Nick Bryan

Writing About Writing

Hobson & Choi Blog Tour – WEEK TWO

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It’s all over! Emotions were high, the pace was frantic, but the H&C Blog Tour is at an end. After two weeks of relentless H&C content written by myself and others, the whole damn enterprise is finally at an end. I thought I’d get the retrospective post out there, rather than squeezing it out in a few days, just so you can all feel like it’s really over and move on.

So, what posts did come in our second week? Could there have been… a change in media format?

Me, Myself & Blogging

As with last week, there were a few posts written by myself, the author, and I tried my best to provide a range of content to keep life interesting. First up, over on the K-Books site, I answered a few interview questions – this includes some thoughts on the very concept of writing advise, not to mention an answer to the ultimate self-publishing question: Why self-publish?

A couple of days later, I guest-posted on The Online Novel, with one of the most process-heavy articles of the whole tour. Want to know how I went from webserial to self-published, what I did on the way and exactly why the hell I made the decisions I did? The answers could well be in here somewhere.

Then, for some light relief, I wrote a short, jokey guest post for Nyx Book Reviews about the concept of YA Crossover and whether Hobson & Choi is that or not. I’m not sure if I actually answer that question, but I did make some great conceptual jokes about the “blog tour” idea.

Since H&C is a very serialised series, I worked out my Top Ten Book Series for Winged Reviews. I hear the internet loves lists, so why not go see if your favourite series is in there, then leave your disagreements in the comments if I left it out?

Lastly from me, another swing in mood, I did an in-character Q&A for Kirstyes’ site. Yes, this is me taking a few questions whilst pretending to be my characters from H&C. It’s a new one for me, but it was surprisingly fun, and if you’ve read the books, this does qualify as new material. (Although it does very slightly spoil a plot point in the first third of book one. Fair warning.)

Also, if you desperately want even more new material, remember you can get a free extra short story by subscribing to my mailing list.

Outer Limits Of External Thought

Meanwhile, in the strange world outside my mind, there were a few reviews. First up, Alastair of Nimbus Space penned his considered thoughts on the second book in the series. Did he like it? Did he hate it? Click and find out, I reckon.

Booktuber The Book Moo actually recorded separate videos for each H&C book, which is an impressive level of dedication. You can see her reviewing The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf here and also giving Rush Jobs the treatment here. Or, to save you having to click through and break up this wall of text, I’ll embed the first one here:

After that, there was another review from The Bookish Outsider, covering both books in the series in a single magnificent sweep.

Not to be beaten, Andrew of The Pewter Wolf did the same thing the next day, and that brings us to the end of the tour. Wow, that was a lot of blog posts.

Multimedia Mastery

Oh, and if you missed me talking about it at the time, I was on London’s arts station Resonance FM, chatting about H&C and my favourite London spots on the Daniel Ruiz Tizon Is Available show. You can see more details about that, including ways to listen back to the show, in the blog post I did about it the other day.

And that really is it, I swear. And now, playing us out, because I can, here’s The Book Moo again reviewing the second H&C book. This video includes the exciting spectacle of my face rushing towards the camera. END OF TOUR

Hobson & Choi Blog Tour – WEEK ONE

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The first week of the Hobson & Choi Blog Tour has more or less happened! The good word of H&C spreads far and wide across half a dozen sites, with many more still to come!

In case you haven’t had time to keep track of the latest tweets and so on, I thought I’d come back with a quick summary of what’s happened in the last week. Not to mention, I wrote a few fun posts for this tour myself, and since subscribers to this website are meant to like that sort of thing, I figured it was worth calling attention to them.

Me Me Me

First up in the posts-by-me section, then, we had a good-length interview with fellow indie author and JukePop graduate Virginia McClain. Some good introductory questions about the series, plus a few more in-depth moments about process, serials and whether I would be willing to eat a guinea pig. Virginia’s own post-Jukepop action-fantasy novel Blade’s Edge just came out too, which I thoroughly recommend. More details on Goodreads, including a longer review by me.

