Daynote - Thu 13 Nov

Absolutely shocking weather today, so I've holed up inside and cracked on with the work. My weather app just says 'rain for the next 12+ hours'. Ah, Scotland in November.

ON DECK: A decent 1,083 words this morning. It's always a bit rough getting going again after a day when I don't manage any words. The imp of self-doubt says 'oh no maybe you'll never write again and even if you do it'll be terrible'. But the well-trained brain reacts predictably to the Scrivener window, a nice dark office and a blinking cursor, thankfully. Days like this it's the routine and the repetition that let you ignore the worries and second-guessing of your own abilities.

LISTENING: I deeply enjoyed this crossover episode between two of my favourite bookish podcasts, Read and Buried and Quick Book Reviews. What a delight to listen to and a real insight into the sheer amount of work podcasters have to do to keep those episodes coming. I occasionally get asked if I'm going to start a podcast and my answer has generally been no, mostly because I know a lot of podcasters and I know how much work it is.

WATCHING: We watched the second episode of PLURIBUS last night and it was just as good as the first. Just top work from everyone involved.

READING: More of THE POWER OF THE DOG yesterday and I'm starting to see the inevitable confluence of all of the various story threads. I'm well over halfway through the book and the tension from wondering how these things will intersect is palpable. Masterful stuff.

LINK: A heartbreaking and infuriating post from author and podcaster Scott Edelman about withdrawing a story from F&SF Magazine where he was accepted after fifty-four years of trying. F&SF are now owned by MRM (Must Read Magazines) who have also bought Analog and Asimov's. They have introduced terrible, rights-grabby new boilerplate, then engaged in extended one-to-one negotiation with writers calling it out (rather than trying to understand the norms of the field they've entered).

These folks seem to be trying to burn community goodwill and also seem to not understand that writers know each other and can compare contracts, so their divide-and-conquer tactics simply won't work (except for the few novice writers who don't yet have those contacts or connections). I won't be submitting to any of these magazines for the foreseeable, until there's standardised boilerplate. I won't hold my breath. If this sinks these magazines it will be a deeply ignoble end for stalwarts of the genre.

UP NEXT: A bit more drafting to hit my rough 5k word target for the week, then I'll be prepping for this weekend's event at Denny Library!

I'm really looking forward to this - it's my first library event and I'm also looking forward to meeting the other authors, Marion Todd and Kate Foster.

Eagle-eyed readers may also have noticed that my other event, interviewing Vaseem Khan and Kim Sherwood at the Aye Write festival in Glasgow, has been removed from the website. Sadly the ticket sales didn't quite hit the mark, so the event was cancelled. Apologies if you were looking forward to this, but I suspect myself, Kim and Vaseem will show up together on a panel in the future (there's only so many of us spy authors!) at one festival or another.

In any case, we shall persevere. Onward!