The Decrypt - January 2026

Somewhat incredibly, this year will mark six years since I started writing a monthly newsletter (the actual anniversary will be in June). Which is pretty bonkers. At least 12 monthly newsletters a year (and a few one-offs when exciting things happened) with this one being number fifty one - there are possibly more I haven't tagged properly. I'd work out the number of words that is, but I have a feeling it would be perilously close to a novel's worth and I don't really want to think about that amount of typing.

In any case, it's a new year and we've seen off one twelfth of it, well done us. This is The Decrypt, my monthly newsletter on all things writing, publishing, craft and media. It may not feel like it after a month of incessant rain and horrible news on every channel and feed, but the light is coming back. Grab your beverage of choice and let's get into it.

It has been a very quiet month on the general events front, offset only some nice podcasting, online articles and a couple of things right at the end of the month.

Mid-month the wonderful spy fiction enthusiast website Spybrary posted their interview with me and new host Bryan Boling.

I really, really enjoyed this conversation with Bryan and I heartily recommend the podcast if you love a bit of spy fiction. The same day, I also found out that Tim Shipman (the chief political correspondent for the Times and also a huge spy fiction aficionado) had included my next book, SOLITARY AGENTS, in his list of ten spy thrillers he can't wait to read this year. An absolute honour.

On Thursday of this week, I recorded an episode of the Writer's Routine podcast with Dan Simpson, which should be out fairly soon. I've been listening to this excellent podcast for years, so I really enjoyed the conversation. If you're a writer, or just curious about how the writing actually gets done (and if you read my newsletter, one or the other is likely) then it's well worth a look.

And today, of course, I'm at Stockport Noir!

Here's where I confess I actually wrote this newsletter a couple of days in advance, so as you read this I will be enjoying this excellent one-day festival. I haven't been before, so I'll be figuring it all out from scratch, but I'm really looking forward to being on stage with Ruth Ware, Abigail Dean and Sam Holland, chaired by Kelly Peck. And, of course, meeting lots of other authors, readers and bookish folk. I can't wait!

The other major thing that happened in January was me going part-time at my day job. So far it's been marvellous, although I'm still adjusting to a) exactly how I'll structure the one day a week I now have for writing and b) what's a sustainable amount and type of work expectation to place on one day a week. At least part of the reason for going part-time was to balance my writing better with everything else in my life, so it will somewhat defeat the purpose if I just massively ramp up an already very busy schedule.

It's been an excellent and steady month on that front, with nineteen days of drafting, one day of editing and approximately 25,000 words written. I say approximately because I'm writing this a couple of days in advance and I'm hoping to get some words written tomorrow and then on Friday when I take the train to Manchester. I like trains. Excellent places for writing. Nothing motivates like spotty wifi.

All of that work has been on Project VAULT, an as-yet unannounced new book. It's a lot of fun so far to write, and I've had some very encouraging feedback from my critique partners, which is always a good sign. I've hit a little over 35k on the draft total (I wrote 10k on it before Christmas) and, I think, survived the first of my two usual wobbles on this project.

It's actually startling how predictable my two moments of doubt hit on pretty much every project. The first comes around the 30k mark (so, this week, for me) and is usually because I look at the whole project and what I've written so far and simultaneously wonder how the hell I'm going to write a whole book and also worry that I don't have enough word count left to actually tell the story I want to tell. The truth is between those two points.

The second moment of doubt is somewhere between 70k and 80k, when I look at all the different plot threads and character arcs and everything that's appeared, expectedly and unexpectedly, in the course of the drafting. And then put my head in my hands and wonder how the hell I'm going to pull all of this together into a coherent ending.

It's a good thing these points are so predictable, because now I know to just carry on writing in both cases. Trust the process and my own experiences.

But, for now, heading into February, I'm on the exciting upslope of a new book that's coalescing into something I'm really enjoying. And I've got at least a couple of months until the serious doubts surface again.

February is going to be another quiet-ish month, although I am going down to London for a day to do some bookish things.

I'm also going to be teaching at Napier University here in Edinburgh for a couple of days again, which I'm really looking forward to. This will be my third year of speaking to the students on the Creative Writing MA and it's always a highlight of the year. This year I'll be talking about writing and selling short fiction and also the importance of community and community-building to a writing career.

