my bag of ten preservative-ridden stodgy mini-croissants from Lidl for saving me from buying breakfast.

Nick returns from the digital wilderness to find… – Hobson & Choi update! Sandman! Spectre! Comics on eBay! OTHER!

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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.

H&C3 – Read aloud in only 1.5 days! Record!

H&C3 is coming! Time to read H&C2!

Hobson & Choi III continues to crawl its way towards the outside world, like a mole with motivation issues. I’ve got a draft I’m happy with, it’s just going through final proofreading. Meanwhile, I’ve booked a slot with the always-excellent Design For Writers to work their cover-makin’ magic once more.

Projected release date: probably October. Plenty more to come on that in the next couple of months.

Pale Riders of the Post-Marvel Apocalypse

Huge blood-bloated Spectre. Now that’s horror.

I haven’t read any Marvel superhero comics for a month, which is new. I basically rely on Marvel Unlimited for them, and that, unfortunately, relies on the internet. So for whatever reason, I’ve opted to fill my comics reading time mostly with pale-faced DC characters, specifically:

  • The Sandman! Yes, the Neil Gaiman-written many-artist-drawn legend of the medium. I last read it as a teenager and a lot of it went over my head. Reading it again now and it’s very whimsical, magical stuff, the sort of thing Gaiman’s long done best. I’m about 40 issues in. Great comic. Be sorry when it’s over. Might go and read that Lucifer spin-off series by Mike Carey/Peter Gross that everyone talks about.
  • The Spectre! The incarnate wrath of God, wearing a Grim Reaper cloak and green swimming trunks. Specifically, the 90s run by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake. I don’t know exactly why this sprang to mind as a thing to read, but it’s a strange comic. Zips between horror (Tom Mandrake does a good extreme grotesque image, see nearby example), magic-bolts-zappy mystic superhero action and sudden diversions into genuine questions of theology. Interesting counterpoint to the metaphorical approach of Sandman, in that it’s like being smashed in the theological brain with a brick. In tiny green pants.
  • Not a DC comic but they do have quite pale faces – Transformers! I bought a huge chunk of the two current ongoings – Robots In Disguise and More Than Meets The Eye – in a Humble Bundle at the recommendation of writer friend Chris Brosnahan, not to mention I’d seen rave reviews for More Than Meets The Eye online. Aaand… it’s a very odd read for me as I’m not a Transformers person at all. I vaguely knew Optimus Prime was the main goodie.
    All of which leaves me enjoying the vibe – MTMTE in particular is a really well-paced, exciting, funny comic – but kinda struggling to get into the mythology. My specific problem: they all look so similar. I kept expecting to develop the ability to tell them apart, but with a few glaring exceptions, I am struggling. I don’t think the art is bad – in fact, it’s very clean and attractive – but I still keep needing reminders in the dialogue to tell me which one this is. Still, I’ll persist. Once I’ve caught up on the last month of Marvel Unlimited updates.

Ultimate Spider-Man lives, physical comics die

Nick Bryan once touched these comics!

The news about the upcoming Marvel relaunch came out, and to no-one’s surprise, my eulogy for Ultimate Spider-Man did turn out to be pre-emptive – Miles Morales lives on in the regular Marvel universe, in a new book simply called Spider-Man. I’ll still miss the series taking place in the Ultimate universe though. Elsewhere in the Marvel relaunch, there’s disappointingly few interesting new books that aren’t just continuations of existing ones. Well, except Warren Ellis doing a Karnak series, that sounds amazingly weird.

And while I’m talking comics – you can now buy some late-90s/early 2000s Daredevil and Captain America comics from me on eBay if you want. Mostly these are pretty good stuff, but I really have lost interest in the single-issue physical comic as a thing to store or read. I’ve held on to the teenage collection for a while in case my interest regrew, but no sign yet. And yes, I’m choosing those starting prices pretty optimistically. I’ll relist them cheaper if they don’t sell.

Literary Fiction and Other Plantlife (featuring Scarlett Thomas)

So new, the receipt is still tucked inside.

Went to see Scarlett Thomas read from and speak about her new book The Seed Collectors at the always-excellent Big Green Bookshop. She spoke very entertainingly about her process, the struggles of both writing and teaching and why likable characters are over-rated. (She is very right, they are.)

Thomas has always been one of my favourite novelists who isn’t generally seen as genre, even though there is some pretty extreme weirdness in many of her books. The Seed Collectors plays down the odd concepts a bit, but the fragmented structure, witty narration and, yes, the fact almost everyone is a fun bastard very much appeals to me. Enjoying it a lot, only 70 pages to go.

Nine Worlds, one request for presents

Next weekend, I am at the Nine Worlds convention. If you think that’s likely to be the topic of an upcoming blog post on this website, you’d be correct. I had a great time last year, and hopefully this will be a worthy sequel. The books and creative writing events in particular look great. May even try and take more than one photo this time.

No sign of any friends holding weddings on any of the days yet, so I shall be ambling around the entire event. I should have a few copies of The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf on me, which I could be persuaded to offload at a reduced price, or in exchange for… I don’t know, booze or comics or your own book or something. Make me an offer. Or if there’s a take-one-leave-one bookswap table again, go and see if I’ve left one there.

