Nick Bryan

books

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!

Hobson & Choi Case Two – “Rush Jobs” – out now!

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Today, my friends, the second H&C book goes forth into the world, where it hopes to be received with open arms and warm love. After meeting in the first book, John Hobson and Angelina Choi further explore the world they’ve found themselves in, and find it to be a strange, grim place.

So, here is a picture of the cover – for more details on the actual plot, go to the Hobson & Choi homepage, where you can also find links to buy a copy of Case One – The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf – for a newly super-cheap price.

For the new book, you can add it on Goodreads here if you so wish, and if you feel like leaving a review and/or rating there, on Amazon or on your own blog/social media, that would be pretty sweet of you. Continued growth plays a big part in helping me continue to get these out there.

Speaking of heading on out there, we’re also doing the Hobson & Choi Blog Tour to coincide with the book launch – check out the details here if you want to follow along. If you follow me on Twitter, I’m sure the blog posts will also be retweeted there as they happen.

You can buy Rush Jobs in both print and digital from various venues. I’ll also be dropping off a few copies soon at the Big Green Bookshop, if you’re a fan of buying things in person.

BEST OF 2014 – Books

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My original plan, as threatened in last week’s podcast/film/music summary, was to dig into my favourite books and comics of the year in this single post. However, due to circumstances beyond my control (me banging on for too long), I am going to leave this one with just the books and return to the comics at a later date. Probably quite a soon later date, as I still harbour the ambition of getting these blog posts out before 2014 itself ends, and I still gotta do the TV as well.

If you want to see how my tastes have evolved, you can consult the 2013 equivalent of this blog post. For now, though, let’s dig into the best printed prose stories of the year, most of which I read digitally.

YA – Why, eh?

My major shift in books-direction this year was to start reading YA, because I’ve begun to socialise with a lot of YA-likers and also (inevitably) started to wonder if I could write it myself. So, if anyone else wants a good entry point, I’ll lay out the best of my mostly-scifi/fantasy sampling.

I’ve read The City’s Son and The Glass Republic by Tom Pollock, the first two in his Skyscraper Throne trilogy set in a fantastical London. Although the first one is a strong opening adventure that set out a potentially fascinating world, the second was a year-highlight, a genuinely excellent emotional journey through cool concepts that I’d recommend to anyone. Must track down the third one. (By which I mean: I’ll buy it when it gets cheaper on Kindle.)

Elsewhere in the YA exploration, Pantomime by Laura Lam is a lovely, fragile book about Micah Grey, a teen coming to terms with his own identity under confusing circumstances – and also set in a circus. Control by Kim Curran is the sequel to her alternate-reality-wrangling scifi book Shift, and in a similar way to the Tom Pollock series, the first one does some interesting world building, but the second is the one which really made me pay attention. Happily, the third and final part is coming soon.

Also read The Curse Workers trilogy by Holly Black, about magical con-men, and although they never quite top the excellent first book, it’s all an exciting adventure.

At the younger end of the target-age spectrum, but also among the most excellent: Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens is a mega-likable school detective story and Close Your Pretty Eyes by Sally Nicholls is beautifully characterised and creepy. Very creepy.

Aged To Perfection

I’m going to creep back towards adult novels now, via the bridging method of fantasy author Joe Abercrombie. I read the last two books in his adult trilogy The First Law, as well as his new YA book Half A King this year and all were great. The biting wit and intense adventure are strong across the board.

Tore through The Cormorant, the most recent in Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black supernatural crime series too, and it’s the best one yet. The first two were fun adventures, but this third part was blow-me-away good, and I’m pleased to hear it should be continuing this year with Thunderbird. His urban fantasy book The Blue Blazes was fun too.

I also read Feed by Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire) and although I’ve not read her work before, I did enjoy the combination of genuinely creepy horror plotting and someone writing about the internet/blogging in a way that suggests they actually understand it. All too rare.

Getting into sundry other territory now, I also liked:

  • The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, a sweet robot-romance by Cassandra Rose Clarke
  • Fight Or Flight by Chele Cooke, the second in her Out Of Orbit scifi adventure series
  • Deadlines, a weekly newspaper-crime serialised thriller by Chris Brosnahan
  • Gun Machine, a heavily armed crime novel by noted comic writer Warren Ellis
  • Mayhem, Jack-The-Ripper-esque gritty crime by Sarah Pinborough.

Phew. I read a lot of books this year, and that was just over a third of them.

I refrained from listing my own book, as that seemed like supreme arrogance, but if you want to see The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf on a similar list, you can head on over to Nimbus Space here. Just popping that in. Coming soon: the comics!

