Daynote - Fri 28 Nov

We woke up to the greenhouse door having been blown off its runners (we normally duct tape it shut before serious wind, but I didn't check the forecast) after a very windy early morning here. I took one look at the rain lashing the fences and street lights outside and decided nope, so I carried on with outlining instead.

ON DECK: Made solid progress on the outline this morning, passing into part 3 and the first serious bit of action in the book. It's coming together, though I'm still doing a fair bit of staring into the middle distance and muttering 'no, that's crap'.

LISTENING: An excellent episode of the Page One Podcast this morning with Scottish literary agent Jenny Brown. I've seen Jenny chairing Pitch Perfect at Bloody Scotland a couple of times and this is a fascinating interview about her path into agenting.

WATCHING: We celebrated Thanksgiving last night (my wife Valerie is American) with an excellent turkey dinner and watched LITTLE WOMEN (the 2019 Greta Gerwig version), which was really good. Loved the pacing and the cross-cutting from past to future - I thought it worked really well.

READING: A tiny bit of DARK WATERS last night, where I read three more chapters than I meant to (because it was late and I was knackered). Just really excellent stuff.

KIT: I don't often take advantage of Black Friday deals, but I made an exception to pick up this updated Osprey Quasar backpack. I've had the previous iteration of this general purpose commuter backpack for years (twelve, thirteen maybe?) but the back panel mesh finally gave up the ghost, and this new one was discounted fairly heavily so I grabbed it.

I really like the new version. They've dispensed with some of the fussier little pen and zip pockets inside in favour of larger open mesh pockets and bigger main compartments. They've also added a tablet sleeve and an e-reader sized sleeve (ideal for me) and put microfibre lining inside the top pocket (where I often stash phone, notebook, sunglasses etc).

LINK: Absolutely loved this Instagram 2025 roundup by event manager extraordinaire Matthew Land, who runs author events for Blackwell's and Waterstone's West End here in Edinburgh. 178 events is a frankly absurd number (I think I've done slightly north of 25 if you count podcast recordings this year, and I'm knackered). Matthew is an absolute (load-bearing, deeply appreciated) pillar of the publishing world in this city. And on top of everything he does he's also an incredibly talented illustrator.

UP NEXT: Off for dinner with some writer pals this evening, then seeing friends and family at the weekend. And next week, I'm deeply hoping to square away this outline and (hopefully? maybe?) make a start on Project VAULT proper.

Onward!