Daynote - Fri 2 May

Finally got out for another walk, ending the week on a sunny morning high note. A slight onshore breeze, the woods bursting with life and new leaves, salt air and sunshine. Absolutely magic.

Overnight, my Kindle Monthly Deal did really well, with A RELUCTANT SPY getting to around the #250 mark for the UK store overall and hitting the top ten in three categories.

ON DECK: More editing this morning, adding a new series of short scenes that added another 1,111 words. So I'm going in the wrong direction, a little bit. But now that I've done that, I'm going to rewind all the way back to the start and begin my third full readthrough and edit.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I'm working off multiple critique partner documents, my own notes and, to be honest, vibes, so I will work directly on screen until the book is done and has hit the target word count. Then I think I'll do one final readthrough, if I have time, on the Supernote, but that will be dependent on me having the capacity to actually make any changes. I try to read aloud for my final pass, because there's no better way I've found to identify awkward phrasing, typos and sentences that go on far too long. It takes forever, but I think its worth doing if I have the time.

LISTENING: I enjoyed listening to Joe Abercrombie talking about his novel THE DEVILS on the Coode Street Podcast yesterday.

WATCHING: Another brilliant, sweaty-palmed episode of THE STUDIO last night. It's a lot of fun watching characters screw themselves so spectacularly.

READING: Picking up another beta read yesterday, from one of my original critique partners from more than a decade ago, who I reconnected with at Worldcon last year. It's excellent. Very cool to see someone whose work you admired years and years ago that has been working at their craft the whole time and continued to level things up.

LINK: I enjoyed this Reddit AMA from fantasy author Brian McClellan. Sad to hear he's not planning to bring his podcast Page Break back, it was excellent.

UP NEXT: It's a Bank Holiday weekend here in Scotland, so I suspect I'll be trimming hedges, laying slabs and otherwise footering about in the garden for much of it. I may sneak in a bit of writing here and there, just to keep momentum up, since I'm now less than a month from my deadline and I've got a lot of notes to work through.

Onward!