Best of 2015 - TOP TEN BOOKS

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.

Hitman by Garth Ennis/John McCrea - A comic about men, violence, superheroes and undead seals

I'm a big Garth Ennis fan - his Preacher series was important to me in my teens, his Punisher Max run one of the best things I read in my twenties and I've never read a comic by him that isn't full of strong storytelling. Even when he might not be working on a classic concept, the man knows his way around a comic book page.

I've recently been filling some gaps in my cultural intake, including a few major Ennis works that I never got round to. First up, almost exactly a year ago, was his Hellblazer run with Steve Dillon and others. Today, I'm moving on to Hitman, a five year series with artist John McCrea about Tommy Monaghan, a super-powered gun-for-hire running around the DC Comics superhero universe. It wasn't easily available for a while, but DC have put it back into print in seven collected books, not to mention slapped the whole thing up on Comixology.

So, I read the entire sixty-issue series (plus the extra bits and bobs reprinted in the collections) over the course of about a month. Normally it'd take me longer to read a run of this length, but as I said earlier, Ennis is just that good, and so is McCrea. The stories slip down.

HIT

When writing the above intro, I almost didn't mention the super-powers aspect of Hitman because it often barely seems to matter. The focus is always on the character of Tommy Monaghan and his friends, a crew of fellow hitmen who all hang around in the bar, take jobs and then go back to saidbar to bitch about them. They rip the piss out of each other but always have each other's backs when it comes down to it. It's sweet, in an incredibly violent kinda way.

Zombie sealife - no, it wasn't a joke

And because this is set in the DC universe, where every fantasy or sci-fi genre convention has been introduced somehow, Ennis can throw almost anything at Monaghan and friends, and they just nod wearily and do darkly comic ultraviolence to it. Demons and vampires? Dinosaurs? Zombie sealife? Batman? They're all in here somewhere, having their arseholes filled with grenades. Well, not Batman, he just gets puked on.

But as I say, these clearly aren't the parts that really interest Ennis. The stories where Monaghan and crew mutilate genre standards are usually the fun comic relief storylines between the main ones, which deal with the mob, the military and the real-life consequences of living a life full of ridiculous violence. Especially towards the end, as the constant waves of death start to finally penetrate the main cast, it gets downright sad.

And his super-powers, well, Ennis doesn't seem that bothered. Monaghan can do x-ray vision and telepathy, but their only purpose is to maybe explain why the hero is a little better at surviving gunfights than most. It was the same in Preacher, to be honest - Jesse Custer could compel anyone to do anything via the Word Of God, but tended to just punch them instead.

If you enjoy a charismatic likable-but-doomed anti-hero story, then Hitman is definitely worth a shot. He and his friends are a great ensemble, the jokes are funny, the gunfights and action are beautifully executed by McCrea. Some mainstream artists struggle to make complex fights clear without the shortcut of bright costumes or obvious energy blasts, but McCrea renders the environments clearly and communicates every important move. It really is like a good action movie.

In fact, McCrea nails it when the superheroes show up and when Tommy and friends are hanging around drinking in the bar and when Tommy gets zapped into the future and when the dinosaurs show up and every other thing he's called to draw. The consistency and clarity is a joy to behold.

Ennis says in the text piece that ends the series that he feels like he could've done more Hitman, and I loved the book, so obviously part of me thinks that's a shame. On the other hand, I can also respect the clear beginning, middle and end here. And if the ending isn't the one Ennis was planning, he does a damn good job still making it feel entirely inevitable and necessary.

MAN

That was some heartfelt verbal masturbation I just wrote. A real embarrassing outpouring of positivity. Tommy and the guys would hate it. In the name of not seeming like a fanboy, I'll talk a bit about some weaknesses.

The award-winning Superman issue

Yes, if you've read many Garth Ennis comics in the past, you'll notice some recurrence of pet themes. There's male friendship, the consequences of violence, flashback stories about soldiers, a quick trip to Ireland and the need to poke fun at superhero comics (although also an excellent Superman issue where Ennis plays them entirely straight). And yes, he has tackled these things a lot, but as someone who has read a lot of his work: this is one of his best renditions. These elements always feel in service of the story.

