Daynote - Fri 15 Aug

Much cooler today, which is a relief. I do not function well in temperatures above 25°C, especially in high-humidity Scotland. One of many reasons I was glad to move home from London fifteen years ago.

Oh hey look it's Friday! Hooray!

Also - A RELUCTANT SPY is still on an Audible 2-for-1 deal and it's absolutely rocketed up the charts. It's at #126 in the whole UK chart this morning and at number 42 in the Mystery and Thriller category. Very chuffed to have cracked the top 50 and in some excellent company:

ON DECK: No word count again today, as I was resolving comments and renumbering chapters this morning. But that's all the 'easy accepts' done. Now I'm going to be actually editing - adding new words, cutting words. I'm about 4k over where I want to be thanks to the new additions and I'll probably add another couple of thousand words in incidental line edits before I start cutting. But it's a deeply achievable goal, only about 250 words a day to cut before my deadline.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I'm now in Word (hisssss) and wrestling with Track Changes. Whoever decided the selected change should be displayed at the bottom of the screen, as far as possible from the 'Accept Change and Next' button in the toolbar, wasn't thinking very hard. It creates so much mousing around to do things. Also I like some aspects of 'Modern Comments' (like being able to see a single compact list, resolve threads and filter by resolved/active) but I hate other things about it (it's ugly and awkward and half the time 'Accept change' doesn't work on the first click). It's a crime that this software is the business standard around the world, it's awful.

LISTENING: Loved this interview with fellow ESFFer Catriona Silvey over on Page One. There's a video version too:

WATCHING: We finished off THE ASSASSIN last night, which was very enjoyable spy stuff. Lots of tactically-vested mercenary goons being mown down. And the script was cracking from start to finish.

READING: More of BERLIN WOLVES yesterday. It's terrific.

LINK: I was delighted and also horrified to see that the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize judges have already made their decision, and posted about it on social media:

So right now all five of us are Schrödinger's Winner, in a simultaneous quantum superposition of winning and losing. Twenty eight days until we find out!

UP NEXT: It's the weekend, but I'm on deadline, so I suspect there'll be a bit of writing too. I'm also going to have a farewell lunch on Sunday with a friend who's moving away, which will be lovely but bittersweet. Then next week I'm doing more writing, celebrating a birthday with a loved one, taking a day off on Friday to kick off the Bank Holiday weekend (I live in Scotland, but my day job goes by English bank holidays) and otherwise cracking on.

Onward!