Nick Bryan

self-publishing

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.

Hobson & Choi Blog Tour – Book Two Blurb + Launch Plans

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It appears the launch of Rush Jobs, the second Hobson & Choi book, needs preparation. You can see an exclusive 100% real not-fake not-a-joke preview of the Case Two cover just to the right of these words. Enjoy!

But yeah, if you’re someone who dislikes making Christmas plans in mid-November, best duck and cover, because we’re about to talk late January 2015.

After The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf‘s relatively soft launch, we at H&C HQ are going bigger this time. Yes, it’s a blog tour. This means that if you, the reader, run a blog about books (or something else you can easily relate back to H&C), you can host a post around the time of the Rush Jobs launch. This could be your own review of the book or a piece I’ve written or some combination of the two. We can work something out.

However, if you wish to be involved at all, you should register your interest by filling in the form here, which does include checkboxes to determine what kind of post you might want to feature.

Get ye applying. Your blogs won’t tour themselves (because I will be doing that).

In order to get everything in order for this blog tour, we’ve also put the new book on Goodreads, so if you want to announce your formal intention to read it, you can do that too.

Oh, and to make the Goodreads page look less skeletal, I’ve released the blurb for Rush Jobs, which goes like this:

“Sometimes #crime feels like the Matrix. Or the #patriarchy or #porn. It’s everywhere, even in people you trusted, and there’s so MUCH of it.”
Angelina Choi returns for her second and final week of work experience at John Hobson’s detective agency, ready for anything after their first successful murder solve.
After all that online buzz, they’re in phenomenal demand. Can Hobson & Choi solve a kidnapping, play chicken with corporate crime, beat back gentrification, save a dog from drug dealers and head off violent backlash from their last case?
Or will grim revelations about Hobson’s past leave them floundering in the chaos?
Rush Jobs collects the second major storyline in the Hobson & Choi saga, #1 on Jukepop Serials and #2 in Dark Comedy on Amazon, adding brand new chapters and scenes to the case.
Also included: bonus story Infernal Accounting, exclusive to this book. An unfortunate accountant is terrified of his first day working for Rush Recruitment – but they’re only a temp agency, right? How bad can it be?

So there we go. The countdown has officially begun. Apply now to be a tour stop! And yes, the real new cover, from the creators of the first one, will be unveiled at some point. Exciting times.

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.