The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling) – Thoughts On A Book

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Just finished reading The Cuckoo’s Calling, the first crime effort by J.K. Rowling, best known for being written under the pen name of Robert Galbraith and concealed for a short period. Eventually, of course, the truth emerged, and although the fun ended, sales went through the roof.

But plenty already written about that, and sequel The Silkworm was released recently with the unsecret identity still in place. I read The Cuckoo’s Calling as if it were a story (and in many ways, it is), how did it hold up? What thoughts did I have? (Some mild spoilers, though nothing explicit really.)

The Casual Cuckoo

First up, for anyone who found The Casual Vacancy a bit of a rambling polemic, this second adult effort is much more story-shaped. In fact, compared to her other work, it’s unusual how heavily it buys into and works within genre conventions.

Rowling/Galbraith does a good job of populating said story with strong characters and memorable personalities. With so many people under the Suspect category, each getting one or two scenes to shine, it helps having all be memorable and easy to define. Although, even with Rowling’s gift for the easy-to-place personality, I did feel a few tugs of “Wait, which one was that again?” by the end.

Because, yes, this book is very long. And I say this as someone who thought most of the Harry Potter books were a fair enough length. (Except Order of the Phoenix, that was ridiculous.)

The Doom Bar’s Calling

The mystery itself is a well-drawn, believable one, armed with fun twists and turns to keep us guessing. Maybe could’ve used a midway mega-twist to keep everyone excited through all that length, but the resolution remained satisfying.

Lead gumshoe Cormoran Strike gets plenty of depth and development, plus amusing drunk moments. He also drinks Doom Bar, a respectable ale.

Basically, it felt like many good origin-of-series stories (see also: the Guardians of the Galaxy movie and last weekend’s Doctor Who Capaldi debut) – focusing on introducing the lead character and putting them through a standard storyline, psyching us up for when they face a more terrifying threat next time.

And it did a decent job, although (again much like that Who episode), it probably didn’t need to be quite as long to achieve that. Definitely worth a look if you like J.K. Rowling or a good meat-and-potatoes murder mystery.

(And yes, I’m aware that this book does demonstrate a more-than-slight resemblance to my own Hobson & Choi books in the early chapters, although that does clear up in later days. The dangers of following the same genre-lines.)

Nick Vs Nine Worlds – Convention Conclusions

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Nine Worlds - THE HOTEL VIEW

This weekend just gone, I was at the Nine Worlds convention in Heathrow. Regular and well-behaved blog readers will have read my pre-game post last week, in which I revealed that this is my first convention, despite having wallowed in nerdy interests from the age of about ten.

So, how did it go? Well, I didn’t achieve my goal of taking interesting photographs, for sure. To my right is the view from our hotel window, which was one of only two pictures captured during the con. For the second photo, as well as opinion of the actual event, continue reading…

Nice Words

As you may have gleaned if you follow sufficient geeks on Twitter, Nine Worlds was pretty excellent. Just the right number of people, a brilliant range of events and, most spectacularly, threading the needle skillfully between positivity and PR.

Because, too often, many conventions look like you’re basically being gathered in a room to be advertised at, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve taken so long to go to one. But Nine Worlds designed all its panels around discussion of a topic, either serious or silly, and everyone turned up ready to say something worthwhile about those points. I’m not saying no-one ever honked the BUY MY STUFF klaxon, but for the most part, it was as a sideline to an engaging discussion.

Maybe that’s the result of the con being organised primarily by the fandoms rather than the studios/publishers, and it worked well. Even the publisher-sponsored Saturday night party on the book track didn’t over-do the sales pitch, and kudos to them for getting their tone right. And giving me some free books. (I’m only human, alright? Read my balanced analysis and shut up.)

Noteworthy Workshops

Genre-As-Fish

And now, here’s the part where I name some of my favourite panels, hoping not to miss any really good ones and feel like a dickbag. I’ve got the programme open in front of me, so hopes are high.

