Thinkin' About Social Media - Two guest posts elsewhere!

Hello!

A rare bit of blog content between podcasts now, as I've been doing some more guest posts to drum up more interest in my Hobson & Choi self-published crime series. On this occasion, whether by coincidence or because it's a cunning PR strategy (I don't actually know), they are both about the demon Social Media.

First to go up was "The Benefits and Disadvantages of Social Media to an Author" on Linda's Bookbag. In this post, I attempt to distill everything I have learnt and observed about using social media over the years - mostly as an author, but sometimes just as a human being.

Second, I try to explain "How Do You End Up Writing A Book About Social Media?" on Emma's Bookery. It's a good question - I sometimes wonder myself - and I know some people act like it's the death of dramatic tension, but I think I can justify its appeal to me. You'll have to read it yourself to see how I did.

And those are my guest posts! Hopefully a few more of these popping up in the coming weeks as we start ramping up for the H&C4 launch - I've got a cover completion date in early August confirmed, so hopefully we should get the book out before the third quarter of 2016 is over. I can but dream.
And in the spirit of Social Media Strategy, obviously do not forget to follow me on Twitter.

NickNoWriQuart - Failure Broadcast

After a few weeks of admin-linking to work elsewhere, a full on-this-website blog post this time - although not a super-long one as I'm going to talk about something I failed to achieve and I don't think dwelling on it for thousands of words is super healthy.

Between that paragraph and the title, regular readers may guess where I'm going - my one-thousand-words-a-day-for-three-months word count challenge did not reach its final goal. To be precise, it wound down a week or so back at around 66k, but due to real-life busywork, writing blogs for other sites and the huge amount of comic-based TV I'm trying to follow, I haven't got round to posting about it for a while.

Still, after going to the trouble of announcing the challenge was happening, I shouldn't gloss over my non-success. Pretty annoying that I chugged along fine for two months on my own and then died off just as everyone else joined in for NaNoWriMo, I must say.

Anyway. Where did it all go wrong?

Plan Vs Reality Vs Words Vs Plan

A lot of my problems can be summed up with this post I wrote in June, which is nice as it saves me typing all that out now. Turns out, planning a new novel in a whole new world is harder work than planning another nice comfy Hobson & Choi book.

My plan didn't entirely fall apart, which is nice - my words were going in the direction I planned, but the way they got there and the circumstances under which the story took place changed so much that I couldn't really keep going. Or rather, I could, but I'd be writing stuff I knew I'd end up deleting and much as I sometimes enjoy the NaNoWriMo forge-ahead-no-matter-what approach, I also don't like knowing beyond all doubt that I'm wasting my own time.

Plus, in terms of progress along my book plan, I'd written sixty-six thousand words to cover plot that should've taken about forty thousand max. So, even if I did my planned ninety-one thousand by the end of this month, I'd never have a full first draft as I barely covered half the story. Not to mention, I don't see much point in writing a new major part if I know huge chunks of the foundations will be removed, but haven't yet decided which ones.

So I've started bashing together a better, more coherent draft of the early chapters, re-using existing material for most of it, but stitched together differently. We'll see. As with all these word count challenges, best to focus on the fact I achieved something. Even if a huge chunk of my 66k gets cut, it all went toward figuring out the world.

...Vs Reality Vs Plans Vs Leeds...

Also unhelpful, I admit, that just as I started wobbling on how to progress the novel, I became incredibly busy all the time so momentum died. I was in the day job a lot, many birthday parties came along, I went to Leeds for Thought Bubble - which was fun, by the way. Saw loads of comics, feel like I want to write some more of them soon.

No idea how that fits in with the novel writing, no. Will try and keep bolting together my better draft.

To be honest, it is with some confusion that I stagger towards the end of 2016. At least I know to start editing H&C4 in early January, that's a pleasing constant. Everything else is in a state of weird flux.

