Author Nick Bryan!

About Nick

Nick Bryan is a London-based writer of genre fiction, usually with some blackly comic twist. As well as the ongoing self-published detective saga Hobson & Choi, he is also working on a novel about the real implications of deals with the devil and has stories in several anthologies.Full details of his published stories, as well as links to buy the ones that can be bought, can be found on the Works page of this website. He is also on Twitter as @NickMB, where he updates with perfect and reasonable regularity.
When not reading or writing books, Nick Bryan enjoys racquet sports, comics and a nice white beer.

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​Interview

1. Tell me about your books.
My books are the Hobson & Choi series, a darkly comic crime series starring a pair of mismatched detectives in a London where every innocuous business hides yet more dark deeds. It’s fun, one of the detectives is a teenage girl so there’s a bit of angst and lightheartedness to offset some of the grimmer crime moments. The first one is The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf (free in ebook format), two others have followed.

2. Who inspires you?
The direct inspiration for my stuff tends to be a combination of playing off tropes in crime/YA/fantasy fiction and a vaguely cynical view on the world. I try not to collapse into total pessimist nihilism, but after a while on Twitter reading about the advantages of having money, the things people get away with, the patriarchy, the suffering that exists, etc, it’s hard not to feel there’s some bad stuff out there.
And that rolls out in the H&C series, turning the level up to ALL IS CRIME. It’s a heightened reality, which might be offputting to some who want heavy realism in their crime fiction, but the people who like it seem to really like it.
Chuck Wendig also posts some excellent writing advice on his blog, which has pushed me through some slow days.

3. If you could have dinner with any 2 authors, dead or alive, who would you choose and why?
Definitely Pratchett, he was a huge influence on me growing up and now he’s sadly no longer with us, I’d be a fool to pass up the opportunity. The second would probably be comics writer and novelist Warren Ellis, I love a lot of his work and his weekly newsletter Orbital Operations is always interesting.
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4. Are you working on anything at the moment?
At the moment, I’m slowly working out a fantasy book about magic toasters as a little break project while my first draft of Hobson & Choi Case Four sits in a drawer for a while. Once we enter 2016, my plan is to pull H&C4 out of that drawer and start editing with a vengeance.

5. What are some of your favourite books?
It varies depending on mood (and on whether I’m allowed to include comics) - I’m a big fan of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London books, Joe Abercrombie’s First Law books, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, Simon Spurrier’s A Serpent Uncoiled, Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black series, Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens and others.
If comics are permitted, we need to build in Preacher by Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon, Ultimate Spider-Man by Brian Michael Bendis/various artists, Chew by John Layman/Rob Guillory, Saga by Brian K. Vaughan/Fiona Staples and many more. I did a guest post for YA Yeah Yeah a few months back which digs into this at more length.