Nick Bryan

birthday

Thirty-Second Birthday V Hobson & Choi 4: Dawn of Moderate Fantasy Violence

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Hello!Since I keep saying I should do a blog here without a podcast attached, I thought I’d slide a quick one out today – because it is my thirty-second birthday! And I always seem to blog on this day, for whatever reason.

I’ve got to go out for my celebratory activity quite soon – more on that later – but here is some stuff. It’s been a while since the last substantial Hobson & Choi update, so let’s start there…

H&C4 – Coming To The Airwaves!

Yes, I have a complete not-shit draft of Hobson & Choi Case Four! Almost time to send it to the external editor, get some informed feedback and then take a big swing to try and make it publication-ready.

First, however, I have to read the whole text out loud to myself. I inflict this upon all my fiction-prose work before releasing it to an external audience, because I find it really helps with the flow of the writing. However, it is boring as shit, and no amount of knowledge that it’s useful seems to change that.

I did a whole blog post on this task a while back if you’re interested in more, but the current-upshot is: H&C4 is coming along, it should be with you… if I had to guess, I’d say around the third quarter of 2016. I am hopeful that it won’t slip into the fourth, but no promises.

Weirdly, looking back on my thirty-first birthday post, this is almost exactly where I was with H&C3 at the same time last year. However, I’m hoping it won’t take until October to get this one out, as I don’t have the distraction of moving across London this time.

So anyway, it’s coming soon. If you want to check out any of the first three, you should absolutely do that. The first case remains free on digital. All links and info on the main H&C page.

Moderate Fantasy Violence website and the Birthday Activity

My pop-culture-chat podcast Moderate Fantasy Violence, the focus of every other post on this blog so far in 2016, continues apace. For my birthday activity, we’re going to see the widely-criticised film Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Then we’ll record our fourth episode tomorrow and see if we can add anything to the critical conversation.

Yes, the film’s reviews are bad, but it sounds like it might be an Interesting Failure, and those are absolute catnip to story-talky-people like myself, so I’m still excited.In other MFV news, we now have a proper separate website at ModerateFantasyViolence.com where you can see and listen to all the podcast stuff so far. Kudos to my co-host Alastair JR Ball for doing most of the hard work setting that up, it looks great.

As well as the main episodes that I’ve been posting here, you can hear some deleted tangent-conversations that were cut to get the shows under an hour. Check that out, and if you fancy subscribing to or reviewing us on iTunes, even better.

So how are you in yourself, Nick?

Alright?

Kinda struggling to get another writing project going thanks to ideas not quite coming together or seeming as beautiful on the page as they do in my head. Once H&C4 is off to an editor, I’m going to take another swing at that. I think I’ve probably become a bit complacent thanks to spending so long working almost exclusively on Hobson & Choi, which is a world I love, know and can write easily. Maybe a short story or something to make it less intimidating?

And outside that, the new flat in Lewisham seems to be working out, realising my long-held dream of doing a podcast is a lot of fun and I don’t even mind turning 32 because it seems a lot like 31. So cool. Good work. See you back here next year, I suppose?

(I will attempt to blog at some stage before my thirty-third birthday.)

Thirty-One Year Check-Up – Comics, Hobson & Choi III, Life

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Today is my thirty-first birthday, and after making a giant messy fuss of my thirtieth, I feel like this might end up being a quiet one. Still, it’s been a while since I blogged about what I’m up to in a broader sense, so I figured this was as good a time as any for a check-in.

So, where is the third Hobson & Choi book at? What else am I working on? How am I feeling, y’know, deep down? Some of those questions answered in the following words.

Comics Of Future Now

The biggest new news, as posted on social media yesterday, is that I received a print copy of my first published comics work: a story in The Gathering: Noir from the good folk at GrayHaven Comics. You can see my hand modelling the comics in the nearby picture, and I can confirm it is a lovely, well put-together object with attractive cover art. For more details on this comic and a single solitary panel of art preview from my actual story, see this post from last month.

In previously unspoken news, I also have another short comic story approved and assigned to an artist with an entirely different indie set-up. More details on that when it happens, although we’re probably talking 2016.

Would be nice to advance the comics thing further, but currently all my spare creative-project funds are going into H&C books. If the comics internet has taught me one thing, it’s that asking artists to work for free is not a good look. Speaking of Hobson & Choi…

H&C3 – No wolves, no recruitment agencies

The third Hobson & Choi book, Trapped In The Bargain Basement, is currently being read out loud by me, sitting alone in my house. As discussed in this old post, that’s a dull process but always ends up being worthwhile. I’ve cut 3000 words of needless burble this time, and not even finished yet.

It should be off to an editor in the next two or three weeks, and hopefully out to you, the reading audience, in the latter half of this year. I’m hoping late summer/early autumn, but should probably be a little vague, for reasons I’ll get onto in a minute.

If you want to make me feel good on my birthday, feel free hit the Hobson & Choi homepage and buy one of the books (the first one is very cheap on digital). If you’ve already purchased and read, you can leave a review on Amazon/Goodreads/your own site or tell your friends/social media followers/blog readers/whoever about H&C. All pretty crucial to the whole authoring game.If you’ve already done all that: thanks, I love you, you’re fine.

Thirty-One Life

Alright, I’ll talk a bit about the birthday as well. My feelings about life and the passing of time haven’t changed much since last year’s 30th-marking blog post, to be honest. All is alright. In addition to the self-publishing, I have my urban fantasy novel finally out with agents and we’ll see how that goes.

(I considered blogging about that as it happens, but I’ve yet to come up with amazing new perspectives as I haven’t done much beyond send a few emails. So I figured I’d just not bang on about it, lest I sound like I’m complaining about “literary gatekeepers” or whatever the angry people say.)

It looks like I might be moving back south of the river some time this year. I like Walthamstow a lot, but there’s something weirdly homely about the Peckham/New Cross/Brixton region. And yes, the inevitable disruption involved in moving house is why I’m hedging my predictions for H&C3 release dates.

That’s probably enough from me to keep you going into April. Now, I’m off to hack out another quick chapter on my tentative sci-fi project that probably won’t see the light of day until 2016. Work doesn’t stop for a mere 31st birthday.