Daynote - Mon 23 Mar 2026
Blooming and budding in the woods.
A very nice weekend with some sun and some getting out and about. I also fitted a gutter to a shed with minimal amounts of swearing. It was quite a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon, up a ladder, in the afternoon sunshine. I'm not an immensely practical guy, as a general rule, so it's extra satisfying when I get something like this done and it doesn't look like a complete cack-handed mess.
My walk this morning was lovely too. Lots and lots of birdsong, flowers coming up and trees budding out. And Poppy The Labrador had a very good stick to show me.
ON DECK: Solid words this morning, 1,355 words on VAULT and 291 on the short story, for a total of 1,646 words. Not bad.
TOOLS AND PROCESS: I had a very good critique session with my crit group last night, where they confirmed what I'd already kind of realised but not admitted to myself - there's a big chunk of the current book that's sort of not working at the moment. I say 'sort of' because there is a version of that plot thread that could work, it's just not the one I've written.
However, I'm over 80,000 words down, so it's kind of too late to stop and rework that element without fatally killing my momentum, so I'm going to push through to the end, then build a timeline of the whole book (since the timeline is completely broken at the moment), then use that to work out how I can either rip out or rework this plot thread. I'm very likely to be 10,000 to 20,000 over my target word count, so ripping it out might be the sensible choice, but I'll make that decision when we get to it.
LISTENING: Very much enjoyed this slightly chaotic episode of the Murder Junction podcast with VE Schwab and Cat Clarke, talking about their book THE ENDING WRITES ITSELF. Somehow in all the publicity around this book I hadn't actually heard a summary of the plot, but they sell it pretty well in this podcast.
WATCHING: We watched the first few episodes of the second season of LAST ONE LAUGHING over the weekend and it's as oddly compelling as the first season. You'd think a room full of people pointedly not laughing wouldn't be that funny, but the faces they make while not laughing and the utter deadpan delivery of the lines makes it feel like a silent boxing match with jokes as the punches. Great stuff.
READING: I've started on NO WAY OUT by Max Connor (aka Neil Lancaster, Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) which is the second in his Josie Chapman spy series.
I've not read the first, but that's no obstacle - it's cracking along with corrupt cops, people traffickers, FBI, SIS and more. I'm not far in, but having a great time so far.
LINK: I've been tracking the news stories about a claimed massive advance in solid state battery tech from a company called Donut Labs, and this discussion on the Everything Electric video podcast about the claims and the tech itself is the best overview I've seen. I want the claims to be true because of the transformative power they'd have if they are, but I think this is a good bet-hedging discussion.
UP NEXT: I've got a podcast recording this week and a trip into town on Friday hopefully for some new author photos, but otherwise it's a pretty quiet week, just pushing the draft(s) towards their ends.
Onward!