Daynote - Thu 5 Feb

Exceptionally dreich outside this morning, and I started a bit late on the writing, so I skipped walking this morning in favour of cracking on a bit, not least with this daynote.

ON DECK: A decent 1,122 words and I'm very, very close to the 40k mark. That means I think I should hit 50k by this time next week (I have a couple of long train journeys which will be excellent opportunities to make that happen).

My inbox has been a very encouraging place the past couple of days - invitations to do cool things and the machinery of publicity and marketing starting to kick into action for the release of SOLITARY AGENTS. I didn't realise until quite late in the day that it was four months to go until the book comes out, but I managed to pop a post up on the socials:

It's kind of snuck up on me a bit, I can't lie. Not least because I miscounted the months. But pre-orders are going really well and it's really nice to see the enthusiasm of readers who enjoyed the first book. Why not pre-order using my comprehensive set of links?

LISTENING: I really enjoyed this fascinating interview with Nicole Vanderbilt of Bookshop.org over on Always Take Notes - it's such an interesting approach that they've taken and the interview goes into some detail about the complexities and challenges of their business model.

WATCHING: We finished off THE NIGHT MANAGER last night. I had an idea that things weren't going to be tied off neatly but the ending was still a bit of a shock. A very interesting narrative swerve that was pretty Le Carré in its bleakness. I do wonder where they're going to take it now

READING: I got some excellent bookmail courtesy of Pushkin Press the other day, and made a start on it last night:

RAT RACE by Callum McSorley (Bookshop, Amazon) comes out on May 7th and it's the third in Callum's excellent Scottish crime series (the first two volumes won and were shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize, respectively). So far it's an absolute joy - characters that jump off the page, a palpable sense of gangland Glasgow and jokes that have made me snort-laugh more than once. Top stuff.

LINK: I'm a big fan of the history blog A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry (ACOUP) and this post on the Bronze Age Collapse is no exception. One of those historical mysteries that absolutely fascinates me.

UP NEXT: A morning of writing tomorrow (yay, part-time Fridays, this feels like it'll never get old!) then lunch with a friend, visiting family in the afternoon and then a birthday party. Phew, going to be a busy Friday! Then a chill weekend, with the Luna Press Publishing annual party to look forward to on Saturday.

Onward!