Daynote - Thu 21 Aug
Chipping away at the manuscript.
A good editing session this morning, then an early start with the day job since I need to finish early today, so no walk for me. It continues to be lovely and cool though.
Very chuffed to see the updated paperback cover starting to appear online, with the McDermid Debut Award winner roundel added:
I don't actually know if there are physical copies shipping with the roundel added yet, or if this is an update to online sales portals before the next reprint, but it's still very exciting to see it out there. If you see one of these in the wild with the roundel added, please do let me know.
ON DECK: A pretty solid -195 words, a little over target for my deadline. I'm editing a bunch of very short, intercut action scenes at the moment that are already pretty tightly edited, so there's not a lot to cut. But I'm getting there, slowly but surely. I'm adding stuff as I go too (though not a lot) so in reality most days are more like 'add 200 words, cut 400' but the aggregate is -200 or thereabouts. But it's coming along nicely.
I had a really nice interview with Dawn Geddes from the Bloody Scotland team yesterday, so look out for that in a future issue of the Bloody Scotland newsletter. Which is excellent and well worth signing up for.
LISTENING: Another great episode of Balancing The Books, this time with suspense novelist Jo Callaghan.
WATCHING: No telly last night since we were out for a very nice birthday meal. Might finish off DEPT. Q over the weekend though.
READING: I did read a bit of BERLIN WOLVES though. Still no idea where it's going.
LINK: An excellent post from The Honest Editor on how to restructure a novel. Once again, I'm finding myself wishing this newsletter had existed five or six years ago, when I was figuring this stuff out through trial and error.
UP NEXT: A (busy) day off tomorrow with an exciting call in the afternoon, then a long weekend for the bank holiday (I live in Scotland but my work goes by English bank holidays). Might go and sign books at some point, we shall see. Might do some more editing on trains. But mostly celebrating a birthday and hanging out.
Onward!