Like many 90s-and-earlier comics, it occasionally hits some bum notes when re-read with 2015 cultural sensibilities, but (perhaps due to the PG-13-level content rating), it rarely goes hardcore awful for laughs like Preacher sometimes did. There aren't many women in the supporting cast beyond Monaghan's one love interest - as I say, Ennis clearly wanted to ruminate on male comradeship here. Although to give the book some credit in this paragraph, the all-male crew of hitmen are not too uniformly white.

In short, yes, I loved this series, it was right up my grimly comic, urban-fantastic, Ennis-liking alley. Hitman was kinda ahead of its time - a talented writer/artist team telling their own stories against the backdrop of an established superhero universe, just a few years before the balance in mainstream comics shifted from following franchises/characters to individual creators. If it existed nowadays, it could well be a cult hit. Now that it's finally back available, worth giving it a shot.

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.

ADMIN FOR THE ADMIN GOD - Video reading! Guest blog! Thought Bubble!

Hello! Yes, it's been a few weeks since the last brief admin post and now here's another one. Sorry. Got at least one thing to blog about, but I have to get a train to Leeds in about an hour for reasons you'll discover shortly, so it'll have to wait.

But! I have managed to write a guest blog post for someone else entirely (because I secretly hate you etc), so at least there's something to read. This is on the excellent If These Books Could Talk blog and is me musing about prose serialisation (yes, my pet topic), complete with recent examples and the inevitable bodily fluids joke at the end. It's a good post, check it out.

Outside the written world, I also did a reading at the lovely Big Green Bookshop (where you can now buy all three Hobson & Choi books in print!) as part of the Novel London series. If you couldn't make the reading due to only hearing about it now, that's okay, as Novel London filmed it and the result is now up on YouTube and also embedded below. Note the delicately beautiful product placement of H&C3 in the background.

Thanks to Safeena of Novel London for setting all that up, and if you get the chance to read at or attend a future event, give it a go. It's fun.

Last of all, I am off to Leeds shortly to both visit my godchild (also called Nick, it's weird) and attend one day (Saturday) of the Thought Bubble convention, which I hear on Twitter and many podcasts is one of the best comicon type events in the UK. Excited for that. Do say hello if you'll also be there, I am wandering around by myself so may look scared. I also have a copy or two of The Gathering: Noir anthology featuring my published corporate noir story, so that's exciting.

That is it! I hope to manage a more meaningful blog post next week. Or at least before the end of November.

Hobson & Choi quiz! Poem! Guest posts a go-go!

Hi!

After producing a slightly loose post last week, I was perhaps considering writing a real one this time, but I became unexpectedly busy and the remaining time had to be given over to the important tasks of actually writing and watching TV shows based on comics.

But as luck would have it, I've written some proper structured Hobson & Choi related bits for other blogs that have gone up this week, so at least I can link to those.

They're a little more esoteric than some of the guest posts I've done in my time, as there's only so much I can say about my Amazing Writing Process.

Firstly, there's the "Which Hobson & Choi Character Are You?" quiz, which is perhaps the most important personality test of our generation. Yes, even though it contains an arguable factual error re: whether Breaking Bad is a "current" TV show. Ahem.

Thanks to the always-excellent Chelley of Tales of Yesterday for hosting that one, including doing all the actual set-up for the quiz - I just sent over a set of questions and answers. Much obliged.

Second, and even more in-jokey than the first one, it's Gentrificapocalypse Now, a poem by Sad Receptionist. This is an actual creative work by a character from the H&C books, who you can follow on Twitter if you want. His backstory is (partially) unveiled in the second book, but the actual Twitter account is just stupid rhyming jokes really. More details in the actual blog post, kindly hosted by Andrew of The Pewter Wolf.

And that is it for now. Next week, if I'm not unexpectedly busy, maybe a real blog post here?

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.

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

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 links on the main Hobson & Choi page.

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 below should be a rank of buttons to help you buy it. Enjoy!