Well hello there!
It's been another quieter month here at Goodman Towers, not least because I took about half of it off. But I also completed edits on a novel, did an amazing event and generally had a pretty nice, summery month.
And of course, lots of exciting things have been bubbling along in the background, so despite the languid pace, I've still got plenty to tell you. Which means it's time for another edition of The Decrypt, my monthly newsletter on all things writing, publishing, craft and media. Settle in, grab a hot or cold drink depending on preference and ambient temperature where you are, and let's get down to business.
Here we go!
I started August with a really, really nice dinner to kick off a two week holiday - heading to The Voyage of Buck in Edinburgh with some writer pals who are, variously and inclusively, critique partners, RPG buddies and friends - Nick Binge, Marco Rinaldi and Ben Anning. We were celebrating some recent successes and it was a fantastic evening. Odd name for a restaurant, excellent food.
A couple of days later, I went to Fringe By The Sea with my wife Valerie to chair an event for Doug Johnstone, who's just published his 20th novel, GHOST NOTES (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon).
It was a really great event and Doug was a brilliant interviewee, giving some really thoughtful and nuanced answers. We got to meet his family and he ended the event by playing some songs with his son, which was a lovely way to finish things up. More book events should have music. Then we got some truly incredible tacos from El Dorado Taquiera which, to be quite honest, would be enough on their own to bring me back to this tremendous event. We'll definitely be back next year.
The following week, we went camping at Glen Spean, in a very fancy bell tent.
We've got an ambition to see a lot more of Scotland now that we have a car of our own, and camping is a very good way to do it, since there's amazing sites all over the country. But we are somewhat kit-deficient, so we started out by sleeping in a fancy tent someone else put up for us. We also had a really wonderful afternoon wandering around Ariundle Nature Reserve, which is a fragment of Scotland's temperate rainforest. We even crossed a river barefoot, which was very welcome in the heat.
After that I had a few more days off at home, filled with a mix of reading, sleeping, a bit of sea-swimming and some (very gentle) gardening. It was very much needed and wow it's amazing how much better I feel with eight or nine hours of sleep a night. I should probably take some kind of lesson from that and go to bed earlier.
While I was off, I also signed up for Strava, mostly because a few old friends and colleagues were on there and when I've had a shit run and I'm completely exhausted, a wee thumbs up from a pal that I got out and did it anyway genuinely does help. I've been doing weight workouts since last year (and fixed my dodgy ankle and shoulder in the process) and finally got into a regular cardio habit this January which seems to have finally stuck this time, so if you're also trying to get a bit healthier, do feel free to request a follow if we've met (I'm afraid I won't generally be following back people I haven't met).
The following week, I met up with fellow writer Stark Holborn when she passed through Edinburgh on her way to Cologne and Gamescom.
I met Stark a few years ago at Cymera Festival, where I got the chance to tell her that her book TEN LOW (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) had got me out of a huge reading and creative slump. Since then I've never missed an opportunity to push it on people (hence the hype man comment above) and Stark and I have, very happily, become friends. We had a lovely chat about writing, games, TV adaptations and the travails of publishing. When you're trying to figure out how to make a creative life work, having friends who are doing the same thing makes all the difference.
That week, Valerie and I also had a very nice birthday dinner at the excellent Waterside Bistro in the nearby town of Haddington, which is one of our favourite places. Forgot to take any pictures though.
The last week of the month has been pretty work-focused, as I got stuck in with my edits - more on that below. But overall, while it's been a quiet month, I've still managed to get a bit of rest, read a bunch of books, go camping and meet up with friends. And I didn't go to a single Fringe show. A few years ago I'd have considered that a criminally missed opportunity, but Edinburgh in August can be A Lot and I went to the Fringe (and Book Festival) every year for a decade when we lived in the city centre. So these days I only go if something really catches my eye. I'd love to go to the Book Festival a bit more next year, if I'm not saving cash for Montreal Worldcon.
Not a single word drafted this month - it's been all about the edits.
Usually, when I'm sent a set of novel edits, I have a fairly tight turnaround to get them back to my editor. This is often somewhere around the 2-3 week mark. However, I knew I really, really needed some proper time away from screens in the first half of the month, so I negotiated with my editor that I wouldn't pick up the edits until I was fully back in the swing of things.
That meant I only worked for half the month, but it also meant that the time I did spend working was very focused and productive.
I actually had two sets of edits to do when I came back from my time off. The first was for a novelette commissioned by Hawberk Press, which should be launching later this year. This is the first piece of original SF short fiction I've sold in a while, so I was relieved that the editor, Mike, really enjoyed it. I did a nice clean pass through the draft in a single writing session and bundled it back off to them.
