Daynote - Mon 13 Apr 2026
A sunny Monday morning.
Good morning! A beautiful blue-sky day in Edinburgh, with a nice chill to the air that keeps things crisp as you're walking a very energetic dog. An excellent start to the day.
ON DECK: My weekend writing plans went awry as I was dealing with some other, unexpected stuff, but I got back into this morning with 1,079 on VAULT, 204 on the short story, for a nice 1,283 total. Not bad, and good to be back to it. I'm just under 100k, so this book is definitely going to come in pretty long. But that's okay, that's what editing is for.
LISTENING: I was really, really chuffed to be included this morning in the latest episode of Quick Book Reviews, with a phenomenal review from Philippa in which she called me 'an auto-buy author'. Put a big grin on my face as I was walking the dog around Leith Links, let me tell you.
WATCHING: I watched Alien 3 for the first time in many, many years over the weekend, after listening to the What Went Wrong podcast episode about it. I'm not sure I've actually seen it since I was a teenager. I could definitely see the rougher edges as an adult, but there was still some fantastic visuals and performances.
READING: Didn't quite finish NO WAY OUT by Max Connor (aka Neil Lancaster, Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) over the weekend, but I'm fairly close. It's got pretty brutal in the second half, I must say. All building to what I'm guessing is going to be an explosive finale.
LINK: In case you missed my news on Friday, I got to announce that my third novel (and debut SF!) SHARDS OF STARLIGHT has been acquired by Solaris Books.
I am very excited about this and it's amazing to be able to talk about it. Check the linked post (and Solaris's announcement about it) for more. I'm really looking forward to working in the SF genre and with Solaris and my new editor Amanda Raybould in particular.
UP NEXT: Another couple of days of dog-sitting, then I'll be off home, before coming back into Edinburgh for an event on Thursday night with Edinburgh Sparks, which I'm really looking forward to. Somewhere in there, over the course of this week, I'm hoping to finish this first draft. We'll see.
Onward!