Beautiful walk this morning, and my first for some time, since I was sick before we left for Italy. It was sunny and mild and I saw deer in the woods and a heron at the beach, and also got to throw the ball for Poppy The Labrador and say hello to her owners, which was lovely.
We're nearly in November, which means my event with the London St Andrews Book Festival is rapidly approaching. I'm going to be chatting with Charles Cumming and Nicola Meighan in London on the 21st of November at 5pm.
Grab your tickets and I'll see you there!
ON DECK: I continued work on the proofs for A TRAITOR'S CALL, with 19 pages down today, taking me to just under 10% of the draft reviewed. Close reading takes ages. Thankfully I'm not absolutely hating every word, which is usually a good sign.
I also worked on my press kit page, updating book covers with new 3D models and adding my author photos from Bloody Scotland. Pretty pleased with these:
Credit to Paul Reich, the official Bloody Scotland photographer, for these excellent pics. It's a nice perk of being a guest at Bloody Scotland that you get an official portrait taken.
TOOLS AND PROCESS: I have been deep in edits of various kinds for so long that I am absolutely hankering to do some drafting. If I'm ever lucky enough to do this full time, I think one of the things I will try to do is have a little bit of drafting every working day, even on days when I'm predominantly doing edits.
Right now I can't really do that because my writing time is limited and edits nearly always have a deadline attached, but in the future I'd love to always set aside 30 or 60 minutes in a day to work on something new and keep that part of my brain turning over. Because months and months of edits really does a number on your drafting momentum.
LISTENING: I very much enjoyed the first episode of Read Receipts from Reactor, interviewing CL Clark (who I've recently been doing Narrative Damage sessions with), Alix E. Harrow and Tasha Suri. A hilarious and fascinating conversation about lady knights and sword lesbians.
WATCHING: Bit of BAKE OFF last night. Pastry is complicated, huh?
READING: More of THE TRIALS OF EMPIRE by Richard Swan (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) last night, which is still in the early stages. Love the prose and the sense of overwhelming threat.
LINK: Intrigued by this opportunity for new Scottish screenwriters. Six months of mentoring, training and a bursary could be an amazing thing for folk trying to break into the industry.
UP NEXT: More proofs! A Narrative Damage recording tonight, then a business meeting tomorrow, but the rest of the time it's a steady backbeat of proofs, proofs, proofs. I do need to speed up a bit if I'm going to hit my deadline though.
Onward!