Nick Bryan

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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!

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.

OUT NOW: Phantom Of The Space Opera – a novel team-written in 75 minutes at Nine Worlds! Guess my chapter and WIN STUFF!

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As mentioned during last week’s Nine Worlds 2015 round-up, a highlight of the convention was NaNoSessionMo, in which myself and twenty-eight adventurous co-authors wrote a book in only seventy-five minutes! Not as catchy as an hour, but we needed every second we could get.

After compilation by the excellent people responsible, the resultant masterwork has now been released onto the internet! Along with a photo showing me apparently drawing inspiration from my forearm! And a lovely cover by Sally Jane Thompson which you can see to the right! It’s called Phantom of the Space Opera!

Yes, there’s a play on words in the title. I approve. Keep reading for a few more words about the experience and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to guess my chapter and win stuff!

How to write a novel in 75 minutes

Just in case anyone is curious how you plan a novel in around half an hour (followed by another thirty-ish minutes of frenzied typing), the basic framework was to start off yelling out ideas, and then hammer them into this story-circle structure outlined by Community creator Dan Harmon.

The genre? Space opera. The main character? A cyborg. The motivation? Love. And I’ll refrain from spoiling any more, but everyone really got into it, strong, fun and surprisingly serious ideas started emerging and, yes, the more literal opera is eventually involved, because the titular wordplay demands satisfaction.

Inevitably, nearly thirty people shouting risks dissolving into chaos and ringmaster Chris needed to steer us back onto topic a few times. Still, when the dust settled on the plotting half of the session, it was impressive how much the resultant list resembled a novel outline.

How to read a novel written in 75 minutes

And also how much the final product kinda resembles a story! Yes, a sometimes inconsistent one – inevitably, many transitions between chapters don’t quite join up. Still, perhaps because it’s the product of a group of likeminded people in the same room following a half hour chat and with a fairly detailed scene-by-scene plan, there actually is a good sense of tone.

And it’s fun, too. Having structure without strict rules allows for moments of weirdness that are entertaining without dissolving into the incomprehensible.

So yeah, as a fun convention experiment, I can’t say enough good things about this. Special kudos to Chris Farnell and Megan Bettinson running the event, who did a great job keeping us both on schedule and in good spirits. I haven’t said much about my specific segment, because it would ruin…

THE CHAPTER-GUESSING COMPETITION

Look what you could win!

The PDF of Phantom of the Space Opera doesn’t specify exactly who wrote which part, so I’m gonna take this opportunity to do a nice straight-forward competition. Go forth to this link here, download the file and give it a read, then try and guess which part I wrote.

They’re all clearly numbered and a different human being produced each one. Email your guess to me at nick@nickbryan.com and every correct entry can have the first two Hobson & Choi books in the ebook format of their choice. I’ll also do a draw (in the event that I get more than one correct entry) and that one person can have a physical copy of the first volume too. I’ll sign it as well, unless you don’t like that sort of thing.

This is a fairly loose competition, but you gotta have some rules and here they are:

  • The closing date is the end of August 2015 – 23:59:59 BST on the 31st if you’re a big specificity fan. The correct answer won’t be disclosed until after that.
  • You can have up to three guesses per person. Email them to nick@nickbryan.com all in one go. Use them wisely.
  • Yes, anyone can enter. Even though it might end up with me posting a book to Australia.
  • No, I won’t tell you who wrote any chapter other than my own. It’s not my place and, for the most part, I wouldn’t know anyway.

Go on. It’s only 13,000 words of homework, you know it’s worth it. It’ll be fun.

Comic story by me now buyable! “The Case Study” in The Gathering Noir!

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So busy talking about the oft-mentioned Hobson & Choi books around here, I kinda missed the fact that my first comics work came out! This is a four-page story called The Case Study in The Gathering: Noir anthology from Grayhaven Comics. I’m moving noir desperation away from the mafia and on to a whole new group of men in suits – corporate executives.

If you want a print copy, they can be ordered directly from the Grayhaven website – no news on a digital edition yet, but I’ll let you know if it happens.