Then I set about Project VAULT, which is my codename for another spy thriller I've been working on since last December. My editor at Headline Books was very happy with it and the edits were 'light', though in practice that still meant 200-odd comments, four or five structural points to address and a couple of thousand edits overall. This is what the draft looked like when I finished it last Friday:
I did have a brilliant time working on this edit - my editor's notes were great and I was also working from notes from two of my critique partners (Nick Binge and Lia Holland) which really sharpened things up. And I genuinely enjoyed reading the novel back, which is always reassuring. This book isn't technically announced yet, but you can find it should you go searching on various online retailers. Look out for an official announcement (and hopefully cover) very soon.
I turned VAULT in on the 27th, which means there's only really today left in the month to work on writing. It's a bank holiday, so I won't be going too hard, but I think I will do a little bit of notebook noodling about upcoming projects. I'm trying to get back in the habit of working things out on paper, because there's something about it that makes my brain work differently than typing bulleted lists into various notes apps. Something about the way the pen slows me down, and that I can draw things if I need to, really gets the old cylinders firing.
The other thing that happened in September is that our latest Narrative Damage campaign, 'From The Dust', was released over on Youtube and on the Narrative Damage podcast feed. This is a Delta Green scenario (think X-Files with a side of eldritch weirdness) and it was tremendous fun to record. Start with the first episode on Youtube for the full effect.
Marco Rinaldi, our gamemaster, went above and beyond on the production quality for this series. Give it a go, I bet you'll love it.
After a couple of quieter months, September is going to be a very exciting change!
I'm really, really looking forward to Bloody Scotland this year. I'm appearing on a panel on the Saturday with Paul Warner and Chris Merritt (Kim Sherwood can unfortunately no longer make it). We're going to be chaired by Paul Burke, who writes for CrimeTime and produces the excellent CrimeTime FM podcast, among other things.
I should also find out soon whether I'm on the shortlist for the McIlvanney Prize, after being longlisted in July. Last year I was standing beside my friend Tariq Ashkanani when he won the McIlvanney and I won the Debut Prize, so it's an incredible honour to be in the longlist for the overall best novel (Tariq is too, for the second year in a row). We'll see if I make the shortlist - it's an extremely stacked field of competition this year.
Regardless, I'll be at the ceremony on the Friday night to hand over this year's Debut Prize trophy and I can't wait to see who wins.
I will be around all weekend, so if you're coming along and you read the newsletter, please do say hello if you see me. I'm always very happy to chat, sign books and generally waffle on in the bar of The Golden Lion.
The following weekend I'll be heading to Braemar Literary Festival, where I'm going to be taking part in a community event on the Friday evening. Precise timing and venue to be confirmed, but keep an eye on my social media and website for confirmation. I'm also looking forward to that - I've never been, but Braemar is a beautiful place and I've heard some great things about the festival.
A bit more on the old gogglebox and book-wise this month, since I had some time off. Some absolute crackers too.
Reading
A very good month for reading:
- BECOMING A WRITER, STAYING A WRITER by J. Michael Straczynski - I picked this up a few months ago, but hadn't managed to get into it, and I was in the mood for a bit of inspiration during my break. This book really delivered - there's not many writing books that are primarily career-focused (rather than craft-focused) and that are also aimed at mid-career writers (Jeff Vandermeer's BOOKLIFE is the only other one I can think of). And this book was particularly inspirational because of JMS's multi-decade, multi-stranded career. I have ambitions in that direction myself and I finished this book much more confident I might be able to make them happen. (Bookshop, Amazon, Waterstones)
- CRY PILOT by Joel Dane - I'm still reading this and having a brilliant time with it, though it's been shoved aside a couple of times by proofs with a deadline attached. But the fact I keep coming back to it is evidence in itself that it's a great book. Definitely one for folks with a bit of a grounding in SF - I'd imagine the sheer volume of neologisms and ideas might be a bit overwhelming if you're not steeped in the genre. But it works on several levels - as a great piece of military SF, as a speculative novel with a really ambitious worldbuilding approach and on the line, as a well-written adventure novel with an ensemble cast. Recommended. (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon)
- LONDON STATION by David McCloskey - After I included David in my roundup of my favourite spy writers in the Express in July, his UK publisher Swift Press very kindly sent me a proof of this, his fifth novel and the fourth in what I'm just going to call the Artemis Proctor series (since she's the only recurring and by far the most memorable character in all of them). And boy, it does not disappoint. It also doesn't pull its punches when it comes to the UK security services and Artemis Proctor remains my current favourite character in fiction, full stop. She very much brings a baseball bat to the cricket match, so to speak. (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon)
- JOE COUNTRY by Mick Herron - I've been reading Mick's Slough House series just ahead of the TV series for the last few years, but I got jump-scared by the trailer for Season 6 (they are really firing through the seasons, apparently due to Gary Oldman applying his star power as a producer) and realised I was a bit behind, so I dived in last week. It is excellent - these books are all great, but they're also steadily getting better as I read them. (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon)
Watching
It's a month for watching ongoing seasons, apparently:
- We finished PARADISE, which had a couple of very effective episodes and a couple that felt less compelling, but overall we really enjoyed it. I'm not sure where the show is going to go in its third season, but it'll be interesting to find out.
