Daynote - Tue 16 Jun 2026
A still and quiet morning.
A lovely walk this morning. It was cool and a little damp, but also very, very still, so I took a long, slow walk through the woods and down to the water. Loads of giant, terrier-sized hares in the fields.
A post on Bluesky this morning reminded me that it's Bloomsday, which is always a nice marker of the year passing.
Some very nice emails over the last couple of days - from readers, reviewers and editors - that have boosted my morale significantly. The post-launch emotional slump is real, so the emails were well timed.
ON DECK: A fairly light 27 words added this morning, though that was across three chapters and was a bunch of cuts and a bunch of additions. The aggregate word counts often disguise a bunch of actual writing, when I'm editing, since I'm adding as much as I'm cutting, or vice versa. But the metric that matters (chapters finished) is much healthier.
LISTENING: Getting caught up on a significant backlog of podcasts post-launch/Cymera and I enjoyed this interview with Australian SF author T.R. Napper over on the BFS 'Long Story Short' podcast.
WATCHING: No regular TV last night, but we did watch Patton Oswalt's comedy special that he did on Youtube. Felt very good to laugh so hard:
READING: More of DECEPTION by Alan Parks (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon), which has now got fully into the meat of the plot. The 1940s New York atmosphere is absolutely leaping off the page.
LINK: A double set of links this morning. First of all is a call for submissions from Bloody Scotland for Crime In The Spotlight. I did this in 2024, the day after my first novel was published, and it was an incredible experience. If you're a new crime or thriller writer in Scotland I highly suggest you apply.
Next up is this fantastic gallery of Cymera photos on the ESFF website. What a brilliant weekend (though my wallet and energy levels are still recovering).
UP NEXT: One more day of the regular routine, then off to London for Capital Crime! I'm hoping to maintain some wordage over the trip (trains are great for this, and I'm going to try and write a bit in the morning), but I'm also eyeing the weather forecast for London and hoping I'll be able to sleep. I don't do all that well in 30°C heat. We'll see how it goes.
Onward!