Author: Bryan Beal

  • 2026 – A Non-Plan Plan

    The end of 2025 was frenetic and stressful, mostly because I have serious impulse control issues. Pumping out NeoTokyo Dead before the manuscript was really ready added to that, but it was a huge learning experience. So, what can be expected from Bryan Beal in 2026? I have two major projects in the writing at…

  • Human and AI in Art

    The temptation to join the crowd and use AI (which are basically just Large Language Models with the intelligence of a hedgehog, if we’re being generous) can be fairly intense. A lot of “authors”, henceforth I will refer to them as “users”, are pumping out books, among other artforms, through varying use of LLM’s. The…

  • The Slow Burn

    In the on-going effort to turn a short story in a full novel, there have been a few forced realisations. Callous Sky would have been about 17,000 words a the end of the short story, but with enough floating about in my head for probably five or six times that. Making those changes to an…

  • Plan First

    Writing a short story is something I have failed at repeatedly. Well, writing a good short story is what I have failed at. Novellas and novels? They do not seem a problem to me. NeoTokyo Dead is just the second I have written, the first having drawn some interest from a publisher. I started writing…

  • Caution to the Young Players

    I write cyberpunk a lot. My debut novella, NeoTokyo Dead, has only just come out. At the moment, I know exactly who has read it, besides myself. One person is in Canada, and another is someone I work with here in Aotearoa. There are a few more people from the USA who have read it…

  • Inferiority Complex

    This is for the self-publishers among us. I wanted to think about the phenomena that is self-publishing and, in part, my own responses to being a self-published author. As I have talked to people, I have found myself saying NeoTokyo Dead is “only self-published.” Even as I have said this, I have caught myself up…

  • NeoTokyo Dead

    It has been a long time coming, from back in the days when I was writing and messing up on Wattpadd. NeoTokyo Dead has finally made it into life beyond the blogs. Being the debut fictional work for this kid, there was a lot to learn. The reason for that is simple. I have no…