- We finished off Season 3 of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, though I was completely convinced that we'd missed some episodes, because the season finale didn't feel very... well, finale-ish? A lot happened, there was a big battle, but for some reason I assumed there'd be more. Still, it was a lot of fun and we'll probably show up for season 4.
- We're also still working on SILO season 3. I found the second season a bit frustratingly wheel-spinny, so I'm hopeful this one will start to shift the actual plot along a bit. The first couple of episodes featuring extended memory loss isn't making me too confident about that, but it's well made enough that we'll carry on.
- Speaking of shaky beginnings, we also started on THE TESTAMENTS, which is based on the sequel/same universe followup to THE HANDMAID'S TALE. The opening episode had a super clunky text prologue, which I guess was necessary if someone had absolutely no idea what they were watching. But it improved rapidly after that. It's a very interesting shift in perspective (since most of the characters have grown up within the Gilead system) and some stellar acting from the mostly pretty young cast. I'm intrigued to see if it follows the same arc as the book. The flashback episodes never get less horrifying though.
Playing
Spies, special ops and cowboys...
- I finished off 007: FIRST LIGHT and had a really brilliant time with it. Great main storyline, some incredible locations and genuinely fun espionage action. I do feel like I barely scratched the surface of the various tools and gadgets in the game - this kind of game often suffers from the fact that you only need one gun/tool to get through the whole game and there's no real incentive to experiment. I have been playing the 'Tacsim' challenges after the main game, though they're much smaller scale and more linear than the HITMAN: FREELANCER mode that absolutely ate my gaming time for a good year in 2024. I might give this another playthrough in a few months, just to experiment a bit.
- I returned to an open-world game that I hugely enjoyed after it got a free update: GHOST RECON: WILDLANDS. This is a brilliant single/multi-player shooter that's lots of fun and has some brilliant mechanics. They've done a bunch of stability and texture work to polish it up for the PS5 and released a new (fairly short) series of missions, but it's still showing its age a fair bit. Still, it was a good nostalgia trip to jump into for a day or two.
- I also jumped back into my favourite cowboy simulator, RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2, after watching the GTA VI Extended Look gave me a sudden hankering for a really deep, involved open-world game. It's still absolutely gobsmacking as a game even eight years after it came out and I immediately sank right back into trotting around on my horse, robbing stagecoaches and playing poker. Just a brilliant game. It will probably keep me going until November, when GTA VI comes out. Although it might also be time for another CYBERPUNK 2077 playthrough...
The internet is a bad place, but there's also some pretty great stuff on there.
- An excellent primer from agent and author Kate McKean on what not to freak out about in the publishing process.
- A very kind review of my book SOLITARY AGENTS included in Paul Burke's recent summer roundup of spy reads.
- An excellent piece from The Honest Editor about communication in publishing (or occasional lack thereof).
- A great interview with Olivie Blake (THE ATLAS SIX) on the Page One Podcast.
- A fascinating interview about multi-strand careers with Suyi Davies over on SFFAddicts.
- Also from The Honest Editor, a good piece on how blurbs and blurbing works in publishing (spoiler, it's complicated).
- A fun interview with m'friend and colleague Nick Binge over at FanFiAddict.
- A fascinating panel interview on The Town about the differences between UK and US television production.
- A great interview with literary agent Oli Munson on the Page One Podcast.
The summer is wending to a close. Up here in Scotland it hasn't been anywhere near as baking hot as down south, mostly just humid, cloudy, occasionally rainy with the odd day of bright sun. Although I did have a nice couple of weeks off, I've also not done a lot of the things I usually associate with summertime, like travel or heading to the festivals in Edinburgh.
Instead, it's been a mix of work and rest, rest and work, and lots more reading than I thought I'd get done. But that's been a restorative thing too, especially as I'm working my way through some books that have been on my shelves for some time. It feels good to fill the well in this time when I'm mostly editing books of my own. When I jump back into drafting in September, I'm hoping that inspiration and energy carries through to the rest of the year.
I'm also looking forward to an autumn season of events, a couple more holidays (I... uh, didn't take much of a break in the first half of the year) and, if I play my cards right, finishing at least one more novel draft and starting a third. I've got 60,000 words of SHARD and I'm hoping I'll finish it by November, leaving the last month of the year to lay the groundwork for another spy novel. We shall see.
If you're back from your holidays and staring down the barrel of a fourth quarter of the year without any time off, solidarity. The end of the year will be here before you know it. And if you're working on projects of your own, I hope you're able to use this last third of the year to finish what you start, polish what you finish and get it out into the world. Good luck and remember to rest.
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.