Daynote - Mon 27 Apr 2026

Good morning! A glorious start to the week, with actual genuine warmth in the sun. If you look carefully in the picture above, you'll see the herd of deer I spotted out in the fields this morning, enjoying the sun on their backs.

ON DECK: This morning I was working on my short story, with a grand total of 14 words added in edits. As always, with editing, I probably wrote something like 200-300 words and cut about the same, so it netted out to very little. And most of these were line edits from my crit partners.

We had a good discussion on the overall story yesterday, but I quite often like to do all the line edits first, so that I have a 'clean' manuscript to work from when I'm adding new stuff. I have maybe one more session on this short story to get it done and dusted, then I'll be back to Project VAULT to finish the timeline, reorganise the scenes and start working through the book as a whole.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I'm currently swithering on whether to do a read-through before my major rewrite, or do the rewrite and then do the read-through. I think I only really have time to do one read-through, so I think I will do it after I've done the edit heavy-lifting, then use the read-through as the basis for a pre-submission polish pass. Ideally I'd re-read it after each edit pass, but I don't think that's going to be possible in this phase. I'll definitely be re-reading it after subsequent edits, proofs and so on, so I'm not too worried.

LISTENING: I enjoyed this interview with author and RPG creator Gareth Hanrahan over on Narrative Damage. I remain absolutely fascinated by multi-threaded careers like this.

WATCHING: A bit of RACE ACROSS THE WORLD over the weekend. This show makes me want to travel so badly every time I watch it.

READING: Starting to pick up speed on my read of CHILDREN OF STRIFE by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) - the scope is broadening (in physical terms) and narrowing (in character terms) simultaneously in very interesting ways.

LINK: I'm approaching a critical point of messiness and disorganisation in my home office (where I spend an inordinate amount of my time) so this post on Threads about how to actually organised a declutter in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming was well timed.

UP NEXT: I've got to seriously get rolling on the edit for Project VAULT, as it is due at the end of May, which I'm absolutely certain will come sooner than I think it will. I've got a brief trip down to York on Thursday for Alessandra Ranelli and Kristin Perrin's launch event with Criminally Good Books, but otherwise I'm just going to be full-steam ahead on this edit.

Onward!