Veronica Mars seasons 1 & 2 - Belated TV review time!

Veronica Mars is a US TV high school crime show from the mid-2000s, in which a teenage girl in the crime-ridden town of Neptune solves a load of mysteries - both smaller ones to help out her classmates and big-time criminal incidents involving gangs, murders and the like. Helpfully, she's the daughter of a local private investigator, so she knows the business. I've long been aware that this is a very well-regarded show, and as a fan of Buffy, I'd probably like it, but only just got round to watching properly.

I've now seen the first two seasons - the third will follow, along with the recent Kickstartered film continuation, but considering this are mammoth 22-episode American network TV seasons, I figured I can probably find enough to say about the first 44 eps to fill up a blog post.

So, let's investigate this detective.

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

Lovely cover by Sally Jane Thompson!

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!

Nine Worlds 2015 - Ten Highlights, One Bookpile

Nine Worlds! It came! I went! Did that sound weird?

Anyway. This weekend just gone was the third annual Nine Worlds convention at Heathrow, an event that is such a geekfest, it is called that on Twitter. This is a single con attempting to devote at least some programming to as many difference aspects of geek-beloved media as possible, all the while remaining as diverse, inclusive and people-friendly as possible.

If you think that's a huge and challenging remit, you'd be right. I went to the con last year as well, how did the 2015 effort stack up? What were the best panels this year? Did I manage to take a photo of anything other than the view from my hotel? Well, as you can see on the right, I've certainly equalled that, at least.

Nick returns from the digital wilderness to find... - Hobson & Choi update! Sandman! Spectre! Comics on eBay! OTHER!

As threatened in my last blog post with that podcast appended, it's been a very quiet month in Content terms, as I have been moving house from Walthamstow to Lewisham, into a charming fourth floor flat where myself and my self-publishing empire will hopefully be very happy together.

As traditionally happens whenever anyone moves house in the modern world, this was accompanied by an annoying gap in internet access. We only got online yesterday, and I must admit, I'd forgotten how amazing the world wide web can be.

So, here are a few things I have seen, experienced and planned during my month away. Some have already been mentioned on Twitter, but most I couldn't be bothered to tweet because my only Twitter access was my four-year old phone and loading the app is a chore.

Hobson & Choi Podcast Special - Writers' Huddle Interview with Ali Luke!

Like a bolt from the blue, the Hobson & Choi Podcast is back on the scene!

I've moving house in the near future and will be without wifi, so internet content from the Nick Bryan/H&C Media Empire will be thin on the ground. But before disappearing into irrelevant meatspace for a bit, I recorded an interview for Writers' Huddle, a subscription-only writing forum run by the excellent author and blogger Ali Luke.

Listen now to hear me talk about H&C, serialisation, self-publishing, writing characters different from yourself and whether I ever considered putting Hobson & Choi into first person. Plus a little news about the status of upcoming H&C books in the outro.

So, download the episode here using the power of browser rightclicking!

Or use the embeddy player below, or if you're faithful enough to still be subscribed to H&C in iTunes, it should be there too...

Hobson & Choi Podcast Special - Writers' Huddle Interview with Ali Luke! by Nick Bryan on Mixcloud

Thanks to Ali for hosting the chat and letting me put it out to the wider internet. Be sure to check out her blog at Aliventures and her own self-published fantasy book Lycopolis. Plus she's on Twitter (obviously) as @aliventures.

If this interview got you interested in my Hobson & Choi darkly comic crime books, you can read more about them at HobsonAndChoi.com. Sounds by zagi2 on Freesound as before.

And that, for now, might really be it for a wee while...

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!

I finally read Age of Apocalypse - Was it like a smaller Secret Wars?

Just recently, I crossed another item off my list of stories to read on Marvel Unlimited - I rattled through the X-Men: Age of Apocalypse mini-epic. I don't know what spurred me to go for that precise one, but after the fact, it seems topical - after all, Marvel are about to pull an Age of Apocalypse on their entire universe with the mega-massive Secret Wars event.

That's before we get to next year's X-Men: Apocalypse movie, which probably won't adapt this storyline but might, and recent DC event Convergence, also an AoA-style move, albeit shorter.

So it seemed a good time to talk about it, maybe discuss how these new events are using (or abusing) the legacy of Age of Apocalypse. Spoilers follow for twenty-year-old X-Men comics!