And that's a current writing update, for anyone interested. If you're doing NaNoWriMo, good luck to you - you've just passed halfway, that's gotta feel good. And if you've attempted and failed NaNo, ah well. Stick with me and focus on the fact you wrote something. There could be gold in there somewhere.

Writing challenge update! Guest post! GollanczFest! ADMINARAMA!

This is going to be another post which mish-mashes together some smaller points rather than having an amazing structure of its own, I'm afraid, as I've been writing a lot of guest-posts for other people's blogs, so haven't got a huge amount of fuel left in the Blog-Engine (or spare time left in the day) to produce a properly-structured masterpiece for my own.

However, I want to do some kind of update on my ongoing thousand-words-a-day writing challenge and I've got a few other bits and bobs too, so here's another disjointed general summary!

NickNoWriQuart - OOH WE'RE HALFWAY THERE

The big news (for me anyway) is that I've made it over the halfway mark of the daily writing challenge I outlined on this blog a month ago. My day job got quite busy for a while and then I had to publish the third Hobson & Choi book and write all those guest posts and I really thought one of those things would smash it to bits, but no, I'm still on track. In fact, I'm a few days over quota, as I'm busy most of the weekend - for reasons I'll outline a little further down - and wanted to make sure I didn't drop the challenge.

So, the good news is that I've done nearly 50k and, if this were NaNoWriMo rather than NickNoWriQuart, would have won by now. But NickNoWriQuart is both more hardcore (longer total!) and less (smaller daily wordcount!) than NaNo.

The bad news is, as with nearly all my first drafts, decent-sized chunks of the plan haven't really survived contact with reality and various changes became necessary as I went along. This is something I've blogged about a fair bit - here I am talking about making less mistakes and here I am talking about plans going awry - and yet still it happens.

But I've got my notes, the broad plot remains in place, so I'm going to try and swoop onwards for now. Mostly because I think it would be useful to have taken a swing at the ending - more infuriating to go back now and make a huge amount of substantial change, then discover this new version doesn't work for my ending and have to change everything again.

So, in short, everything continues as normal. I still want a full first draft by the end of November (or possibly the end of the year if I need to write a final couple of chapters in Dec) and I'll do another update at some point.

Guest Post - Five High Street Institutions I Could Turn Evil in Future H&C Books

If you want something that more closely resembles a structured blog post, I've written this one for Jim over at YA Yeah Yeah in which I talk about five fixtures of the British high street that I could theoretically turn all crimey for a future Hobson & Choi novel.

Do give it a look for some fun. Even if you've no interest in hearing about my writing process (in which case the previous section of this post must've just killed you), this really is all silly jokes.

Oh, and as this is the only H&C-relevant section of this post - yes, the book 3 launch went fine, thanks for asking. Sold a decent amount of book three, gave away a huge amount of the newly-free-on-ebook book one. Coming up next: some promotion, including a few more guest posts (I'll try and list them here in some kind of link compilation) and maybe even some Multimedia Content. We'll see if that works out.

GollanczFest - Will it be GollanczBest?

This weekend, I am going to GollanczFest in London, in which a bunch of sci-fi/fantasy authors (who happen to all be published by Gollancz) will be talking in general about their work on Saturday and in a more advice-to-writers way on Sunday. I hope it'll be interesting, there are some great authors in attendance (including Joe Abercrombie, Ben Aaronovitch, Paul Cornell, loads of others) and after the excellent fun of Nine Worlds in August, I'm up for more of this kinda thing.

Linking back up to the first part, GollanczFest is why I've written a short way ahead on the NickNoWriQuart challenge. It may also be the topic of its own blog next week, if I can think of much to say beyond "Yeah, it was good." If you want that level of analysis, follow me on Twitter and it's a safe bet you'll get some over the weekend.

Okay, that turned out a decent length (if still quite bitty) post in the end. Cool cool.

