Daynote - Tue 17 Feb 2026

I got out for a walk for the first time since last Tuesday this morning, which was very much needed. And it was a beautiful (though very cold) morning, which was a relief after days of rain with only occasional glimpses of sunshine. My hands are still a bit cold though.

This morning I also got to talk about my next book, SOLITARY AGENTS, being included in the Waterstones February Pre-Order sale!

You can grab a hardback copy of SOLITARY AGENTS for 25% off! Just pop FEB26 in at checkout online or in the Waterstones app. This deal runs from today until midnight on Friday 20th February, so don't hang about.

ON DECK: After a fairly paltry word count yesterday morning, today I locked in and got a much more creditable 1,824 words in a little over an hour. Sometimes things come together that way. It's hard to tell which days and which scenes are going to flow easily like that, so really all I can do is take the good days when they come and try not to worry so much about the lower count days. I'll still get there in the end. But still, it's a boost to the morale when the sun comes out and the word count is high.

On Friday and Monday I also signed contracts on two separate things, neither of which is announced yet, but both of which I'm very excited about! Suffice to say I will have plenty of projects to keep me busy well into the next few years now, which is both daunting (deadlines, contracts, edits!) and exciting (advances, new books, events!) in that it's starting to look like an actual career.

It's kind of weird how my personal timelines have extended as a result of working with publishers - before I became an author, I was rarely thinking more than two or three months ahead, aside from vaguely sensible financial things like paying into a pension and paying my mortgage. Now, I'm routinely thinking about things two or three years in the future, and making plans for even further ahead.

LISTENING: I really enjoyed this Cortex 'state of the workflow' interview with tech youtuber Becca Farsace (whose recent digital detox video I linked to the other day). Not just a pure app stack/gear breakdown, but also a really interesting conversation about moving from working for someone to working for yourself as an independent creator. Which is a subject that is absolute catnip to me.

WATCHING: An absolutely brutal episode of A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS last night which was very, very effective. Proper pit of the stomach dread material. And the simple flashback structure really heightened the drama of the main storyline. Great stuff.

READING: I'm heading into the final quarter of RAT RACE by Callum McSorley (Bookshop, Amazon) and really, really enjoying it. Absolutely no idea where it's going to end up, which is, I think, harder to do than you'd think in a crime thriller. But he's pulling it off admirably and I do believe he's going to stick the landing.

LINK: A bonus podcast link today - I'm loving the What Went Wrong podcast recently and their recent episode covering Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is no exception. I'm always here for a bit of Charlie Kaufman scriptwriting lore.

UP NEXT: Hopefully a little less rain! I'm still prepping for Napier on Friday, but aside from that, just making some good progress on the current novel.

Onward!