Daynote - Mon 12 Jan

Back to the beach this morning, after a weekend of ceaseless rain and wind. It was still windy, but lovely and clear. And a fair bit warmer than last week to boot.

Last week, despite some disruptions, went pretty well on the writing front and I had my first ever Friday writing day (I went part time this year), which was slow and mainly focused on outlining, but very encouraging.

ON DECK: A solid 1,079 words this morning. I'm up to about 17k words on Project VAULT and it's going pretty well. It's very enjoyable to be able to just fire through a draft. And being able to do my micro-outlining on Friday has been huge - I've got a full week's worth of scenes prepped and ready to go, so during the next four days I can just get on with it. Smashing.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I've been doing a bunch of on-the-fly research, including fairly detailed searches for specific building floor plans recently. And I finally got annoyed enough with how useless Google searches have become (laden with ads, sorted in byzantine ways, full of LLM-generated slop summaries that are often wrong) that I decided now was the time to pull the trigger on Kagi.

Last year I trialled using Kagi when I was working on SOLITARY AGENTS, specifically when I was trying to find out some fairly niche things. Google has become steadily less useful for this kind of deep-dive research for the reasons above and also because it has a very heavy recency bias, so the places I often find key information (ancient blog posts, forums, academic papers) are de-emphasised. It worked great then, but I wasn't quite ready to switch to a paid search service. However, now that I've actually stumped up for it, I'm annoyed I didn't do it sooner. It's incredibly fast, detailed, full of useful tools like 'Lenses' that allow you to narrow or broaden your search and there's not an ad or slop summary to be seen. It does have 'AI' tools but they're entirely optional (I shall be avoiding them).

It reminds me of using Google in the late 2000's, when it felt like a near-magical tool. It's a shame the creators of the first truly transformative search tool have strayed so far from their original vision.

LISTENING: I really enjoyed this 'Dead Drop Five' interview with Bryan Boling, a new host over at Spybrary, who interviewed me just before Christmas (interview coming soon!). I think Bryan will be a fantastic addition to the podcast - I certainly found him to be a thoughtful and engaging interviewer.

WATCHING: We finally gave in and started watching THE TRAITORS after so many friends and acquaintances had said this season was particularly good. And it really is excellent television. I particularly appreciate that they have don't follow the pattern of many reality TV shows that are basically forty five minutes of people screeching at each other, instead focusing very strongly on the mechanics and logic of the game itself (while still allowing for a fair bit of interpersonal drama). Great stuff.

READING: I finished Paul Warner's debut A SPY IN THE BLOOD yesterday and sent off a blurb to Paul's editor Ben Willis this morning. Here's what I wrote:

When a grizzled Cold Warrior is thrust into the hot wars of the 21st century, it won't be his legendary tradecraft skills or decades of espionage experience that keep him alive, but the burning certainty that his daughter, missing on her own SIS mission, needs him. 

This explosive debut shifts from the shadowy streets of London to the freezing mountains of the Hindu Kush, powered by double-crosses, brutal action and last-resort adrenaline. Warner's wry humour, fatalism and the dogged persistence of his protagonist Mark Wolfe draw you deep into the plot, spiralling through betrayal, sacrifice and the inexorable corruption of the secret world. An expertly thrown knife of a spy novel that slips the blade between your ribs when you least expect it.

I really enjoyed it! It's out on January 29th from Bonnier Books (Bookshop.org, Amazon, Waterstones, some affiliate links).

LINK: I really enjoyed this first part of a career retrospective from screenwriter and author Julian Simpson. While he's right that nobody does things precisely the same way, I do always find how people get from A to B absolutely fascinating.

UP NEXT: It's a pretty steady-as-she-goes week coming up, continuing to roll through the draft and then probably do some more outlining for next week on Friday. I'm hoping to crack the 25k mark this week, which will be a quarter of the first draft, or thereabouts.

Onward!