Daynote - Fri 20 Mar 2026

An excellent start to the day today. I decided I'd try going for my walk first (more on that below) so I got out during what we call a 'haar' in Scotland, sea fog drifting in over the coast. It makes everything smell amazing and I come home bejewelled with mistiness. And it makes for cool photos too. Then onto the writing.

Yesterday, the first episode in a new actual play RPG series from Narrative Damage came out, featuring me playing Lord Wilbur Linklater in a Call of Cthulu scenario called Loki's Gift. We had a lot of fun recording this and I hope you enjoy watching or listening to it!

If you prefer a podcast, you can listen here. There will be two more episodes in this scenario, coming out on Thursdays at 6pm. And we're planning many more in the future, including lots of published authors bringing their own unique spins to characters and settings. Subscribe now to get them as they come out.

ON DECK: Today is a Writing Friday and it's been a pretty productive morning. I've got 2,183 words so far, all of them on Project VAULT. Next up, after finishing this post and making another cup of tea, I'll be editing work for my critique group and planning out next week's scenes in more detail. Then, this afternoon, I'm aiming to get a thousand words or so on the short story I'm working on, as well as doing some admin and prep for podcasts and events I have coming up.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: Since about 2019, I've had an unshakeable principle, which has been Write First. No matter what else I do in a normal working day, I try to get the writing done first thing in the morning, before going on the internet, before doing my day job or chores around the house or anything else. And it has worked really pretty well, to the point that it's become a bit of an untouchable principle in how I work.

However, now that I'm working part-time and have Fridays for writing, I thought I'd try a small change, which is to have my breakfast, journal a bit, go for a walk, then sit down to write. I was a bit nervous about this, because it is such a departure, but I've found that the morning walk serves a different purpose on Fridays. On a normal workday, it's a very effective psychological and physical buffer between my personal creative work and my dayjob - I reset, shake the limbs out a bit and come back ready to sit down and do my salaried work.

When I have the whole day to work on writing, though, going for a walk in the middle of the morning kind of just... kills my momentum dead. And there's no need for a buffer, since the day is focused on one kind of work.

I've tried it today and it went very well. I'm still working on an updated post about my overall writing routine (largely because it hasn't fully settled yet), but I count this as a successful experiment.

LISTENING: I loved this interview with Abigail Dean on the Page One Podcast, talking about her new book THE DEATH OF US. I met Abigail at Stockport Noir in January when we were on a panel together and thought this book sounded fascinating, and this is a great interview covering the Difficult Second Book, as well as the different kinds of storytelling in various genres and formats.

WATCHING: A bit more of TRUE DETECTIVE last night. Wild stuff. Back when this came out, watercooler TV at the office was still a thing, with people talking about each episode as it came out. I remember those conversations and now I'm seeing why it caught so many people's imagination.

READING: I finished off THE INFINITE STATE by Richard Swan (Bookshop.org, Waterstones, Amazon) last night, which now has a snazzy cover for its UK edition.

Here's my blurb for this fantastic book:

A dystopian triumph that bundles you into an unmarked van and drops you into a future so dark and oppressive it will leave you gasping for air. But the embers of rebellion are here too, in a story of nation-building, resistance and hope that burns far brighter and goes much farther than the banners of Pater Aeturnus will ever reach. A compelling and original science fiction novel that shines a light into the darkness of space and the human spirit.

LINK: I was really delighted to see that I.S. Berry's superb spy novel THE PEACOCK AND THE SPARROW is going to be made into a film. Ilana was kind enough to blurb A RELUCTANT SPY after I got in touch to tell her that I absolutely loved her gritty and compellingly bleak story of a washed-up CIA case officer dancing with death in Bahrain during the Arab Spring. Pick it up before the film comes out, it's worth it.

UP NEXT: More words this PM, then it's the weekend. I have a new gutter to fit to my shed and family to see, but I'll also be doing a bit of reading and, hopefully once this haar burns off, enjoying a bit of sunshine.

Onward!