Hello once again, readers, writers and word fans! Welcome back to The Decrypt, my monthly newsletter on all things writing, publishing, craft and media.
This was a busy month in many different ways - editing, events, book clubs, write-ins, paperback promo and a few things I'm not allowed to tell you about yet, but will allude to below.
Grab your beverage of choice and let's get into it.
I had a couple of really great events this month. I started with my first ever in-person book club visit, with a very friendly local book club here in East Lothian. I went along to their semi-monthly meeting (in Dunbar, but it rotates around the county) and had a really phenomenal time.
Everyone was incredibly nice and the group asked lots of really insightful questions about the book, my writing practice, publishing and what's coming next. I'd love to do more events like this, so if you'd like me to come along to your book club, get in touch.
My next event was Tariq Ashkanani's launch for THE MIDNIGHT KING at Blackwell's in Edinburgh, which was a really great night. Tariq is a friend and one half of the fantastic Page One podcast, so the event was really well attended by a bunch of mutual writing friends.
Later in the month, I also attended my first ESFF Write-In. This is a community event run by Edinburgh SFF, out of The Crannie community hub in Edinburgh's Old Town.
A full day of writing sprints, chat, coffee and hanging out. I had a great time and made loads of progress on my edits. If you're in Edinburgh and you write genre fiction, you should join ESFF and come along to the next one.
And tonight, at 7pm, I'll be in conversation with Chris Whitaker at Waterstones Edinburgh West End. I'm really looking forward to meeting Chris and asking him about his phenomenal novel ALL THE COLOURS OF THE DARK, which absolutely blew me away. If you're in or near Edinburgh, do come along!
This was a very steady editing month for me. No new words aside from the odd paragraph here or there, but over 18,000 words cut from the draft of PROJECT SCARLET (the first draft was 125,000 words, and it needs to be around 100k maximum, at least when I submit it).
I worked mainly from my own notes on a Supernote Manta, and aside from a slight hiccup when I lost about ten chapters of editing notes (I got them back, the error was on my side thanks to syncing a broken ePub), it's worked marvellously. I find the combination of longer Digest notes (which allow me to write out big chunks of new dialogue or ruminate on how to solve a problem) and direct markup on the manuscript works incredibly well. And when I have a marked-up manuscript to work from, everything feels a great deal easier to tackle. I inevitably make more edits as I go, because reading the manuscript on screen feels different than working on the Supernote, and I notice different things. But the combination of a read-through followed by an on-screen edit works really well for me.
One thing I don't think I'll do again is do these things simultaneously. I kept catching up with myself in the readthrough. I thought it would save time, but it was mostly just creating an annoyance for myself. So on the next pass I will take my writing time and use it to read through systematically with the Supernote, then do an edit.
Once I can talk about this manuscript publicly, I will write some posts about how it works practically, with some example screenshots. But it's definitely a killer combo.
Other than that it's been a focused month, with not a lot of jumping around between projects or getting distracted. May will be the same, since I'm working towards a deadline. I'm timelining at the moment, taking the book and plotting it out on Aeon Timeline, which is boring but very necessary. But after critique partner edits, I only have one final polish pass to do before it's ready for the next stage. And then, I have no idea. Well, I have some ideas, but I haven't settled on one yet.
In five days, it'll be one month (!) until the paperback for A RELUCTANT SPY comes out. Which is kind of crazy. It barely feels like any time at all since the hardback came out.
I'm really excited about the paperback. As I've said in recent posts, I'm a paperback reader most of the time (my hardback purchase rate has skyrocketed almost entirely because I want to support author friends, but I find hardbacks large and kind of annoying to cart about) and for me paperback is really the ideal format for a thriller or SF novel - a little bit of portable escapism you can fit in your bag or jacket pocket.
I was also extremely pleased to get this wonderful blurb from fellow spy novelist David McCloskey, who I met back in January.
I'm a huge admirer of David's work, so I was so, so pleased that he was able to read my book. And it arrived just in time to go on the paperback cover! Delighted.
The other extremely cool thing that happened this month was that I found out that A RELUCTANT SPY has earned out. The linked post goes into a lot of detail about what this means which I won't repeat here, but essentially it's confirmation that the book has sold very well in its very first quarter - well enough that the royalties earned have equalled what I've already been paid for the book. From January onward, every sale of the book will mean I will get some royalties, which I'm hopeful will be a really good foundation for my writing career.
It's not happening in May, but my next big event will be Capital Crime in June, where I'll be doing my first ever panel!
I've never been to Capital Crime before, so I'm both looking forward to the event as a whole and to being on stage with three other fantastic authors. If you're going along, please say hello! I'd love to meet subscribers in person.
Reading
A bit more reading this month, although still heavy on the beta reading.