NO VERONICA MARS PARAGRAPH FOR YOU

Yeah, that’s it. Was gonna do a chunk on the fact I’ve finally finished Veronica Mars season 1 thanks to having no streaming TV to distract me, but that would push this post to a ludicrous length. Will probably get its own post in the coming month.

For now, though, I’m off to watch backlogged Last Week Tonight episodes on my new Now TV subscription on my newly working internet. Farewell!

I Was A Pre-Teen Book Prize Judge – Nick’s Mind-Boggling Confessions!!!

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Many years ago, when I was about ten or eleven, I wrote a review of a book. If you follow this website, you know I often review, but on this occasion, I was critiquing to win the chance to judge the WH Smith Mind-Boggling Books Prize.

This was an award for children’s books with a gimmick – the judges were all aged between ten and twelve, so had authentic young-person opinions. I entered, using Microsoft Publisher to put an attractive border on my review and the title in bendy WordArt at the top of the page. The book in question was Redwall by Brian Jacques – a book which I already listed as big in my influences a few months back – and thanks to my advanced critical faculties, not to mention an amazing pun about walls painted red, I won!

Which meant I got to judge the prize, read a stack of books and enjoy more media attention than my tiny mind was ready for. Keep reading to discover how that went and see some frankly horrifying pictures of pre-teen Nick Bryan. I was cleaning out my old bedroom at my parents’ house the other day, you see, and stumbled upon a whole trove of this stuff.

Be Warned: there will be spoilers for the outcome of the 1995 Mind-Boggling Books Award.

“Okay, that’s it, now glare at me like you’re a disapproving librarian.”

How am I keeping those books on my lap?

So, obviously, once I got confirmed as judge and accepted the challenge, they sent me the ten or twelve books involved. I had a few months to read them, which wasn’t that challenging for me as an overly bookish child.

Whenever I spoke to anyone about it, they all acted impressed at my ability to read “so many” books in “so little” time and I stared, baffled. Because, you know, it’s not a lot. Is it?

Obviously, I had limited empathy for adults at the time, so can now appreciate that that so many books in three months might look like a challenge, especially if they were long adult books and you had a job or writing side-project or both.

After the local newspaper found out that something interesting was happening in their area, they sent a man round to have a chat, ask the question I just described and photograph me in situ, seated on my Mum’s admirably seventies sofa. Not gonna lie, it was a painfully awkward experience, but I was in the newspaper! That more or less made up for everything.

Your eyes may have already wandered to the photograph from that shoot, in which I look like a geeky child asked to do a weird librarian pose by a stranger. Note also the fish crest jumper, which I wore all through primary school for no discernible reason. Our school badge wasn’t even a fish, I found the jumper at a boot sale.

“Your motivation in this one is Contemplative Philosopher.”

I am the one on the right.

And that wasn’t even the end of my media schedule! I appeared on BBC Essex, where they yet again asked me how I read so many books. I chatted to a DJ, got his autograph in my tiny red book which he insisted on signing live on air. Residents of my village were mega-excited to hear me coming out of their car radios. Good conversation-starter at cub scouts.

I also got photographed with the other judges, the result appeared in both the Funday Times (not a typo, it was the children’s supplement) and the Radio Times. It’s basically all of us standing in a couple of rows like we’re in a school photo, flanked by Toby Anstis and Andi Peters in place of teachers.

Messrs Peters and Anstis were presenting the Children’s BBC broom cupboard at the time, which I watched a lot, so I struggled to keep my cool whilst being polaroided with Andi Peters. Results as pictured – I may have overcompensated a tad. He didn’t ask me how I read so many books, obviously, because he was a dude.

At last, I went to the Mind Boggling Books award ceremony, where I watched respected author and previous-year’s winner Malorie Blackman present the prize to the winning author. And then the judges got a tour of the Natural History Museum, but not me because I was sick that day and barely kept it together long enough to see the presentation itself. Let down by my feeble human frame again. I found a photo from that day too, but I’m not going to post it on the internet because I look like I’m about to die.

But what about the actual books, Nick?

Note how the yellow star logo blends seamlessly into the other stars.

I’ll be honest, I’ve read a lot of books both before and since I judged the Mind-Boggling Books prize, so my memory of these specific volumes is a little spotty. Probably can’t reproduce my exact critical opinions on every single one. I’m sorry if I’m letting down the book blogger community, but I was ten.

However, my favourite book of the lot was Confessions Of A Dangerous Alien by Maggie Prince, and that was the one that went on to win the prize! For once, my voice counted in democracy!

I remember clearly enjoying its weird ambition and identifiable characters, even if I couldn’t tell you for the life of me what it was about without Googling. Brilliantly, it has a page on Goodreads and the default cover image on that site (reproduced to left) features the Mind Boggling Books logo, so everything I did mattered!

Even better – the PR guys sent me a free copy of the sequel after the book won. They left it a bit late to send their bribe through, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

So that was the winning book. Let’s finish the post talking about that, rather than the weird pre-teen squirm of my early media appearances.

If you want to reward my youthful commitments to literature (or just be entertained), I have some dark-comedy London crime novels out and you can buy them on various platforms (including real physical books!) if you want. First one cheap on digital!