Daynote - Mon 22 Sep

A stunning morning today and the first truly autumnal day of the year - leaves turning on the trees, crisp coolness and bright, gorgeous, low early morning sunlight. An absolute tonic to get outside.

Yesterday I went on a fantastic e-bike tour of East Lothian with my brother and his partner Milena. This was a joint birthday present for my brother and I (we're fraternal twins, as you can likely tell from the video below) from the rest of our family and we finally got it together to do it and it was amazing. Tina from EezeeRiders took us on an amazing three hour tour through the woods, beaches, country lanes, parks and fields between North Berwick and Tyninghame in East Lothian.

It was a fantastic day and we had brilliant weather for it. And the e-bikes are like magic - on long hills, a quick pedal and you zip straight up without breaking a sweat. A huge amount of fun - highly recommended.

ON DECK: A cheeky 1,294 words this morning, then going back and prepping three chapters for my crit group to read. I'm at about 17k overall on PROJECT DRIFT and it's starting to coalesce in my head in interesting ways. This is probably the least-outlined book project I've worked on in some time; I have a rough idea of direction and key moments, but I'm microlining a few chapters ahead and not planning much beyond that. It's probably going to require a lot of consistency revisions later, but it's fun leaving space for a bit more spontaneity, and it also means I haven't spent days or weeks up front doing detailed outlining that then goes to waste. Good stuff.

LISTENING: I enjoyed this episode of Starship Alexandria about the vintage SF movie BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS - this is one of those movies that I'm fairly sure I've seen, but I may also be confusing it with old-school BATTLESTAR GALACTICA or THE LAST STARFIGHTER. A very fun episode regardless.

WATCHING: Generally I think the Internet is a poor place to look for ideas (discussion on the internet, or a good article, can sometimes be part of good inspiration, but if your sole source of inspiration is what you see online it'll be thin gruel indeed) but I do think there's some notable exceptions. The excellent Youtube channel Kurzgesagt (German for 'short explanation' or 'in a nutshell') is one of them.

Herewith, for example, a fascinating exploration of the many ways of stopping a planet-killer asteroid. There's a dozen short stories or even novel ideas in here, if you pair a video like this with a bit of fiction and non-fiction reading.

READING: Speaking of reading, I roared through another ten chapters of Tom Hindle's next book A KILLER IN PARADISE over the weekend. It's cracking stuff, though I do find I spend the first 30-50% of murder mysteries just waiting for the metaphorical shoe (body) to drop, so the tension becomes quite unbearable.

KIT: After packing and unpacking (for work and book events and sundry other trips) a dozen times in the past year, I finally got tired enough of not having dedicated travel kit like toothbrushes and razors that I got some doubles. For keeping the beard neat I've got a Merkur HD (though they seem to be called 34Cs now, for some reason?) which are brilliant, well-balanced safety razors with cheap-as-chips blades that last a decade plus in my experience. And for the toothbrush I've got a Sonisk Pulse - runs off a single AAA battery, comes with a cover so it doesn't muck up the inside of your wash bag and it's a tenner. It's obviously not as good as the main electric toothbrush I use at home, but for 2-3 nights away it's absolutely fine and half the weight.

LINK: I really enjoyed this retrospective of SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND by fellow writer James Swallow. This show absolutely blew my mind back in the mid-Nineties when it aired and it was an absolute crime it only got a single season (which ended on a cliffhanger to boot). The whole thing is available on Youtube and is well worth tracking down.

UP NEXT: I have a family birthday this evening, then some work travel later in the week, so it's going to be a busy one. But I'll do my best to stick to the morning routines and get the words down regardless.

Onwards!