- All The Colours Of The Dark by Chris Whitaker - I've had this on the TBR for some time, since Harrogate Crime Writing Festival last year where people kept grabbing me by the elbow and saying no, seriously, read it, it's amazing. Being asked to chair Chris's Edinburgh event was the perfect motivator to take on this very long book (it's nearly 600 pages in hardback), but it absolutely flew past. It is a compulsively readable and epic book that I deeply enjoyed.
- Planetside by Michael Mammay - I picked this off my eReader TBR pile and started it because I fancied something very different from the above, and it absolutely is. Excellent military SF. I'm not far into it, mind.
- Innocent Guilt by Remi Kone - This is my current evening read. Remi will be on a panel with me at Capital Crime in June, and I was sent a proof of her debut novel as part of that. It's an intriguing setup - a mute and shellshocked woman walks into a London police station carrying a baseball bat, covered in someone else's blood, but she won't say who might be injured or what's happened. I'm really enjoying it.
Watching
We've been finishing off various series in April:
- We're absolutely loving THE STUDIO on Apple TV - A lovingly made and absolutely hilarious comedy from Seth Rogen about what goes on inside major Hollywood studios. It reminds me a bit of THE FRANCHISE, which I also enjoyed, but the constant improv jazz in the background, slapstick humour and really strong ensemble cast really works. Episode Two, about the perils of shooting a 'oner' single-shot take is particularly good, not least because the entire episode is, in itself, a one-shot take.
- We watched and enjoyed the weirdly compelling LAST ONE LAUGHING on Amazon. It wasn't exactly comedy, per se? More a psychological experiment. But it got steadily more surreal and funny towards the end. And had a very worthy winner.
- We loved KNEECAP, the docudrama (featuring the group themselves) about the titular Irish hip-hop group. Incredibly energetic and compelling filmmaking.
- I saw WARFARE at the cinema with a friend and it was quite the experience. Absolutely harrowing and an incredibly austere piece of filmmaking. No music apart from diegetic music at the start and the credits. Almost no visual artifice (slow-mo etcetera) aside from some very close-up/sound-faded scenes indicating shock. And no real plot, per se, just a mission that turns into a bloody and brutal casualty extraction. I'm glad I saw it, but I'm fairly sure 'enjoyed' isn't the right word.
Playing
Another month of very undemanding stuff. But still fun.
- I had lunch with an old friend who has a regular WARZONE game group going, and I've hopped into a few games with them this month. It's been a real blast from the past, since the last time I played it was during lockdown. And recent changes to the game have brought it back, basically, to how it was back then. So it's been a ton of fun, especially running with a regular group.
- I picked up SNIPER ELITE: RESISTANCE which is pretty fun. It's very much more of the same (essentially the same engine and modes as the last game, just with a bunch of new levels) but I'm enjoying it.
- I've also picked up BLUE PRINCE, though I haven't actually started playing it yet. I've heard some wild things about this first-person puzzle game that make me think I'm either going to love it or... not love it. Sometimes puzzle games, especially first person ones, just completely go over my head in a really unsatisfying way.
Newly extruded internet products, get 'em fresh:
- I loved this essay about coming back to the real world from social media, from Casey Johnston. It resonated quite a bit.
- A good piece from Maris Kreizman about what it means to be 'a good author' in the publishing world.
- Tightening your prose in the edit, from Susan Dennard.
- A very cool collection of calculators and converters
- How acquisitions meetings work, from Phoebe Morgan.
- I got a really nice shoutout on the excellent Bloody Scotland podcast!
- Again from Phoebe Morgan, a great post on sales track records.
- An excellent post from m'friend Jordan Acosta on great free picture resources for your blog or newsletter.
Well - a busy one indeed.
It was, however, also a comforting month in many ways. The morning and evening light is lengthening so quickly, and the average temperatures are rising. The woods I walk in most days are leafing out so quickly that the deer are getting increasingly hard to spot. Everything smells amazing and the wind coming in off the North Sea isn't even that chilly.
I'm on the downslope towards submitting a novel, so I'm quite focused in a way, just holding steady to the morning writing session, the walk and also occasionally indulging my excitement about the work with a bit of cafe writing, lunchtime outlining and idle sketching in notebooks. It's a fine line between a steady, productive working rate and burnout sometimes, but I find I can mitigate a lot of that by trying to find a little time to play around, read some books and, most importantly, look after my body and mind by doing things that aren't writing or reading. That's why I spent most of this last Sunday reorganising our shed and doing some digging in the garden.
I'd say spring has definitely sprung, and we're on our way into the early days of summer now. I hope you're enjoying the longer days, taking a breath and some time away from screens and screaming headlines, drinking a nice hot drink in the morning or evening, getting as much sleep as you can. The omnicrisis will still be there tomorrow. And it's easier to face when you're rested.
In the meantime, as ever, keep reading, keep writing and keep moving.
If you have a question, suggestion or something else you'd like me to write about, please get in touch over on Bluesky or Instagram, or send me a message on my contact form.