NickNoWriQuart - One K, Once A Day

I stopped blogging regularly about my writing a while ago, felt I was running out of new/readable ways to say the same things - certainly, nothing I couldn't say on Twitter more concisely. However, I'm embarking on a Big Writing Exercise shortly, so I'm throwing it a post.

Because, yes, it's autumn, the end of the year is poking its head over the door, leaves are brown and it's cold in a Winter-Preview kinda way, all that can only mean one thing - Writers Doing Calendar-Based Word Count Challenges!

Obviously, I'm a little ahead of everyone else here - most are waiting for November to embark upon the epic NaNoWriMo quest. But I'm doing something a little different and I'll now attempt to explain it...

Five ways my book plans collapse upon contact with the real world - A Metaphorical Disaster Movie

At this stage, I've written a lot of novels, and started even more than that. Every single one started with a plan of some form - sometimes a couple of ideas scribbled on a pad, other times thousands of words of ideas, followed by a chapter-by-chapter outline and then individual scene breakdowns within those chapters.

But either way, the plans always come a little unstuck when exposed to the writing process. As I've been doing a lot of first drafting lately, so spending a heaping helping of my time dealing with plans not corresponding to prose.

So, to inform and reassure anyone in a similar place, I've broken my Plan Vs Reality problems into an internet-friendly Buzzfeed-style five-point list. Yes, only a thin membrane separates some of these feelings, but I've spent enough time staring at my plans in despair to know they're all distinct. If you've experienced all five of these, you can award yourself a prize when you reach the bottom!

Receiving my first set of edits - A Psychological Journey

So, the ongoing plunge towards Hobson & Choi self-publication continues. I sent my manuscript of Book One off to an editor, because if my trip to London Book Fair taught me one thing, it's that you gotta let someone else loose on it.

After all, I'm competing with an array of authors who have editors, I'm bothering to get a decent cover done, so I might as well make sure the insides are up to scratch.

With that goal in mind, I got my book back from the editor about a week ago, and have just blasted through the whole lot of edits once, making changes accordingly. It's a strange experience, getting edited for the first time, and even after chatting to other people beforehand, it's still... interesting.

I AM NOT A NUMBER (but my novel editing progress is and I can't stop looking at it)

This week, threatened as recently as last week, I launched into the third draft of my constantly-in-progress novel. This is the phase where I trawl through the entire text of the book, picking at individual words and trying to get it to the stage where I'm willing to share it with my elite team of beta readers.

ASIDE: If you want to join said elite team, email me and volunteer, or contact me using any other method available to you. All viable humans considered, especially those able to read a book in 1-2 months and provide feedback more detailed than "Yeah, it was okay." Beta reading likely to commence in early-to-mid June.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I launched into the editing process, and quickly settled on a method. For more details on said method and its implications for my location, read on...

Is it me or is there a COMPLETED SECOND draft in here? (WriteBlog #24)

Unfortunately, the pun in the title doesn't really work, as that kind of draft is spelt draught. But enough self-sabotage.

This week, on Wednesday to be precise, I completed the second draft of the novel I've been blogging about for ages. So yeah, hit my self-imposed deadline of the end of April by about six hours, go team. Now, this doesn't mean it's time to show it to publishing professionals, or indeed other humans at all, but it is a major chunk of work finished, and I'm going to number it as second draft anyway, simply because it gives me a feeling of progress.

So what exactly do I mean by second draft? And what's next if not showing it to others? Time now for a little pause-and-take-stock in the editing process.

2048 - Ideally this would be my review score... (WriteBlog #20)

When last we met, I was having some massive writing days, but also worrying that I was maiming my ability to function in a basic human way. I was also developing a growing addiction to 2048, the stupid tile-matching number puzzle which has managed to somehow bypass my usual instinctive avoidance of timesink phone games.

Not content with pouring hours into the Doctor Who version on my computer, I have now downloaded the actual app for my phone. It has not improved matters. But anyway, this isn't meant to be a weekly blog where I moan about my latest procrastination discovery (although that by far one of the biggest challenges I face in my authorial life, sadly) - how's the actual work going, Nick?

