Daynote - Mon 7 Sep

It is suddenly very autumnal indeed. Although the temperature is actually a degree higher than last week, the grey sky, cool wind and sea spray all combined this morning to remind me that yes, is September and that means autumn. A lovely walk today and I saw the chonkiest hare I've ever seen in my life. He's got a good chance of making it through the winter I reckon.

Over the weekend I launched a membership programme, including two new newsletters, perks, signed hardback editions and more. It's gone way better than I expected, which has left me with a very warm fuzzy glow indeed. Don't worry, these daynotes and my monthly newsletter The Decrypt will remain free, but if you're curious about what you might be missing on the paid tiers, take a look.

I'm thinking about new things to add to my membership tiers and I'll be writing a lot more longer craft essays now that I can justify the time spent on them with a bit of direct reader support, but anyone who joins will have access to the full archive as soon as they join. And don't worry, I'll still be writing books.

Speaking of which! Tomorrow is the US hardback release date for SOLITARY AGENTS! I have done a very good marketing graphic.

ON DECK: Last Friday I finished the treatment I've been working on for Project BRIGHT, adding a chunky 3,427 words. And today I've been working on a pitch document for a novel, adding 514 words to that this morning. It's pretty much drafted, but I will do some fiddling with it tomorrow. And I do like to give anything of this nature a day or two, because my first draft is always a bit rough but I need a day or so's distance to see how and where it's rough, so I can polish it up. In the latter half of the week I'm going to jump back onto BRIGHT to work on a sample.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I had a bit of a play with a new writing tool yesterday, namely Penpoint. It's kind of the midpoint between online services like Dabble and full-on writing apps like Scrivener. And it's a one-off purchase, rather than a subscription, which is why I was curious. It is profoundly not for me after going through the (extensive) onboarding and tutorial, for multiple reasons (it's an Electron app, it's got very strong opinions about how projects should be structured, I couldn't for the life of me work out how to get an exported file out of it), but if you're a heavy worldbuilder or have a lot of things to keep track of and you want an all-in-one app, it may be worth investigating.

LISTENING: One of my favourite short fiction writers is Rich Larson, so I was delighted to see that he'd appeared on a new(ish) podcast called The Passage, where writers read out a passage from their work and then do a deep-dive on the process, decisions and inspiration that went into that piece of work. He's talking about the opening paragraphs of his exceptional story in Reactor, In The Hours Preceding The Fall of Tau-Sants, which he memorably describes at one point as a kind of quantum IN BRUGES. A great episode of a great podcast that's gone straight into my regular rotation.

WATCHING: A bit more SILO over the weekend and finally things are starting to happen! I had not really realised how much they were dragging out fairly minor plot points until they started to actually deliver some information. Still not sure if I'll come back for the next season, we'll have to see what the last two episodes bring us.

READING: A fair bit of JOE COUNTRY by Mick Herron (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) over the weekend and it's starting to kick off properly.

LINK: Speaking of good podcasts, I've just come across this super-crunchy screenwriting craft podcast called The Q&A where Jeff Goldsmith interviews screenwriters about specific scripts, specifically this episode about the last couple of episodes of Andor. Another new sub.

UP NEXT: Tomorrow I'll be polishing up the draft pitch for the as-yet-uncodenamed new book, then back to sample writing for the remainder of the week. Then next week I'm back into Project DRIFT in the run up to Bloody Scotland, which is less than two weeks away! Really, really looking forward to it this year.

Onward!