I also had a guest post on Music, Books & Tea about how to use the internet in fiction without killing the drama, which might be of use to other writers and funny to everyone else. It’s kinda a jokey post, but I means my jokes.

Last in the all-me section, I also wrote a fairly comprehensive piece of My Influences for YA Yeah Yeah. If you ever want to know what turned me into the writer I am today, or just want some recommendations, I stand by all of those. Although some might be aimed at a quite young demographic.

The Thoughts Of Others

Even more excitingly, some other folk were kind enough to read the H&C books and offer up some thoughts for the blog tour. Writer/craft blogger and long-time friend of both me and whole H&C project Claire Rousseau wrote a review of both books on her site.

If you prefer lists (like they do on the internet, I hear), Faye of A Daydreamer’s Thoughts produced a list of ten reasons why you should read the Hobson & Choi series, and they’re all worth taking heed of, I feel. But I would say that.

Lastly for now, we have another review of both books by Chelley of Tales of Yesterday! Not only are there kind words said about the books, Chelley may also win for tour dedication with her H&C-styled site banner created for her tour date, which I’m reproducing below for posterity.

Excellent. If anyone in the second week of the tour wants to repaint their house in the style of the Hobson & Choi covers, that might be the only way to beat that.

Prizes Prizes Prizes!

I will just mention that if you want a free copy of the first H&C book, I have recently sent five copies to the Books On The Underground scheme, which leaves copies of books around the London Underground – it seemed apt considering our cover. So if you follow me on Twitter, I’ll try and post whenever I hear the location of a copy.

2014 – A Writrospective

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Because it’s a retrospective about my writing, you see? So it’s a writrospective! Even if you don’t care about me or my work, surely it was worth clicking on the blog post just for that pun? See diagram for more details.

Anyway. I have more or less reached the point where all my free time is booked for the remainder of the year. Might squeeze in an hour or two somewhere, but I doubt any more substantial writing work will happen before 2015 hits.

So I thought I’d take this chance, late on a Thursday night, to look back on what I did/achieved this year, in and around writing, and whether it met my lofty goals from twelve months ago. Don’t worry, it won’t be pure self-congratulation – I missed almost all of those goals, but not completely.

ONE – Self-Publish Hobson & Choi

At the start of the year, roaring through the second major storyline, I’d already more or less settled on the idea of self-publishing my Hobson & Choi webserial in some form. We were some distance away from the final format but my vague goal was: get one – maybe two – H&C books out by the end of 2014.

Well, The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf appeared in July 2014, book two is scheduled for late January 2015. I think I’m going to say this goal was almost entirely a success. Don’t worry, misery-fans, this is the only one.

Not only has that first book sold a few copies (not millions, but more than I’d conservatively estimated), but it was stocked by the excellent Big Green Bookshop as part of their small press programme and sufficiently demanded by readers to graduate from the small press shelf to the big press table.Look, here it is in situ:

That picture definitely makes me happy I paid for a decent cover so my book wouldn’t look embarrassing next to others. Anyway,  if you live anywhere near Big Green and want a copy, go grab one there. And if you too are a bookshop and want to stock H&C, get in touch and we should be able to sort something.

For the non-bookshops among you, stay tuned for Rush Jobs in around a month. Cover reveal coming dangerously soon after January starts. Sign up for the launch blog tour here if you want.

TWO – Finish drafting fantasy devil-based novel, send it to agents

I haven’t entirely managed this one. But as of about a month ago, I have completed the first clause, a good draft is done, so I don’t feel like a complete waster. Basically, two things happened to get in the way of this goal:

  1. The above-mentioned H&C self-publication.
  2. Editing, beta-reading and yet more editing took longer than I expected.

On the one hand, I’m quite pleased with the systematic, steady and ultimately (I hope) successful approach I took to editing this one. On the other, it still took a while. There are only a handful of scenes in the book that haven’t been rewritten and/or replaced entirely once since the first draft, and some multiple times.