Novel Editing - Snake eats itself, then spits self back out and says "Yick!" (WriteBlog #19)

I started these WriteBlogs back in October, mostly as a way of creating imagined mass peer-pressure and encouraging me to finish my damn novel edits. Since then, they've gone through a range of topics, including thoughts on comics writing and moaning about my near-misses with writer's block.

Well, this week we came full circle, as I got back into the novel edits hard, and ended up working on the very chapters I was blogging about when I first started the whole cycle. And then... well, I deleted a lot of them. This writing shit is brutal.

Bursting The Pipes - Man Writes Story (WriteBlog #18)

Two weeks ago, I spent the best part of seven days bashing my head against the same short story brief, before concluding that I simply didn't have the right idea. So, last week, I went off to write other things, only to be distracted by the plumbing in our house going wrong.

This week, at last, I got my shit together. A nice man came over and rearranged our pipework (only sounds dirty) so we can have both hot water and heating at the same time. Meanwhile, I went to multiple cafes, battered the keys of my poor netbook within an inch of their lives and seem to have produced, at long last... stuff.

TWO new stories by me in Seventh Star Press anthologies!

It's been a while since I had any new fiction out there except for regular Hobson & Choi updates, but the wait is over. Pleasant genre-merchants Seventh Star Press have included my stories in two (yes, two) of their upcoming anthologies. They've done cover reveals at their own blog in the last few days, we're definitely all public now, so let's talk about it a bit.

First up, in the Hero's Best Friend anthology, I have a story called The Violet Curse. The theme of the book is animal companions - all manner of hero-helping creatures from cute internet-ready cats to that armoured lion thingy on the cover. Find out more here.

My specific piece is about a loyal dog who wants nothing more than to help its owner - the resident fantasy hero - but discovers she might be a crucial part of his undoing instead, thanks to a pesky purple magic spell. Bummer, right?

And you can now buy Hero's Best Friend in electronic format in the following places by clicking on their respective links:

Amazon US - Amazon UK - Nook US - Nook UK

Elsewhere, in A Chimerical World: Tales Of The Unseelie Court, there are some evil fairies about. Note that this is a two-book set of anthologies, with the good section of the fey appearing in Tales Of The Seelie Court, but I am only in the Unseelie volume. This is because I am a terrible person. Full details of both books right over here.

My story is called The Fool And His Money and is thoroughly contemporary. You know how that economic crash happened recently, and everyone explained it as "Well, they thought there was all this money, but it didn't really exist"? It turns out there's a fairy-based explanation for that...

And you can now buy A Chimerical World: Tales of the Unseelie Court in electronic format in the following places by clicking on their respective links:

Amazon US - Amazon UK - Nook US - Nook UK

Both books should be available for print ordering a week after that - rest assured I will be posting the links up when that happens. In the meantime, if you want a brief preview from the actual text of both stories, I intend to put out such a thing on the new mailing list soon, so definitely subscribe to that, either in the blog sidebar or by clicking on this link right here.

Woo! Publication again! Twice! Pretty excited by this, guys. Now, back to angsting over my editing/synopsis/choice of socks...

Man Vs Synopsis (WriteBlog #14)

In the near future, I am going to an event where I will be presenting a synopsis and a short sample of my novel to Important People. This, logically, means I will need to write a synopsis, which is what I've been doing for the last week. I have now completed a version I can read without wincing, so it's time for the inevitable blog-hashing of what I feel I've learnt from this.

And for anyone who is actually worried, my synopsis itself does not feature in this post, so there will not be any spoilers for my half-edited unpublished novel about Satan. Furthermore, if you have a scary dream which you think would serve as a good ending, absolutely post details in the comments - there is still time for me to use it. Thanks.

Join the mailing list! Stuff will happen!

So, the other day I started a mailing list, but somewhat buried its announcement in my Hobson & Choi #50 retrospective blog. So, here's a post of its very own.

