Daynote - Wed 4 Mar 2026
Three months to go!
Still recovering, so more working at home this morning. Wow, I am missing my walks. Should be able to resume on Monday though, which will be amazing.
Yesterday I had a brilliant event at the John Gray Centre in Haddington where I spoke for about an hour about my writing and publishing career with a very attentive audience who asked a lot of questions. And most of the audience then came along to Kesley's bookshop to pick up a signed copy of the book, which was lovely - clearly I'm refining my pitch for A RELUCTANT SPY.
Speaking of the books, it's exactly THREE MONTHS today until the next book, SOLITARY AGENTS, comes out in UK hardback, eBook and audio, and internationally in eBook and audio.
Kind of hard to believe how fast it's coming up! You can pre-order here, or request the book on NetGalley.
ON DECK: A reasonable morning of writing today, with 1,026 words down. I'm doing a lot of short little scenes that are all going on slightly too long at the moment, so there's probably going to be some chunky edits in my future. But I'm getting through the scenes and it's hanging together pretty well.
LISTENING: An excellent episode of Scriptnotes talking about the idea of 'free work' in the scriptwriting world. Obviously scriptwriting is governed by different financial and contractual arrangements than book publishing, but there's no less of a tendency towards free work, at every stage of the game. We're all banking on it eventually paying off, of course, but that's far from a given.
WATCHING: More of HOW TO GET TO HEAVEN FROM BELFAST last night, which is an excellent mystery as well as being a cracking comedy. It's pleasingly complex too - we're four episodes in and every episode has managed to surprise us so far.
READING: More of THE INFINITE STATE by Richard Swan (Bookshop.org, Waterstones, Amazon) last night. Mainly I'm just really enjoying the setup and the various character introductions so far. It's a notable departure from the first person POV of his first three fantasy novels (the Empire of the Wolf series) but it's working for me.
LINK: If you're in/near Edinburgh and you like horror novels, m'friend and colleague Benedict Anning is launching his debut novel ATOMIC COFFIN in June at Toppings & Co. I was lucky enough to read this book in beta form and it's an absolute corker. Think 'Event Horizon' on the set of 'Hunt For Red October'. Eerie and menacing. Hope to see you there!
UP NEXT: Dinner with some writer friends in town this evening, which I'm looking forward to a lot, then family stuff this weekend. In between, some writing. Same as ever.
Onward!