Daynote - Tue 26 May 2026

Well, that was a toasty weekend, wasn't it? Nowhere near as hot in Scotland as it has been down south, but very humid and still today. I felt bad for the folks running the Edinburgh Marathon on Sunday - I did 5k on the Saturday and I was a mess afterwards, so I can't imagine doing a marathon in that kind of heat.

I had a lovely walk this morning though, in just a t-shirt, with the Firth of Forth as smooth as glass and a very friendly Poppy the Labrador asking for her stick to be thrown. A lovely start to the day.

ON DECK: I had a brilliant Writing Friday last week, in two big sessions, where I pushed through the last 25,000 words or so of Project VAULT and * drumroll * finished it! I thought about hanging onto it for this week as well, to do another runthrough. But it wouldn't be long enough to do another full read, and at this point I think I'd mostly be moving commas around. So I sent it off on Saturday, after fiddling with Scrivener to get a decent export in Word. Hurrah!

Of course, this book will boomerang back to me for edits, but for now it's off my plate. So this morning I decided to return to Project DRIFT, which I last worked on in checks notes last November! Which is a long break to take. I wrote 1,135 words, but it was herky-jerky, start-stop work since I've forgotten pretty much all of the worldbuilding, character detail and even the specifics of the plot. So I think tomorrow and Thursday I will do a readthrough of the first 30,000 words and a light line edit to re-familiarise myself with the project, before getting back to it properly next week.

LISTENING: I really enjoyed this Cortex interview with Steph Ango, the CEO of Obsidian, which is an amazing note-taking and database tool that I've used on and off for a couple of years. Absolutely fascinating to hear the motivations and decisions behind both how the organisation works and how Ango manages his day. A calendar-less company sounds incredible.

WATCHING: We watched a couple of episodes of BAD MISTAKES on Netflix over the weekend, which is a lot of fun and has much of the same chaotic energy as SCHITT'S CREEK, while being a little darker in tone.

READING: I finished SLOW GODS by Claire North (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) yesterday sitting in the garden. Hugely enjoyed it. One of those SF novels with an immense sense of scale that nonetheless has a beautifully drawn character at its core. Recommended. I rolled straight into THE LAST CONTRACT OF ISAKO by Fonda Lee (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) and it's wildly different again. I'm reading these two novels (along with CHILDREN OF STRIFE by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon)) for my panel with all three of them at Cymera, and we're going to get a lot of mileage out of the sheer variety of the three books I think.

KIT: If, like me, you're in a stuffy office without a lot of airflow in this weirdly warm late-May period, I can heartily recommend this USB-powered desk fan from SweetFull which my wife Valerie bought me a couple of years ago.

It's VERY powerful and compact and works a treat to keep air moving. I can't actually point it as myself directly because I get weirdly cold, but it creates airflow beautifully.

LINK: I absolutely loved this piece from author Buzzy Jackson about The Race Of The Unknown Distance and how it applies to creative practices. Because wow, every creative endeavour I've ever been involved in is precisely that - an unknown distance. Hat-tip to Valerie for the link.

UP NEXT: A re-read of the DRIFT draft (heh, that's fun to say) and light line edit, then I'll crack on with that next week. I'm now in a race of unknown distance (see above) to get as much of DRIFT done as I can before edits come back on either Project VAULT, or SHARDS OF STARLIGHT, or possibly both. Hopefully not at the same time, though.

Onwards!