I know a few people who are currently trying to get editing done, we all finished our first drafts at a similar-ish time, and I think we’re all finding the next stage takes a lot longer than we expected. Such is life. When screwing around with a big house of cards, one change has more knock-on effects than you expect.

Still, damn near there now. I’ve been working on my cover letter and hopefully the second half of the target can take a battering in the new year. Woohoo/gulp.

THREE – Write first draft of new lighter-hearted adventure novel

We’re basically at the Total Failure section now. Well, I lie, I wrote the first 1,500 words of this novel yesterday, largely to avoid admitting I’d blown this target.

Obviously, this plan imagined a world where I finished the fantasy book much earlier, spent the last third-ish of the year sending it to agents and could do a decent chunk of this first draft for NaNo. Instead, I spent NaNo concluding those edits and this didn’t happen.

Still, once the Rush Jobs publication is out of the way, I live in hope that I will be able to forge on with this and have (at the very least) a non-shit first draft done by the end of 2015, if not a complete second or third out to betas.

And this, kids, is how I live, constantly balancing targets to make sure I can never relax for a second. I also have about five thousand words of notes on the project after this one, but I’m not putting that on the official to-do list yet, as I value my mental stability.

Still, despite the theoretical missing of many targets, I got a lot done this year, and that’s not even counting the almost-50 chapters of H&C webserial I wrote. I have almost two real books (as illustrated above) to show for it. Writing-wise, things are moving along. I even went to my first ever convention at Nine Worlds and had a great time.Go team me.

Maybe I deserve the enforced fortnight off writing I’m about to have. If I don’t make it back before Christmas, have a good one. I should go to bed now. The now-regular annual Top Ten TV Shows should follow after I’ve seen the Doctor Who Christmas Special.

SERIAL KILLER – Hobson & Choi webserial conclusion contemplation

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As you’ve hopefully struggled to miss if you follow my various web presences in the last few days, the last chapter of the Hobson & Choi webserial on JukePop debuted on the site, bringing the whole 1.75 years of its life to a close.

The story of Hobson and Choi themselves will continue in the self-published book editions, the second of which comes out in January. However, future cases will be written in longer chapters, entirely with the books in mind. I thought the loss of week-to-week serialisation from my life warranted a few words.

PREVIOUSLY ON

As I’ve said in various places, including the quick blurb at the end of the final serial chapter, I grew up on serialised books, TV shows and comics and they still form a majority of my cultural intake. So yeah, a weekly serial, with a breathing universe to slowly unpick and characters who unfold other time, is always something I’ve wanted to do.

The heavily serialised nature of the H&C web version, with characters coming and going, smaller story arcs unfolding within bigger ones and plot threads drifting around before finally exploding, is very much something I’ve taken from those. The way characters took on their own lives, combining in interesting ways and weaving together to form the wider tapestry of the Hobson & Choi universe was exactly like I hoped it would be.

DARK TURN

Unfortunately, it was kinda its own undoing in the end – the bitty nature of the text made it harder to translate into novel format, and since those are intended as the ‘final form’ of the whole story, the one that might make proper money from it, it seemed foolish to keep on with the weekly serial, generating more work and making little cash.

Honestly, what I’d love to do is start a Patreon or similar for an ongoing serial in the H&C format (about 1.5-2k word weekly chapters, not necessarily crime genre) fully intended for and owning that structure, justifying itself through the regular flow of backer money. And then I could probably do some kind of collected editions as well, but it would be less pivotal that they succeed.

Unfortunately, not sure I’m there yet in terms of fan following, but one day, my friends. Maybe once the H&C books sell a few thousand million copies.

TRIUMPHANT MOMENT

Anyway, just because the H&C serial is going away, I don’t want to shit on what I did achieve. As of now (29th Nov 2014), H&C is still the most voted serial ever on JukePop, along with the various monthly chart achievements and biannual award win. I’ve had loads of comments, received good reviews on various websites and met some excellent people through the webserial community, both on JukePop and beyond.

