Daynote - Wed 1 Oct

Stayed up too late working on crit reads and such last night after a brilliant recording of The Incident Room podcast (episode out in early November!), so I had a lie-in, which was fine because October started out very dreich indeed, with drizzle and low cloud. So, no walk for me this morning, just writing.

It is, however, the first day of October which means it's also the first day of my US Kindle Monthly Deal!

Once again, those across the pond can have my debut, multi-award-winning spy novel for less than a dollar. Scandalous.

ON DECK: More copyediting this morning and I got up to about chapter 35. It's going pretty well, there were a lot of questions about timeline and we fixed one timing error, which is a relief.

I must say, I wish I knew who at Microsoft made the decision that when you click 'Accept and move to next change', the next change shows up riiiiight at the very bottom of the screen, sometimes even half off the screen, rather than in the centre of the screen, where it would make sense to display it. I did some googling and the Microsoft Community support answer to this is 'try scrolling up a bit after clicking next'. Righto. Guess I'll do that 2,000 to 3,000 times over a typical copyedit. God I hate working in Microsoft Word.

LISTENING: I deeply enjoyed this interview with James Alistair Henry, novelist and screenwriter, over at Always Take Notes. I'm completely fascinated by 'portfolio' careers like his, with many different strands, not least because I hope to do similar. Great stuff, though the stories of taking 18 months to get paid for a piece of work are grim.

WATCHING: A wee bit of BAKE OFF last night. Stressful.

READING: More of THE POWER OF THE DOG yesterday. It's continuing to be grimly excellent.

LINK: This piece by Jenna Satterthwaite on the idea of 'sales track' in publishing is fascinating and also quite grim reading. Good discussion in the comments too about the market forces (mostly book chains not reordering) behind the 'Fake Math' as Jenna describes it.

UP NEXT: More copyedits! More swearing at Microsoft Word!

Also, on Thursday I'll be appearing on the UK Crime Crime Book Club livestream with Tariq Ashkanani and Marco Rinaldi to talk about Bloody Scotland. Really looking forward to that.

Onward!