An exciting day, as I launch the Hobson & Choi Podcast! Admittedly, not with full iTunes/RSS bells and whistles, due to technical problems that are dull. Hopefully they’ll be with you soon.
However, I didn’t want to disappoint after promising a Sunday launch, so episode one is up now on Mixcloud.
Hello, everybody. This is the 1000th post on this blog (or at least it was on the old site, ahem), so I thought it would be nice to do a proper entry. So, let’s talk a bit about how things are going, a little about the future, maybe some thinking out-loud too. I’ve got a couple of topics to hit, but I’m allowing myself space to improv around the edges.
My ongoing detective serial Hobson & Choi hit twenty-fifth episodes on Thursday, and it looks like we broke the top twenty best-voted serials for the first time in July too. Exact placing still to be revealed, but thanks to anyone who did vote for us. The best is yet to come – seriously, I’ve read #26 and it’s great fun.
But aside from the broad progress update, how are things really going? I wrote a post a while back about the conflict inherent in me, a slightly awkward British man, having to aggressively plug something, and since then, I’ve played with a few strategies to get things working. I submitted an item to the EpiGuide podcast, I created the Official Hobson & Choi Twitter account, where I can ramble about the serial and play with hashtag promotion without feeling bad about infuriating old Twitter followers.
Surprisingly, we’re over 80 followers on that account, which is better than I expected it to do. People seem to be voting for the story on Jukepop, and not just the ones I force with guilt, so I gotta assume it’s going okay.
Still, there’s always more to do. In mid-August, Jukepop’s six-month exclusivity period on early H&C chapters starts to run out, and that means I’ll probably be slapping the first few episodes around other websites to try and raise awareness. May even play with formats beyond text – want to hear my beautiful authentic nasal-Essex accent reading out some Hobson & Choi? You may not have to wait long.
So in the meantime, you can read the serial on Jukepop, and if you know anywhere good I could post some Hobson & Choi in late August, let me know.
Not as many solid plans about getting more original content on this blog. I’m not a huge fan of declaring “tips” about writing – to be honest, I’m still learning what works for me, so although I’m happy to talk about it when I do hit on a winning strategy, they don’t come along often enough to keep this blog humming. I tried a slightly self-indulgent post about my creative process last week, and that was enjoyable enough.
And of course, there was always the Friday stories, which were fun and did get the hits/comments in, but honestly, the amount of writing time I was spending producing them was not good. Work on my non-H&C projects has sped up enormously since I cut those out.
I have a few other stories out submitted, and hopefully there will be positive news soon, but again not enough to run this blog single-handed. The TV reviews continue, though, and I might be doing some other podcasty work in that region too. Maybe. Hopefully. Anyway, enough thinking out loud for now, I think.
Thanks to everyone who’s been following the blog and/or the Twitter account for a long time, I’m aware there are some out there who read along happily and don’t say much, and your support means a lot too. Now, back to the “real” writing. I got another thousand posts to fill.
So, yes, this is the exciting thing I was hinting at yesterday. Was published late yesterday night, but I was off watching the tennis. Still, people are interviewing me, I must be doing okay. Check it out.
Recently on the ever-lovely Web Fiction Guide website, a discussion arose on whether it was wise to avoid reading other material similar to your work-in-progress, lest you subconsciously steal their ideas, and it’s an interesting one.
I’m sure I’ve seen the ever-blunt Warren Ellis post on one occasion that he was avoiding certain material as it was too close to something he was working on. This would be a better anecdote if I could remember any context at all.
But the point being: should we worry? After all, if it could happen to Ellis, it could easily happen to the rest of us.
Broadly, I think the general advice is to read widely around your area, filling your head with influences, thus allowing yourself to plagiarise from several people at once, replicating no one story whilst homaging several, putting yourself above criticism. But what if the one story came up that really was exactly like yours?
I mean, my first ever completed novel manuscript was uncannily similar to the TV show Heroes – both revolved around normal people getting comic book superpowers. It was more of a contained character drama, rather than going into the conspiracy stuff, but I’d used a lot of the same scenarios as them. Basically, we were both influenced by/ripping off roughly the same superhero comics. (Don’t worry though, I still got some use out of the characters – they are the suspects/cannon fodder in my current Hobson & Choi serial. Except now they have no superpowers to save themselves.)
Most interestingly of all, my story had a villain called Skyler and Heroes had one called Sylar – does anyone know what we’re both “homaging” with that? I’ve never accurately traced it.
I mention this because I’m considering reading more around Faustian deals for the current novel-in-progress, and although I’m sure there’s some great stuff, I’m a little concerned I’ll just subconsciously rip it off.
Thankfully, I haven’t yet stumbled across the one story which resembles mine so much, it makes me throw my hands up in despair and say “Fuck it, it’s all already been done, I’m off home to cry, put Heroes DVDs on and throw Doritos at the TV again!”
But will I, one day? Or do I need to grow a little writerly hubris and accept that my work is unique for its voice and slight resemblences are inevitable? (Especially when dealing with something as well-mined as the Deal With The Devil.)
Probably the second one. Anyway, more ruminations may follow, just wanted to get that out there. If anyone has any recomendations for Faustian deals in literature, feel free to mention them in the comments. I’ve already got Doctor Faustus itself on the pile, don’t worry.
Or, indeed, if you know where me and Heroes nicked Sylar/Skyler from. It was a decade too early to be Walt’s wife from Breaking Bad.
I’d already worried for a while about how much to plug my various writing endeavours on various social networks. Mostly Twitter, but others too. Recently, though, I started doing Hobson& Choi on Jukepop, and I’m telling you, I love doing it. Wanted to do something serialised ever since my comic-loving yoof.
But Jukepop operates on a competitive vote-up system, so to succeed, I need people to go vote for me. And I already felt I was pestering people to read my work quite a lot, so… is this too much? How much is too much? Is this much of a muchness?
Let’s blog about it.
There are a lot of aspiring/self-published writers on Twitter trying to get their work out there, and if you enter that community, follow a few people, you find yourself deluged with links and promo hyperbole. It’s hard to argue with the goal, but when everyone’s doing it, how do you stand out?
I tell myself at least I’m generally plugging new material – I don’t usually push work for longer than a day or two, and TV reviews I only mention once – rather than flogging the same thing repeatedly, but ultimately, it’s still a lot of links. I can’t pretend I’m on that much higher a plane here.
Ultimately, I gotta cross my fingers and pray my followers care – maybe dial it down if the audience figures slide toiletward. But by the same token, there’s only so much I can push things to the same few people, thus why I just mention things a few times to account for time zones, then drop them.
After all, I also have idle life updates and toilet jokes, and I’d hate people to miss out due to unfollowing. Yes, it’s my work which I’m genuinely passionate about, but for the same reason, I don’t want it to become background noise either. And there must be places online actually intended as locations to push your flash fiction/serial fiction/TV reviews, rather than just chucking them out into the general Twitter vortex and hoping they “go viral”.
Especially if I’m looking for people to not just idly click the links, but actually invest enough to vote, maybe it’s time for a little targeted marketing. What I really need is some kind of Social Media Marketing Guru to tell me about this – anyone know where I could find one?
(Or, indeed, any thoughts on the issues raised above, shout out in the comments. How much plugging is too much? Is there such a thing? Has anyone had a relative disown them due to excessive flogging of their writing?)
(Creative Commmons spam photo by Arnold Gatilao on Flickr, by the by. Okay, enough bracketed epilogues.)