So yes, it was great to live my writing-a-serial dream, but the fact other people came on board and gave a damn was almost better. I knew Angelina was a decent character, but actual teenage girls getting in touch say they totally felt for her, rather than screaming at me for butchering their demographic, is definitely going on the list of achieved writing goals.

Not yet had any cynical detectives with dark pasts get in touch to compliment my portrayal of Hobson, but there’s still time, guys! Email me now!

TO BE CONTINUED

If you’re worried that this is the beginning of the slow death of the H&C franchise, I hope to prove you wrong. Already written the first 5000 words of Case Four, the first post-serial story, and Case Two is damn near ready to go in January. Will start whipping Case Three into book shape that same month.

In the meantime, if you want more H&C right now, as ever, Case One – The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf – is out now and features an exclusive bonus story digging into one aspect of the universe. That extra story is a decent length too, quite pleased with it. Another fun aspect of owning my own serial world. A similar book-only story will be bundled with Case Two in January.

There’s also a short exclusive H&C case available to mailing list subscribers, so if you go sign up now, the link to download that will be emailed over, and you’ll be told when important future H&C/Nick Bryan developments happen.

That really is it, guys. I think I’m done looking back wistfully over the weekly H&C serial, it’s time to march onto 2015 with our eye set firmly on future book-shaped developments. It’s been good, though. Hopefully I’ll get to do it again one day.

Pros And Cons Of Reading Your Writing Out Loud (or Why I Was Talking To Myself, Honest)

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Reading Aloud - The Dream

From eleven o’clock yesterday morning until seven in the evening, I sat at my desk alone, reading out the first sixty percent of my current nearly-finished work in progress. (The second book of the Hobson & Choi series, since you asked.)

For a couple of years now, the read-out-loud has been the final step of any work before I show it to other people. I vocalise the entire text to an empty house. If you don’t do this, I’m not going to tell you it’s essential (because different strokes for different folks and I would never tell you how to stroke yourself), but if you’ve never even tried it, here’s how it works for me.

The Actual Process, Actually

There are no major secrets in my process. It goes like this:

  • Sit at desk with manuscript open.
  • Read out a scene, making changes whenever I hit such problems as:
    • That phrasing sounds clunky.
    • I’ve used that word twice in a short space of time.
    • I’ve written “actually” eight times in this sentence, because I always bloody do.
  • Keep going until I become distracted or need to pee/eat/other.
  • Continue afterwards.

As well as obvious issues that crop up within a scene or paragraph, reading it out makes me more likely to spot issues over a wider space of time. For example, earlier today, I noticed I’d described a character’s clothes using the exact same three words, three scenes apart. These things happen, obviously, but feels good when I catch them.

Maybe I take in the details more when I force the words out of my mouth, rather than maybe lapsing into scan mode when merely eye-reading. Anyway, I genuinely think it goes a long way towards making the final work natural and readable and if you haven’t tried it, it’s worth a go at least once.

Fully Soundproof Balls Of Steel

No-one is perfect, of course. Here are some downsides or issues I have encountered while using this amazing wonder-method to change my life.

As I’ve said before, most impressively on this video-blog, I struggle to get work done in my house. To write with efficiency or volume, I generally sit in local cafes, living the hipster-writer-ponce dream. Unfortunately, unless you have gleaming balls of steel, reading your writing (especially a full-length novel) out to yourself in public is hard to pull off.

Every time I spend a whole day reading out, I look back and see an hour or two I could’ve spent working, rather than procrastinating in various ways. In future, I might try only reading for half the day and going out for the other bit, so I can feel some degree of Full Productivity. At least, until I can persuade my local cafe to install a fully-soundproofed Writer Cubicle for me to work in.

The other related issue: by the time you’ve edited your book a few times and decided on a final polish via the reading-out method, you might be close to sick of it. Forcing the entire text out between your teeth will probably not help, and only make the afore-mentioned procrastination problem worse.

Again, breaking it down into smaller sessions may help, or slotting in some other writing task between drafts to get some distance from it. Failing that, I promise myself some reward at the end (usually from the Food or TV genres) and ram myself through the task mercilessly.

