Dave Goodman
Daynote - Tue 3rd Sep 2024
A recent reader review
We are in single figure days, people. Not long now! I’ve had a few nice comments from folks signing up to the Goldsboro Crime Collective, which has been lovely, and of course there was the Financial Times review yesterday, which made my day. I’ve taken the week of my launch off so I can do a bit of promo and I’m really looking forward to it.
ON DECK: A really good session this morning, I got a nice chunky 1,833 words. Didn’t get out for my walk but I did get a lot of very nice sleep and started the session feeling rested, so the lie-in was worth it.
It’s so much fun writing the characters from A RELUCTANT SPY again. Even though most readers are yet to meet any of them, it’s been months since I’ve written anything with these characters. I’m also writing quite a loose and fun first draft with a lot of extra stuff I know I’ll cut later. I quite often do this - write out the subtext and have characters say it out loud. Then much of that that gets cut and subsumed into gestures and looks and tense silences. So there’s a version of the book where everyone just says what they mean, then in the edits I push all of that down and away and it’s more like how people actually communicate, which is partially and oftentimes at cross-purposes.
LISTENING: I mixed things up a bit this morning with the Lo-Fi Sunday playlist.
WATCHING: We’ve watched the first couple of episodes of THE RINGS OF POWER season 2. I think this season looks a lot better. I remember a few times last season wondering where exactly the budget went, because everything looked oddly flat. This season there’s a filmic gloss to the whole thing. But it still feels a bit lacklustre. It’s kind of odd.
READING: Still reading NINTH LIFE, closing in on the halfway point.
UP NEXT: More drafting on SCARLET. Feel like I’ve got some momentum now after a solid session this morning, and the story is starting to unfurl in my head, which is the exciting part. It’s also a welcome distraction from the buildup to publication. There’s a lot of waiting, even this close to launch - waiting for reviews to drop, waiting for books to ship, waiting for event confirmations, waiting for emails. Stuff is happening and it’s happening fast, but if I’m not careful I can still spend far too long each day refreshing various inboxes. So it’s good to be working on something and pushing the words forward, even in the middle of one of the most exciting months of my life.