  • Si Spurrier and Kieron Gillen’s Creators on Comics lectures on Saturday evening were smart, interesting and well-delivered. Spurrier probably landed better for me personally with his thoughts on Comics and Story, simply because Gillen was deconstructing Watchmen, a work which I’ve not yet really connected with. Still, both well executed.
    Our second (and last) photo is one of Si Spurrier’s slides, in which he assigns various story genres a species of sea creature. Click to zoom. (Then try his writing, it’s great. Especially Six Gun Gorilla and Crossed: Wish You Were Here.)
  • I started both days off with the debate panels on the book track – on Saturday, it was Dragons vs Werewolves vs Vampires vs Warlocks and on Sunday, Fantasy vs Sci-Fi. I don’t necessarily agree with the conclusions reached (dragons and sci-fi won, to my despair), but they were a very entertaining way to ease into the geekery, the speakers were all respectfully and repeatedly hilarious.
  • On Sunday afternoon, I took in Comics For Kids, followed by Female Protagonists in YA, and both were lovely, excited discussions which made me want to totally go and achieve stuff. Not sure what those things are yet. Still, both were frank, enthusiastic and good. Bravo to any panelists who happen to be reading this.
  • The book track’s Wow. So Panel. panel was cancelled. Such sad. I was hoping it would be a serious dissection of the Doge V Lolcats issue.
  • For the last panel of my convention, and indeed the whole damn thing, more or less, I went to Cara’s Fireside with Cara Ellison and Kieron Gillen. After a reasonably heavy day of genre discussion, it was exactly the right tone of talking-shit friends-down-the-pub philosophy you want. Not braindead, but definitely fun, kinda inspiring in its own way. If it ever comes out as a podcast or similar, I will try and link it up here, or at least on Twitter. Likewise for any of the events mentioned, in fact.

I think that’s everything I wanted to say about the actual panels. This has run a bit longer than I intended, but honestly, it was a great weekend and I kinda wanted to write it down.

No Wrongdoing

Aside from that, yes, there was some drinking on the Saturday night, and it was jolly lovely. I can’t pretend I saw any sci-fi authors drinking the urine of fans or inter-fandom honour killings – some great cosplay though. Especially the bloke who came dressed as Sharknado – amazing. Should’ve taken a photo, really.

I can’t pretend I networked fervently, but I had enough friends and nice Twitter folk there to keep me plenty company. For a first-ever effort at conventioning, that’ll do fine. I sold two e-copies of my book at some point on Sunday, I’m going to assume because I was doing awesome work with my Nine Worlds presence. (Even though they were both from the US Amazon site. Shut up.)

So, yes, Nine Worlds is a lovely con, offering substantial discussions, fun events and a great atmosphere. Unless your main convention need is a range of A-list megastar TV guests, I think it’s worth a look. I’m almost certainly back next year.

And that’ll be all for now. If I spoke to you at Nine Worlds, whether for ten minutes or all bloody weekend, hello again. It was an excellent time. If anyone wants one of these flattened cereal bars from the bottom of my bag, please send an addressed envelope with the necessary postage attached.

OUT NOW IN EBOOK: The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf – Hobson & Choi: Case One

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The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf is out in ebook!

This is the first volume in the Hobson & Choi series, a crime saga with a heavy twist of dark comedy. It shows how my two mismatched detectives begin bickering, whilst also solving their first murder. This involves Twitter, a wolf and food – loads of food, in fact.

I’ll include the full blurb in the remainder of this post, but for those who have heard the H&C sales pitch a bunch of times, let’s cut to the all-important buy-buttons. Hope you enjoy the book, I’m very proud of it, and if you do go for it, consider reviewing it somewhere, be it Amazon, other book-buying sites, the book’s Goodreads page, your own blog, social media, or anywhere else which lets you have a book-opinion.

And remember, if you’ve read Case One on the H&C webserial already, there is an eight thousand word book-exclusive bonus story here to make it worth your while. Print book fans – that edition shouldn’t be too far away now. Proof is en route for my approval.

The Full Sales Pitch

“If we get 400 followers, John Hobson will solve that nasty wolf-murder case for free! Fight the thing himself if he has to! #HobsonVsWolf!”

Angelina Choi was only trying to drum up some Twitter followers and make a good impression on her first day interning at John Hobson’s one-man detective agency.

But the campaign went viral and now they have a murder to solve, no money coming in, and an unwilling Hobson faced with battling some enormous beast.

With both follower and body counts rising, can they crack the case without offending everyone or being eaten by a huge dog?

The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf is the first case starring Hobson & Choi, a bickering, mismatched detective duo for 21st century London. This book collects the debut storyline of the hit darkly comic crime web serial, extensively rewritten and improved for this definitive edition.

Also included: book-exclusive bonus story The Left Hand Is Always Right, grim tale from a dark corner of Hobson & Choi’s London – The Left Hand, budget pub of crime.

Even more details on the dedicated Hobson & Choi homepage! If you have any unanswered questions about anything Girl-Who-Tweeted-Wolf-related, email me and we’ll hopefully be able to come to some accord.

Thank you and goodbye for now. I’m off to enjoy the day. In case the buttons up top didn’t work for anyone, here are all those book-buy links in old-fashioned text form.