Nick Bryan

books

Hobson & Choi v4 – Blood Will Stream – OUT NOW!

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Today is BWS day! No, not “beers, wines and spirits” (my friend Paul used to work in Sainsburys BWS section), it’s Blood Will Stream!

The fourth Hobson & Choi book is out today, featuring our heroes investigating the locked room murder of a YouTuber. Who did the deed, and can Hobson and Angelina find the killer without making the whole situation much worse? For once? Maybe?

I could type a lot more, but since I’m doing YouTube videos at the moment to tie in with this YouTubey book, I’ll embed a video instead. Here are my release day thoughts. Ready yourselves.

There we go. Hope that stirred something in you. Aside from the thought “Man, that guy needs to stop waving his hands around.”

Anyway, down to business: here are all the places you can buy Blood Will Stream in print and digital! Check it out! Hope you like it! Tell your friends! Etc! Release day woooooooo!

Hobson & Choi – Case Four: Blood Will Stream – COVER AND PRE-ORDER DETAILS

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Hello.After many Twitter mumblings and late-into-the-night formatting sessions, I’m excited to report that the fourth book in the Hobson & Choi series is happening!

It’s called Blood Will Stream, it’s about the locked-room murder of a YouTuber and it should be with you on 4th October 2016, just under a year after the third one.

Which is exciting in itself, but also means another cool part of any Hobson & Choi book launch – a new cover by Design For Writers! As you can see, they’ve very much taken the online streaming theme and run with it.

To go alongside that, here’s a nice sales blurb:

“I used to think knowing people just by online handles was totally cool, but these internet murders might be changing my mind.”

After YouTuber GrazGrim is found dead in his locked bedroom-studio, the police are ready to write it off as a suicide.

The online fandom only have one chance for justice: John Hobson and Angelina Choi, internet detectives!

But can Angelina persuade Hobson to take the case on? And will anyone like what they find?

Blood Will Stream is the fourth book in this darkly comic London crime series. The detectives are back in whodunnit territory, revisiting their love-hate relationship with the internet.

Hobson & Choi has been #1 in Dark Comedy on Amazon, broken records on Jukepop Serials and now returns with an all-new mystery never seen anywhere else!

So there we go. This is really happening. As the blurb implies, this is the first H&C book written specifically for book format, rather than forged from rewritten webserial chapters, and I think it’s the best yet. Although it does mean I haven’t had any pre-validation from online comments.

Still, if you want to validate me, you can always pre-order using the links below! (Seamless…)

And it’s also on Goodreads here for those of you who go there. If you have a blog, YouTube channel or other book reviewing outlet and want a review copy, email me at nick@nickbryan.com and we can probably work something out.

Probably some more stuff to come – it has been pointed out that one suitable promo campaign for this book would be to do some YouTube videos, so you might get to see that over the next few weeks. You lucky, lucky people.Now, as has become tradition, it’s 3D time…

Best of 2015 – TOP TEN BOOKS

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It’s the end of the year, I’m running out of reading/viewing/listening time, should get my best-of-year posts filed away before 2015 dies and I miss the zeitgeist.

So, let’s see what I can fit in before I need to cut this shit out and wrap some presents. To give these posts more structure (and recreate the glee I feel when writing my Top Ten TV post), I’m gonna mess with the format a little, possibly do a top ten for the categories I feel can sustain it, and post them as I’ve done them. First up: THE BOOKS.

As of this writing, I’m one book away from hitting my 50-books Goodreads challenge target, but I have a novella lined up that will hopefully take me over the top. Or I could just start counting my comic reading on Goodreads, which would win it instantly.

But what were the best of the proses?

10) Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill – and immediately we slip out of current releases, but this creeped the shit out of me. I don’t read many ghost stories, so may have been an easy mark for it, but nonetheless, an easy and scary read.

9) Half The World by Joe Abercrombie – last year, I mentioned Half A King, this year it was the sequel, and as you’d expect from Abercrombie, top-notch wry action. Must read the end of the trilogy soon.

8) Rickshaw by David McGrath – full disclosure: I know the author from my MA course, but nonetheless, this is an exhilarating, visceral London dark comedy-drama about a rickshaw driver losing his grip and you should try it.

7) Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson – you’re more likely to know Wilson for her (excellent) Ms. Marvel comic, but she also wrote this modern urban fantasy which really hit my imagination.

6) Dual – A Love Story by James Priest – I mostly know Priest for his comics (as Christopher Priest), but his recent self-published novels have very much captured the smart, funny, pragmatic tone that drew me to his other work, and Dual is the strongest of the two complete ones I read this year. His sci-fi series 1999 might be even better, but I haven’t finished that yet.

5) Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch – this is me cheating, as I read all five of these books in 2015 and didn’t want them to dominate the chart. They’re great, though – a witty, well-thought-out, relatable take on magic, which has found entirely deserved success.

4) Envy of Angels by Matt Wallace – a unique, imaginative culinary urban fantasy novella that kept me hooked from start to finish. Already pre-ordered the sequel.

3) The Death House by Sarah Pinborough – a strange, spacey, atmospheric one-off book about a group of teenagers in a grim facility in the middle of nowhere. Hard to describe but good, read it.

2) The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey – a zombie book better than most, through sheer strength of character writing. Technically came out last year. Amazing stuff.

1) Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell by Susanna Clarke –  technically came out a while back, but a lovely, charming, painfully British fantasy book which packs enough plot for a trilogy into a single (admittedly very long) book, full of memorable characters and funny jokes. Also footnotes almost as long as the ones in that Stewart Lee book.

