Daynote - Mon 8 Jun 2026

Phew, what a weekend! On the heels of quite a week! I'm brewing up a longer 'release week' post talking about everything that happened from Thursday to Sunday last week (launch events, podcasts, panels, lots and lots of social media) so I'll keep it brief in this post, but my 7th Cymera Festival (and the 8th overall) was absolutely fantastic.

I was lucky enough to be trusted with the sold-out headline event on Saturday evening, featuring three incredible SF writers (Adrian Tchaikovsky, Fonda Lee and Claire North), who were all absolutely lovely and a joy to chair on the hour-long panel we had. More in the later post, but I coasted on the high of that hour on the stage for the rest of the weekend. An amazing day.

ON DECK: Didn't have much gas in the tank this morning (I never do after a weekend event, the combination of lack of sleep, lots of socialising and emails and admin piling up while I'm busy is a doozy) so I settled for doing a bit of that admin and gently reading through a chapter, though not actually making any edits. You can only do what you can do. Hopefully back to normal tomorrow.

LISTENING: A double podcast this morning - listening back to two recent episodes I recorded recently which both came out on the same day!

The first is the episode of the In My Good Books podcast I recorded with Susie Green at the Bloody Scotland programme launch last week (we showed up an hour early and tucked ourselves away on the second floor of the Golden Lion in Stirling. It was brilliant to chat in person.

The next is an episode of the fantastic Le Carré Cast, talking about travelogues in spy fiction, which is one of my favourite aspects of the genre. I had a really fun and in-depth conversation with Jeff about the challenges and opportunities of depicting different places and periods. I really like doing podcasts on a specific topic where you can do a bit of a deep dive and this was no exception.

If you're in the Venn diagram of writer/spy fan/book person that means you've heard my voice on 3-5 podcasts in the last week, I apologise, but hey, ya know, I've got a book to sell.

WATCHING: Finished off the last season of THE BOYS last night and it was appropriately blood-soaked and over the top. Great fun and I'm glad they gave it a proper satisfying ending rather than just milking it to death.

READING: I saw Stephen Graham Jones at Cymera this weekend (in conversation with my friend Erin Hardee, one half of MK Hardy) and hugely enjoyed his panel. I've heard him on podcasts before and been meaning to pick up one of his books for ages, but the discussion (and the opportunity to get it signed) meant I jumped at the chance to pick up THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER, which I started on the train home. I do love the feeling, on the first couple of pages of a book, of knowing you're about to read a novel full of prose that's going to absolutely blow your ears off the side of your head, repeatedly.

LINK: I was really delighted with this review of SOLITARY AGENTS by David Robinson on the Books From Scotland website. Both because it was a really good review and because it has given me the perfect capsule description of the novel that I can now use in interviews (thank you David!) when I need to give a non-spoilery plot summary, which is:

Told in short narrative bursts from multiple points of view, this is quite gripping – a sort of cross between Race Across the World and Traitors.  

Two of my favourite reality shows used to describe my book! Perfect.

UP NEXT: This is a rebound/recovery week. I have a podcast recording this evening, but otherwise it's a fairly chill/quiet one before I start ramping up for Capital Crime. I'm hoping to make a bit of progress on Project DRIFT but mostly do some exercise, get some sleep and re-hydrate.

Onward!

Aside - I noticed after posting this that it's the 600th post on my website. Which is... a lot of posts! If you've read even a fraction of those, thank you for sticking around.