Daynote - Tue 8 Sep

A very nice walk in the woods this morning - first time putting on my warmer jacket, on account of the wind, but still a bit of warmth in the sunshine.

It's US release day for SOLITARY AGENTS! Hooray! Americans can now pick up the continued adventures of Jamie Tulloch (and now Sam Li) in hardback. Check my links page for purchase options.

Huge congratulations to the five shortlisters for the McIlvanney Prize, including my friend Tariq Ashkanani, who won last year. It was an honour to be on the longlist alongside these writers and it's a cracking lineup for next Friday. In other news, Bloody Scotland is next Friday! I'll be there all weekend, with a panel on Saturday that I'm really looking forward to.

ON DECK: A fairly paltry 50 words this morning, but it was rewrites mostly, reworking the pitch, doing a bit of editing on a back cover blurb draft and generally fiddling with documents I've already written. Sometimes you have to do a bit of consolidation and tidying up, and today was one of those days.

I also had a couple of emails this morning confirming various event-y things, including a type of event I've never done before, which is very exciting.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I'm brewing up a post for my Handler and Legend tier subscribers on my current 'app stack' of software and physical tools that I'm using to do my work. It's prompted me to do a good dig through my various devices and their lists of apps and made me realise quite how many I have installed. Probably time for a bit of a purge. But the process of thinking about what I actually use is a valuable one.

I've taken a bit of inspiration from writer Julian Simpson, who talks a lot about the various digital and physical tools he tries out and uses long term on his blog. I'm looking forward to digging into my own process and assessing, in the process of writing my own post, what I'm actually using, versus what I'm keeping around aspirationally.

LISTENING: I really enjoyed this episode of the Too Much Social podcast interviewing a bookseller about how best to work with bookshops. Much of the discussion mirrored my own experiences, especially the long-tail effect of working with indie bookshops (plus indie booksellers are lovely, passionate people that it's a genuine pleasure to get to know).

WATCHING: An episode of SILO and wow, a lot is happening. This season is heavily backloaded in plot terms.

READING: More JOE COUNTRY by Mick Herron (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) and it continues to be brilliant.

LINK: For some Reasons, I've been going back over my published short fiction, so I'm going to indulge myself with a self-link - how do you fancy a bit of near-future SF set in a half-flooded London where the rich never sleep? Check out Such Is My Idea Of Happiness over on Clarkesworld. Also available as a podcast!

UP NEXT: Now that my pitch document is done and dusted, I'm going to nip back over to Project BRIGHT for the rest of the week and try my hand at something completely new to me as I put together a writing sample. It's been a season for trying new things, applying for things and taking chances on things. We'll see which of the many irons I've shoved in the freezer in the last few weeks eventually heats up.

Onward!