(There is also a very well-done BBC TV adaptation if you can’t face the brick-sized novel, but I’d recommend reading it if you can.)

And that, readers, was the books of the written word of the year 2015. Comics hopefully with you in the next few days.

Trapped In The Bargain Basement – Hobson & Choi Case Three – OUT NOW

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One of those blog posts that kinda writes itself – Trapped In The Bargain Basement, the third book in my mismatched-detective-duo London crime series Hobson & Choi comes out today! It should be out now!

In this third book, the team look into the dark heart of a massive towering shopping centre. But how is it evil? And why? And whose fault is it, and can it be proven? All these answers plus romantic subplot complications in this third volume!

I’ll be honest, it’s a very plot-heavy series, so I’d recommend starting from the first book (The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf) if you’ve not read any before. Helpfully, said debut book is currently free and you can get that from the dedicated page here.

However, I do think Case Three could be one of the best yet and you don’t have to just take my word for it. The first review went up yesterday on fellow indie author Virginia McClain’s blog, which you can see here accompanied by a nice guest post by me about how to turn your serial into a novel.

Here’s a nice pertinent quote from Virginia’s review: “This third installment of the Hobson & Choi mysteries delivers just as much fun and whimsy as the first two books, but with the delightful addition of more wolfhound. My favorite thing about all three books is the characters and their engagement with each other…. Whoever’s perspective we’re following, there’s a good chance that we are going to be forced to take a good look at our own privilege, even if we aren’t forced to stare at it too long, and can safely return to pinning things on the ‘bad guys’ a few pages later. It’s this odd but compelling mixture of dark humor and introspection that keeps me returning to Bryan’s books.”

(It’s weird being referred to by my surname again, by the way. Reminds me of being back at all-boys grammar school.)

So there we go. Trapped In The Bargain Basement is out now in both print and digital and on this page should be a rank of buttons to help you buy it. Enjoy!

The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf – FREE AT LAST (on digital)

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The first Hobson & Choi book, The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf, has been around since early 2013 in various forms: on Jukepop Serials, podcasted, in the self-published book and recently in serialised form on Wattpad.

Well, as the H&C Empire begins gearing up for its third installment (and I’ve already written the first draft of Case Four), I’d like everyone to at least give my grim-yet-fun urban crime book series a shot so I can have some chance of buying that heavily armoured central London fortress.

For that exact reason, the very first H&C case is now free on all major ebook platforms that I could upload and set it as free on.

So if you’ve been meaning to try the series but held back by money, it now costs nothing. How long this price will last, I don’t know – I am a man, not a publishing machine – but at least the rest of 2015, I think.

I considered announcing this on Tuesday with the cover reveal, but because I didn’t get it set up in time wanted to maximise the impact of the strategic announcement on the internet content media #landscape, here’s the freebie news a few days later.

If you’ve already read the first H&C story arc in one format or another, consider grabbing the freebie anyway for Book-One-only bonus short story The Left Hand Is Always Right, which I enjoyed writing muchly.

Anyway, that’s enough text considering all I’m announcing is The Free Thing Is Free. Go now to the dedicated page to begin yoinking from your ebook retailer of choice. And if you enjoy it, you can move quickly on to Case Two and (soon) Three, feeling good about your real contribution towards my fortress.

Hobson & Choi III: Trapped In The Bargain Basement – COVERS & PRE-ORDERS

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After a long editing process, the third book in the Hobson & Choi series is absolutely happening! My darkly-comic crime series in which a world-weary private investigator and his curious teenage sidekick confront the dark side of every modern institution I can think of!

It’s grim, it’s fun and I like it more than most other things – yes, even Batman. (Sorry, Bruce.)

In this third book, our heroes stumble into an evil shopping centre. Yes, even commerce is wrong now, but how is it awful? Find out on October 6th 2015, when Trapped In The Bargain Basement opens for business in print and ebook form!

Of course, a new H&C declaration means a new lovely cover from Design For Writers, the great folk behind the last two. Without any further burble, here’s the cover alongside the blurb, and below that, some pre-order links and review opportunities.

Trapped In The Bargain Basement – THE TRUTH

“You’ve heard of conspiracies within conspiracies? I wish conspiracies WOULD hide inside each other, instead of turning up everywhere I go.”

Angelina Choi returns for her final day of work experience at the Hobson Agency – is there a job waiting afterwards? Should she walk away for her own good?

While she mulls it over, they’re hired by the massive EastVillage shopping centre to investigate a spate of muggings. But do the management know more than they’re letting on?

As Hobson and Choi wrestle with commercialised corruption, will Angelina finally squeeze in her first date with Will the Hot Receptionist? Can anything emerge from the smoking crater of Hobson’s love life?

Trapped In The Bargain Basement plunges grimly comic London crime series Hobson & Choi to new depths, after climbing to #1 in Dark Comedy on Amazon and breaking records on Jukepop Serials.

Also included: Wuff! – The Markus Tail, a book-only bonus short story. Discover the bone-gnawingly tense origin of H&C’s furriest, friendliest character.

Want to pre-order now?

Want to secure your copy before they… run out of books or something? Here are the places you can already get your order in! As ever, there will be a print edition too, but I can only get pre-orders working on ebook for whatever reason.

If you want to formally declare your intentions to read the book, you can add H&C as want-to-read on Goodreads too.

Lastly, if you have a book blog (or other outlet) and want to review Trapped In The Bargain Basement, get in touch with me at nick@nickbryan.com and I’ll set you up.