There is now a mailing list. The form to sign up can be found in the left sidebar of this blog, or I'll embed it at the bottom of this post. Mailings will be infrequent, once a month at the absolute most, and I'll only use it when something of substance happens/is about to happen. You will not get an inane message every week announcing when H&C goes up, don't worry.

In fact, if all goes well, there will be some news/preview material regarding an upcoming "thing" out there on the list in the next few weeks. So yeah, totally sign up. If the embed form below isn't working for you, you can also click here to get to another one. Ta very much.

When the going gets tough, Nick Bryan goes on Tumblr (WriteBlog #13)

I don't know if I ever posted about this on here - I have a Tumblr account, it used to be my main website before I moved to this one. A couple of months ago, I chose a better theme and started using it in the same way as other Tumblrers do - mostly reblogging images and commenting below them. Feel free to follow if you like. A lot of it is comic-related, but sometimes not.

Anyway, I never started using it regularly - I had a starting spurt but died off. To be honest, Tumblr isn't entirely my thing. I'm more a words person than a pictures one, and I don't get emotionally attached to fictional characters in the animated-gif way. Until the last week or so, just as I reached the first genuinely hard part of my novel edits. What a remarkable coincidence.

Killing Your Darlings - They warned me it would be rough, but still... (WriteBlog #12)

Since last I WroteBlogged, I've been editing my novel first draft in a few large sessions, along with keeping up my regular commitments. Long story short, I'm now three chapters into the edit and if I continue at this pace, I may even have something available to discuss at the next writing group meeting, after several quiet sessions while I waited to be happy with stuff.

So, in a bid to make this an interactive shared learning experience, here are my observations/thoughts/feelings from one whole week of hacking at the early parts of a rough early novel manuscript.

Hobson & Choi #44 - "The Hammer Falls"

All kinds of grim visitations involving Hobson in our second Case Two epilogue. Will he be okay? It'll be close.

So yes, a mere couple of hours after blogging about H&C's anthology appearance, here we are with a new chapter. I'll leave you alone for a bit now, I swear. It's a decent chapter though, the final moments of Case Two, before we launch into Case Three next week.

As ever, the Podcast is still going as well, if this still isn't enough Hobson & Choi. Enjoy.

WriteBlog #3 - The Short Pitch And Me

As promised in the last one of these, I've been doing a few small projects in the buffer between finishing Part Two of my current novel last week and starting Part Three for NaNoWriMo. The main one I've found is submitting a few ideas for short comic stories, using the themes and guidelines here.

In this case, they're not looking for complete scripts, just short pitches describing your story. Now, some of you might be thinking this: "Great! Less work for you!" And although there was an element of that, it's been harder than I expected too.

PROCRASTINATORY VINE TIME: Man catches toy in net!

Hello. I'm still hoping to get an actual blog post up this week, but I have literally nothing to put up today (no, not even a TV review), so here is a Vine I did last night of me catching an Adipose stress toy in a fishing net. In case it isn't clear enough from the video, I both threw the toy and operated the fishing net with my right hand, as my left was busy operating my phone.

This should give you some idea of the degree of procrastination I'm able to reach when I'm supposed to be writing.

And yes, the video title is a cheap masturbation joke. Don't pretend you're surprised.

Turning Writing Into A Game – When Do I Win?

If you enjoy the nausea-inducing November writing challenge of NaNoWriMo, maybe you’ve found yourself wanting to find other ways to turn writing into a game. Myself and a friend, both living in the Nunhead region of London at the time, once attempted a second 50k writing challenge in the month of March, under the name “NunheadWriMo”.

You may laugh, but it kinda works with the abbreviation. Without a forum to motivate us, we pushed each other by exchanging trash talk on MSN. For those of you without a kindhearted friend to hurl verbal abuse, though, how can you keep “winning” at writing?

Well, if a daily target and willpower aren’t enough, here are some other incentive schemes.