Nick Bryan

Hobson And Choi

Interview with me about The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf!

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My lovely book cover!

I have not written a blog post today, but it’s okay, because Julianne Benford has interviewed me for her blog, so I can just link to that!

It’s a fun interview, I talk a bit about my inspirations and process, throw in a few jokes. Give it a look and report back.

And yes, the interviewer is also my girlfriend so there is a nepotism element in there. But don’t worry, it’s definitely addressed in the post.

Should reading that inspire you to pick up a copy of the book, here’s the page with the links. And if it reminds you you’ve read the book and still need to write a review on Amazon/Goodreads/your blog/somewhere else, that’s cool too.

Oh, and I 100% finalised my design brief for Book Two last night, so that’s looming in the distance, ready to bubble over at any moment. But for now, let’s focus on The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf. Read interview, buy, enjoy.

Work After Work – A Work Update Working 2014 Over With Work

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Authorbot plunges into the books

Due to the combined impact of my book coming out, my first ever trip to a convention and the heat and humidity fucking with my motivation, I have not done one of these ramble-about-my-process blog posts for a while.

I miss them, I have a few minutes spare, I’ve recently changed my writing routine a little and solidified my future plans, so let’s talk about that. Why would you work after work? Is it because you like work, or at least need to work on your work? What is work? What is my work? How is your work?

Work After Work After Work After…

Some days of the week, I go into my regular office day-job. Not all of them, it’s only part time, but some. On the days I did this, I wasn’t getting much fiction writing done in the evenings. The odd blog post but no proper work.

Well, as the possible projects stack up and I do extra days in the office for various reasons, the lost productivity from all those days began to annoy me. So I have adopted the strategy of forcing myself to bash out at least some writing (usually about a thousand words) upon my return from the office. Sit right down and do it, none of this eating/relaxing shit.

This has made me feel a bit better about my productivity levels, but thanks to the presence of the internet and other distractions, it takes a while, leading to not getting to eat until about 10PM.

I’m hoping that won’t happen every time, but on the other hand, the word counts are going away much faster, which is very much what I’m after. So if you see me and I look a bit more tired, that is why.

Hobson & Choi Book After Hobson & Choi Book After…

The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf - aka MY BOOK BUY IT

Currently, I’m writing the bonus story for the second H&C book, whilst finalising the text for the main story of that same volume at other times. In short, the second book is taking shape with alarming speed, helped by the fact I finished writing the first draft in about May.

It may even be out by the end of the year – I will admit, that is the dream, but considering I haven’t got a cover or sent it off to an editor yet, that might prove ambitious. If it does come out, it will be November, probably. If we fall back past Nov, might roll into 2015, as I probably cannot compete with Santa.

To be honest, though, my name is Nick so I’m used to being compared unfavourably with bloody Father Christmas.

Beta After Alpha After Omega After…

Meanwhile, in the stockpile of things I might get to work on some time, I’ve now had feedback from most of the kind associates who were beta reading that novel about the devil I finished drafting a few months back.

The results were not quite the unanimous love and acclaim I’d probably hoped for, but there was a lot of good stuff in there. To be honest, just the feeling of having the story engaged with excited me a lot. People seemed to follow it and the suggestions were mostly ways to beef up the ideas and characters already there, rather than polite but firm suggestions that I chuck everything away, burn it, then amputate my hands.

So, if/when I get H&C Book 2 put away, I shall plunge back into that book. Kinda excited by that. Again, the hope is to enact the edits by the end of the year, but I begin to think I should settle for just having made any decent start.

In short, the rest of 2014 is spoken for. It might as well be Christmas, except it had better not be, because I haven’t done half of what I need to do. Bloody hell.

If you want to make me feel better in the face of my striving, feel free to buy my book, or leave a review somewhere if you’ve already read it. All helps. If you’ve done all that (thanks!), you can get an entirely new H&C story by subscribing to the mailing list.

The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf – NOW IN PRINT

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So, after a few weeks of slow roll-out, the final step of publication is here: my first book The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf is now in print! Next time, I may try and do it all at once for maximum impact, but this time, here it is a week later.

Basically: it’s a darkly comic London crime novel, the first in the Hobson & Choi series. More details about the book, along with enthusiastic review quotes and such, on our very own official Hobson & Choi homepage.

But long story short, the print edition is available from Amazon here, or the Big Green Bookshop if you happen to be in London (and I’ve remembered to give them some stock).

