Dave Goodman
Daynote - Mon 3rd Jun 2024
‘A Reluctant Spy’, coming this September 12th!
Well, that was a pretty great weekend, after a pretty great Friday afternoon. As you can see from the image above, we did the cover reveal for my novel, on Twitter and Instagram. As I said in my newsletter, it’s a real relief to have the cover out there so I can shout about it! I also got a key ‘next step’ document from the Very Exciting Thing I Can’t Talk About on Friday afternoon. Publishing is like that - limbo for months, then five exciting things happen in a week.
Saturday was spent at Cymera which was incredibly sunny, friendly and fun, with some brilliant panels and our workshop that went really well. And Sunday was my seventeenth anniversary, so we had a really nice lunch at Drift, one of our favourite places just outside North Berwick.
ON DECK: I’m four scenes from the end of Part 2 of SHARD, with -310 words chopped today. I think my cutting totals are going to grow as I have to add less in the last third of the book. I’m probably cutting roughly the same amount per chapter throughout, it’s just that the last third is mostly already there in terms of having all the beats and details it needs.
LISTENING: Chilling to the new-ish Four Tet album ‘Three’ this morning. Can’t beat Four Tet for the vibes, imho.
READING: Still on Murder At The Hotel Orient which goes out on submission this week! I am anticipating seriously big things for this book and that anticipation grows a little with each page. It’s so good.
UP NEXT: I’m going to try and pick up the pace a bit more this week with the SHARD edit and maybe, just maybe, finish it next week. I’m getting that momentum, and from the five or six edits I’ve already done on this book, I know the last third goes a lot more quickly (because it’s basically forty thousand words of sequential action scenes).
I’m also anticipating more exciting things arriving in my inbox, but we’ll see if this is the week they appear!