I’ve seen the four pages and am pretty thrilled with how it came out. For a first attempt at actual fully-realised comic scripting, I seem to have put across my thoughts fairly well.

Of course, comics are a collaborative medium, so other people played a major role in that success – primarily excellent artist Patrick “Podge” Daly, who did a great job of interpreting the script into a proper comic, and Marc Lombardi who edited the whole anthology, lettered my individual story and generally made the whole process flow nicely. Thanks, guys. If/when I do comics again, I’d be delighted to see either of you involved.

I’ll add a single-panel sample of Podge’s art below, just because I think it deserves to be seen – if you like it, do pick up a copy.

Hobson & Choi Blog Tour – WEEK TWO

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It’s all over! Emotions were high, the pace was frantic, but the H&C Blog Tour is at an end. After two weeks of relentless H&C content written by myself and others, the whole damn enterprise is finally at an end. I thought I’d get the retrospective post out there, rather than squeezing it out in a few days, just so you can all feel like it’s really over and move on.

So, what posts did come in our second week? Could there have been… a change in media format?

Me, Myself & Blogging

As with last week, there were a few posts written by myself, the author, and I tried my best to provide a range of content to keep life interesting. First up, over on the K-Books site, I answered a few interview questions – this includes some thoughts on the very concept of writing advise, not to mention an answer to the ultimate self-publishing question: Why self-publish?

A couple of days later, I guest-posted on The Online Novel, with one of the most process-heavy articles of the whole tour. Want to know how I went from webserial to self-published, what I did on the way and exactly why the hell I made the decisions I did? The answers could well be in here somewhere.

Then, for some light relief, I wrote a short, jokey guest post for Nyx Book Reviews about the concept of YA Crossover and whether Hobson & Choi is that or not. I’m not sure if I actually answer that question, but I did make some great conceptual jokes about the “blog tour” idea.

Since H&C is a very serialised series, I worked out my Top Ten Book Series for Winged Reviews. I hear the internet loves lists, so why not go see if your favourite series is in there, then leave your disagreements in the comments if I left it out?

Lastly from me, another swing in mood, I did an in-character Q&A for Kirstyes’ site. Yes, this is me taking a few questions whilst pretending to be my characters from H&C. It’s a new one for me, but it was surprisingly fun, and if you’ve read the books, this does qualify as new material. (Although it does very slightly spoil a plot point in the first third of book one. Fair warning.)

Also, if you desperately want even more new material, remember you can get a free extra short story by subscribing to my mailing list.

Outer Limits Of External Thought

Meanwhile, in the strange world outside my mind, there were a few reviews. First up, Alastair of Nimbus Space penned his considered thoughts on the second book in the series. Did he like it? Did he hate it? Click and find out, I reckon.

Booktuber The Book Moo actually recorded separate videos for each H&C book, which is an impressive level of dedication. You can see her reviewing The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf here and also giving Rush Jobs the treatment here. Or, to save you having to click through and break up this wall of text, I’ll embed the first one here:

After that, there was another review from The Bookish Outsider, covering both books in the series in a single magnificent sweep.

Not to be beaten, Andrew of The Pewter Wolf did the same thing the next day, and that brings us to the end of the tour. Wow, that was a lot of blog posts.

Multimedia Mastery

Oh, and if you missed me talking about it at the time, I was on London’s arts station Resonance FM, chatting about H&C and my favourite London spots on the Daniel Ruiz Tizon Is Available show. You can see more details about that, including ways to listen back to the show, in the blog post I did about it the other day.

And that really is it, I swear. And now, playing us out, because I can, here’s The Book Moo again reviewing the second H&C book. This video includes the exciting spectacle of my face rushing towards the camera. END OF TOUR

Nick On The Radio – Me on Resonance FM talking H&C

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Just a quick bulletin to flag something up – I was on the excellent Daniel Ruiz Tizon Is Available show on Resonance FM last night to talk about Hobson & Choi, plus my strange attachment to my first ever London houseshare.

Full details on Daniel’s site – the show is also available on iTunes if you want to download it from the feed there. (It’s the 26th Jan 2015 episode, obviously.)

And, lastly, it’s here on Mixcloud too…