The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf – Week One

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So, it’s been a week since The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf debuted on all major ebook platforms, and how has it been? Have I done anything other than check my sales stats? How good are those stats?

And, yes, the print edition is hovering steadily into existence – look, there’s a picture of it off to the right next to a cup of coffee.

It’s a strange experience, having work out there and in the hands of people other than me. You might be one of those readers, and if so, I hope you are enjoying it – considered doing a review somewhere?

If you’re not yet a my-book owner, here’s the original post with the buy links.So, here are my observations, other happenings, a short video, a linked preview of the actual book and anything else I can squeeze in…

Bad Breakfast – Director’s Cut Edition

Want to read a short snippet of the classic Bad Breakfast Hobson & Choi chapter, re-edited for the all-new novel edition? Well, as luck would have it, you can see it on Chele Cooke’s blog now, in a guest post I prepared.

Chele’s been a great source of advice in the publishing of this book, and I’ll be repaying the favour in a few days, as her second action-scifi book is about to come out. You can grab her first one for free here.

Pretty Rank

Of course, my main leisure activity has become checking my sales figures, and I can confirm they’ve been… alright. The expected first-day rush, followed by a slow trickle since then. Hopefully I can convert this into a bigger stampede of strangers – as I said earlier, if any of you who already like my stuff fancy doing a review on Amazon/Goodreads/your blog, it would be of vast use.

In the meantime, I managed one big rank-based achievement, and here’s a picture of it:

Number two in two separate categories! Firstly, Dark Comedy, which is one of my main genres and therefore an excellent personal achievement. And second, it’s…. yeah, Irish Crime Fiction.

Just to be clear, there is no Ireland or Irish people in Hobson & Choi. This is an Amazon labelling issue which appears to have now been resolved.

But hey, if I sold a few extra copies to the Irish crime fanbase before that, all the better. Strong start.

Fresh Prints of Vid-Share

The print edition is so close that… to be honest, I could probably have stalled the release a week or two and launched both at once, but I wanted to be out there by Nine Worlds, the weekend after this.

As things stand, barring a total godforsaken catastrophe, we are 1-2 days processing away from the print edition being fully live. There will be a blog post about that soon, along with a nice big picture of the lovely full wraparound cover.

And that, I think, is it. For those of you waiting for the print edition, not long to go now.

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.

The Man Who Tweeted Plugs – Last Stop Before Publication Junction

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The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf, my first effort in self-publishing books, emerges on Tuesday into the world of ereaders! The cover is off to the right, and if you want even more details, review opportunities and the like, this blog post has you covered.

But if you’re interested in some project news, or in what sort of thing fills the days of a man when his book is on the verge of people-powered publishing, here’s the latest update. Probably the last major one before release day. Includes video content. Gasp. Best read on.

Let the internet be your robot butler

First up, because I gotta sell books somehow so should put these in before anyone loses interest. You can now pre-order the book on a couple of e-outlets, in case you want to make sure it appears on your device ASAP.

Here are those links:

And that’s it for now. Makes it all seem pretty real, eh?

Start the presses!

Still only the ebook versions coming out next Tuesday, but progress continues on the print edition, which is going to be lovely. I’ve approved the back cover and the proof version is scheduled to arrive with me a week or so after the ebook comes out.

So, in the event I haven’t fucked up substantially, I’ll hopefully be able to approve that and get that up for your ordering pleasure as well. Or, if there are major mistakes, alas we must wait another two weeks.

But yes, print fans, it is coming. I would’ve waited until both were good to go, but I wanted to make sure I had the e-version launched for when I went to Nine Worlds in a few weeks. If everything goes flawlessly, we may have both for that. Score.

My card, anyone?

I have new business cards for the book release! Not overly exciting for you maybe, but I just wanted to show off the design I did for the back because I think it came out quite well – it’s just above this section. The front is the book cover. Come and say hello at Nine Worlds and I may give you one of these cards.

A series writer’s work is never done

So, amid all this admin, I’ve managed to find some writing time! And what am I working on? Well, among other things, the Hobson & Choi Case Two book edition!

After all, the big thing they told me at London Book Fair was to keep building up the series, so I’d best crack on. Coming to you… either late 2014 or early 2015, hopefully. It’s scary how fast time disappears with these big projects.

And that, I suppose, is that. Depending on time and inspiration, I may not blog again until publication day. Get your two pounds ready folks, it’s gonna be good.