Daynote - Fri 3 Oct

No walk this morning, as I was storming through the last of my copyedits.

Last night, the three Bloody Scotland winners for this year (me, Tariq Ashkanani and Marco Rinaldi) appeared on the UK Crime Book Club livestream with Sam Brownley. It was a brilliant conversation, enlivened by each one of us disappearing from the livestream at random (don't worry, we always came back after a minute) and a brief, impromptu demonstration of juggling by me (off camera though, because of how narrow our camera view was).

ON DECK: I finished off my copyedits for SOLITARY AGENTS this morning and sent them back to my editor! I particularly appreciated the dedication of my copyeditor, Sarah Day, who counted the gunshots heard by three different POV characters all converging on the same point and spotted that I'd got the number wrong in one of the POVs. This is why copyeditors are amazing and completely indispensable to the publishing process.

LISTENING: Absolutely loved this episode of the In My Good Books Podcast interviewing Cailean Steed, who is an amazing author and also hosts one of my other favourite podcasts, Balancing The Books. A brilliant crossover between two excellent bookish podcasts.

WATCHING: We didn't have long for telly last night (due to the above livestream) so we did something I've not done in years, which was to watch a sketch show. MITCHELL AND WEBB ARE NOT HELPING is their new show and it's fascinatingly self-aware, featuring writer's room sketches about the sketch you just watched. Fun stuff.

READING: Another couple of chapters of THE POWER OF THE DOG last night. Cracking stuff. His dialogue in particular absolutely sizzles.

LINK: A lovely piece from lit agent Dong Won Song on the power of doing things for yourself instead of taking what's offered to you.

UP NEXT: The weekend (hurrah) and then next week I'll be back to PROJECT DRIFT until SOLITARY AGENTS comes back for the proofing stage (I suspect that won't be for a while). Looking forward to properly getting into the groove on that project, but I'm also mulling what comes after it, or if I'll need to pick up a different project depending on discussions with various parties. We'll see.

Onward!