Daynote - Mon 29 Sep

An absolutely stunning bluebird sky day today and the mercury has decisively dipped into 'chilly'. I even saw my breath as I walked this morning. It was lovely. Lots of does and fawns in the trees too, doing that deer thing of holding perfectly still while being completely visible. Plus Poppy The Labrador bounded across half the car park this morning to say hello, which is always a joyful way to start the day.

ON DECK: A really nice 1,768 words today on PROJECT DRIFT. I'm writing this draft a little 'looser' than usual, meandering a bit as I do some of the worldbuilding and plotting on the fly. It's a lot of fun, but quite different to how I usually work. But it feels like the right approach for this book so far. I crossed over the 21k mark this morning, so I'm not even a fifth of the way in yet, but it's feeling good.

LISTENING: I really enjoyed this episode of The Incident Room podcast with Chris Bridges and Kingsley Pearson. If you like crime and thriller fiction it's a must-listen podcast.

WATCHING: We watched the first episode of the new SLOW HORSES last night and it was a lot of fun. Sad to see Louisa bowing out though, hopefully she'll be back.

READING: After a September full of blurb reads, I'm getting back to the book I've had by my bedside since July, which is THE POWER OF THE DOG by Don Winslow. It's great stuff and I'll be working through that until some books arrive for my next festival panel (which I'm chairing) in November.

LINK: This article from The Walrus about the 'gambling problem' in the publishing industry (essentially a microcosm of the broader capitalist issue of 'more wood behind fewer arrows' consolidation and profit-chasing at the expense of, well, absolutely everything else) is a sobering read. It's also the fifth or sixth long article of this kind I've read in the past few years.

I do wish that some of the executives who actually make the decisions would read these articles, rather than them being passed around everyone at the bottom of the industry pyramid who are already deeply familiar with the issues. Ultimately short-term profit chasing and refusing to invest in your midlist is self-defeating and will steadily narrow the margin for error (because modest midlist profits are what allowed publishers of yore to ride out booms and busts caused by the bigger books), but when quarterly profits are all that matters, that argument seems to fall on deaf ears.

UP NEXT: A couple of podcast interviews this week, but aside from that it's a nice steady routine week, with my newsletter coming out tomorrow and a lot of walking in the woods and typing on the cards. Can't wait, honestly.

Onward!