Daynote - Tue 31 Mar 2026

Good morning! I'm in London! Briefly, for a dayjob thing, and really only seeing Euston Station plus Farringdon and its environs, but I am nevertheless in the South East for the day.

I had a comfy sleeper trip down, though got to sleep later than I'd like. Still, a large coffee is getting me going.

Last night, while waiting to board the sleeper, I got my press kit page sorted with my new author images, updated downloadable files and more. Here's a couple more images as a taster:

ON DECK: I've just settled into a coffee shop to get going on the morning's writing before I head to my day job location. Hopefully I'll get 1k-ish on the main novel draft (which is very exciting action scenes and quick to write) and 300-400 on the short story (which is slower, more introspective dialogue at the moment. But it's going well otherwise.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I was chatting to a family member about my creative process yesterday, because they asked how I captured, managed and developed ideas. And my answer, much to my dismay, was 'very inconsistently'. It's got me thinking a lot about physical versus digital capture, thinking on paper versus infinite digital canvases, and of course linear versus non-linear development of ideas.

I think the thing that most frustrates me at the moment is how fragmented everything is. On the capture side, I've got stuff in Apple Notes, Scrivener files, lots and lots and lots of Word documents, random Notion tables, physical notebooks, my Supernote digital notebook and probably more that I'm forgetting. And, after an attempt to centralise the development process in Obsidian, I've now got most but not all of it into my Supernote (where it's handwritten and easy to expand, but not easily searchable or easy to restructure).

Basically, I probably need to accept that there's tradeoffs and compromises whichever process I settle on, and the attempt to have it all means I don't really have a system. I'm probably going to settle on a hybrid digital/physical handwritten system, with physical notebooks and my Supernote as the backbone. It's probably a full day or more's work to actually make that switch, though, which is why I keep putting it off, even though the benefits would be immense.

LISTENING: This was an extremely sobering episode of Behind The Lines with Arthur Snell, interviewing Thom Reilly, an energy policy specialist, about the delayed effects of the Iran war as supply lines stretch and break. Worth listening to, even if it's a bit frightening.

WATCHING: More RESIDENT ALIEN before catching the train yesterday. Just about finished with Season 2. Top stuff.

READING: A bit of NO WAY OUT by Max Connor (aka Neil Lancaster, Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) on the lunchbreak yesterday. Still excellent. I forgot to pack it for this trip though.

LINK: A reminder for the Americans among you that my award-winning debut novel A RELUCTANT SPY is on sale this week! With the sequel coming out in a little over two months, now's a perfect time to pick it up.

UP NEXT: Okay, I've drunk half of this coffee, time to crack on and write some words. Then some drinks later on with some writer mates before I clamber aboard the sleeper back to Scotland.

Onward!