Daynote - Fri 21st Jun 2024

I got my first solicited blurb for A Reluctant Spy yesterday. I'm very lucky to have had some amazing blurbs from friends, critique partners and agent siblings, but this one is from Antony Johnston, the creator of the graphic novel that Atomic Blonde was based on, the Brigitte Sharpe thriller series and an absolute tonne of games writing, comics, film and TV work. I very briefly met Antony at Bloody Scotland last year and approached him myself to ask for a blurb earlier this year and once he'd read it, he had this to say:

“A brilliant high concept, fast-moving and impeccably told. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.”

As I start to meet people in the crime and thriller world, I've been very happy to discover I'm joining a community of writers and readers that's every bit as welcoming and kind as the SFF world I started in. And this was a lovely example of that. Thanks for reading, Antony, and I'm delighted you enjoyed it!

ON DECK: Making more progress on the sequel outline, but it's slow, with 381 words and another half dozen plot beats outlined. I'm tempted to write single sentence loglines to get to the end, then fill it out later, but it's often in the 3-5 sentence brainstorming that I come up with the cool stuff, so I shall plod onward at the same pace.

LISTENING: Back to Jazz Chill today, because I needed to do a bunch of thinking.

WATCHING: Another episode of THE ACOLYTE last night. I'm cooling on it a bit. Finding some of the script a bit wobbly and the character motivations and decisions a bit murky.

READING: Continuing with FLESH AND BLOOD and still enjoying it. I'm eyeing up my TBR pile and trying to decide what order to tackle it in. But I'm adopting a 'no new books on the bedside TBR' policy until I've read everything on there. Which is fairly radical, but I have to do something, the pile is the height of a small child.

UP NEXT: Next week I'm hoping to get this outline squared away, and then, hooooopefully I can write some actual new prose fiction. Imagine that.

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