Daynote - Tue 24 Feb 2026

A busy day in town yesterday, with a lot of walking about (including spending some book tokens) so I skipped my walk this morning and had a lie-in instead. Terrific decision, to be quite honest.

Today also marks 100 days (!) until SOLITARY AGENTS comes out in the UK. Which is wild, because it means there's less than a hundred days until June and it means my second book will be out in the world in just a little over three months!

You can pre-order your copy with your preferred retailer on my links page, and book your ticket for the launch event on the Waterstones website here.

ON DECK: A solid 1,023 this morning, getting another scene half in the bag. I'm once again running out of outlined scenes, but thankfully I've got a plan to address that on Friday.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: As regular readers will know, I went part-time in January of this year (blog post still brewing on that) and so far, it's been pretty great. Consistently decent word counts each Writing Friday and a much-needed rebalancing of life, day job, writing, publishing and everything else.

However, for various boring reasons, here at the end of February, I haven't yet had a full day at home to fully explore what a day dedicated to writing can sustainably contain. One of the things I'd been concerned about with going part-time is that I'd overshoot - saying yes to too many things, over-scheduling myself and being over-optimistic about what I can actually get done. But I haven't actually calibrated that sense yet, mostly because of other commitments. So, this Friday, I'm hoping to do a little bit of a level-set - planning a relatively small set of things I want to achieve and just... seeing how I get on with them. That should give me an idea of what I might be able to sustainably manage, week-to-week.

So, this Friday, I'm planning the following:

• A usual Friday target of draft on Project VAULT (around 1,900 words)
• Editing about 5,000 words for my critique partners to read for the following week's session
• Micro-outlining (putting bullet points in Scrivener chapter documents) the next 8-10 scenes
• In the afternoon, working on a commissioned short story (but without a word count in mind, just getting going on it)

That feels achievable, but we'll see. Tune in next week for an update!

LISTENING: I'm fascinated by how writing partnerships work (a couple of my close friends, Erin and Mo, write as MK Hardy and their description of how they do it boggles my mind) so I love interviews with them. This interview with cosy crime duo JD Brinkworth on The Conversation with Nadine Matheson doesn't disappoint on that front.

READING: I started reading Richard Swan's new SF novel THE INFINITE STATE (Bookshop.org, Waterstones, Amazon) last night (US cover and release date below as I don't believe the UK cover has been revealed yet) and it's cracking so far.

I'm working my way through Richard's Empire of the Wolf series and hugely enjoying it, so it's fascinating to see him apply his skills to a distant future setting. Also it involves punching fascists (in SPAAAACE), which I'm always going to be in the mood for.

LINK: I posted it above already, but just another reminder that you can book your ticket for my launch event at Waterstones West End, here in Edinburgh, on June 4th 2026 at 7pm. See you there!

UP NEXT: I've got a podcast recording tonight with the Binge Reading Book Club, which I'm really looking forward to. Then a couple more days of regular writing before my first full Friday. We'll see how that goes.

Onward!