But despite these minor pitfalls, I still think reading out your work is a worthwhile endeavour to consider. If you suddenly want to hear me reading out some work after this post, you can still get all 33 chapters of the Hobson & Choi Podcast on iTunes. Enjoy, and if you have any reading-out tips to share, that is what the comments are for.

Hobson & Choi – Updates & End-dates

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Hobson & Choi, my ongoing webseries about two mismatched detectives and their weird adventures in a horribly corrupt modern London, has experienced a strong few months. We’ve done well on Jukepop Serials, the first collected book edition has come out and also put in a strong showing. So since we had a big positive announcement today, it seemed a good time to do a general H&C post, talk about stuff, make some declarations.

Hopefully it’s all ultimately going to be good news. But be warned: your emotions may vary. Let’s start with the really obvious flag-waving upbeat section.

VICTORY PARADE

So, not only have we been #1 in the monthly Jukepop Serials charts for the last couple of rounds – which would be pretty excellent in itself – but we recently crossed a pretty big boundary: Hobson & Choi now has the most votes of any serial in the history of the site.

Look, here’s a screen grab of that fact, taken on the evening of Oct 16th.

To be honest, that’s basically our biggest single achievement on that site – it’s amazing that the many and varied readers of Jukepop have embraced the story, and thanks to everyone and anyone who voted, commented, reviewed or recommended us anywhere and other such things. Hooray.

We also won the biannual prize, finally announced today, for getting the most votes in the six months between April and September. This win was helped by big boosts from the book launch and releasing twice-weekly chapters for ten weeks. All of which means we win $500, which is almost all going into promo/expenses for the H&C novels. Brilliant stuff, thanks again.

And now, to conclude this victory lap, here’s a short video by fellow JP author, recent successful Kickstarter organiser and friend-of-the-serial Virginia McClain.

Crossing The Finish Line

Here’s another announcement I’ve been sitting on: the Hobson & Choi webserial is finishing with the upcoming gala-sized H&C #100. That should be with you in late November, unless I injure myself.

It’s not the end of the Hobson & Choi story, that will continue in book form, but it is the end of Angelina Choi’s two-week work experience, the wrapping up of a few major subplots and, I’ve decided, a reasonable place to draw a line.

Basically, I’m doing this to focus on the book editions. That was always the plan, and since I’m approaching a clear breakpoint and am on a high in terms of Jukepop achievements (see above), this seems the right time to burn out rather than fade away.

The serialised nature of the original chapters is only causing more work when editing them into book form, not to mention I might sell more copies of later books if I stop giving all the material away for free (even if in a less polished form).

So this is it. Six chapters to go, four of which I’ve already written, and then we’re all done with the serial. Leaving us only with…

Hobson & Choi: The Glorious Book Editions

Since I’ve just announced I’m ditching the webserial for them, let’s have an update on the H&C novels. Book Two came back from the editor a couple of weeks ago, and I am hoping to enact the changes by the end of this month, just in time to consider whether I want to do NaNoWriMo after all.

The cover is also coming soonish, but to make sure I have enough time to deal with the actual technical self-publishing stuff, get the print and ebook editions out at the same time, plan some promotion and avoid competing with Santa, the actual publication date will most likely be in January.

Book Three to follow, probably in late spring/early summer, and then we’re into all-new book-only material.

Phew. So yeah, it’s a pretty busy time in the H&C section of my schedule. I also have a fantasy novel which I’m nursing through various latter-stage drafts, so I’m keeping occupied.

If you want to encourage me in my dreams, feel free to buy The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf (aka H&C Case One) from one of the many buy links on this page. If you’ve purchased your copy already, why not leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads? Or subscribe to the mailing list and get a free all-new H&C short story?

If you’ve done all that, you’re probably alright. Thanks for reading. Time for a nap, I think. Feel free to leave any heartfelt eulogies for the Hobson & Choi webserial in the comments, I’ll probably write my own once the end comes.