Finally I'll be recording a couple more podcasts. One is under wraps for now, but the other is with the marvellous Binge Reading Book Club, co-hosted by m'friend and colleague Nicholas Binge and Hugo Powell. We're going to be discussing one of my favourite novels, EXCESSION by Iain M. Banks (Bookshop.org, Amazon). It's going to be great fun.

And, of course, the main effort will be trying to get around another 20,000 words on Project VAULT, while hoping for more. I'm ahead of schedule, but I want to keep up that momentum.

Reading

More beta reading and quite a few proofs this month, but also some stuff from the ol' bookshelves as well.

• A Spy In The Blood by Paul Warner - I finished this one off in the first few days of the month and enjoyed it a lot! An excellent spy story with a strong character arc and a good mix of tradecraft, tension and thrills. It came out on Friday, so grab yourself a copy sharpish (Bookshop, Amazon)
• Excession by Iain M. Banks - I read this with great relish, after selecting it for the Binge Reading Book Club (see above). I think this is my third time reading it and it really, really held up. It's a lot of fun to read a book like this at different ages. As a teen the worldbuilding and concepts blew my mind. As a twenty-something SF fan, the characterisation and humanity of the themes were the main draw. And now, in my forties, as a writer myself, I'm enjoying the whole thing again, but with an extra layer of appreciation for the craft of it. Brilliant stuff and I'm glad I picked it (Bookshop, Amazon).
• Pagans by James Alistair Henry - I picked this one up after hearing the author on a podcast and thinking the pitch sounded fantastic - a crime thriller set in an alternate British Isles that was never Christianised or unified. So far, it's fantastic. It's out in paperback as of Friday (Bookshop, Amazon).
• Scythe by Neil Shusterman - I picked up this SF novel on Audible on the basis of a friend's recommendation and it had me well hooked from the first line. A really interesting use of paratexts and point of view and worldbuilding that is considerably more compelling and well thought through than many similar novels. I'm only a few chapters in, but really enjoying it (Bookshop, Amazon).

Watching

A pleasantly varied month of screentime:

• We finished off MOONHAVEN, and really enjoyed it. It didn't quite live up to the absolutely fascinating opening episode (becoming a fairly standard conspiracy thriller/murder mystery over the course of the season) but the world, the script and the fantastic production design all worked together to keep us engaged right to the end.
• We finished Season 3 of THE DIPLOMAT, which did an excellent job of rattling along at a breakneck pace throughout. Rory Kinnear was fantastic in it and it ended on yet another staggering cliffhanger. Good stuff.
• Like everyone else, we watched THE TRAITORS this month. It's the first time we've watched any of them and we had a great time, although I think once Harriet was gone the deductive reasoning of the Faithful took a very sharp nosedive.
• We also started the new season of THE NIGHT MANAGER, which I have mixed feelings about. The first couple of episodes felt a bit like many other mid-tier pretty destination thrillers, though it has improved markedly with the return of some characters from the first season. It's also not explicitly based on the book's main plot (though is taking many elements from the book that were omitted from the first season), which I think will upset a few Le Carré purists. But I'm enjoying it.
• I watched A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE on Netflix, Kathryn Bigelow's 'oh god we're all gonna die' nuclear war movie. It was technically excellent and conceptually horrifying, while also a bit undermined by its own ending. The repeating timeline structure worked pretty well though.
• By contrast we really enjoyed FRANKENSTEIN from Guillermo Del Toro. It got a bit of a slating on release for the surreal, glossy quality of some of the CGI and apparently being over-long, but I enjoyed it and thought Jacob Elordi was particularly good early in the film, with a very effective physical performance as the Creature.

Playing

Still on the ARC train...

• I'm still playing ARC RAIDERS, which just released another update. Which is a good thing, because I had hit a bit of a plateau, running out of quests to do and getting shot a lot by campers. I shall give it another go when I get back from Stockport.
• I've also been playing a bit of GHOST OF TSUSHIMA, because I quite fancy the sequel GHOST OF YOTEI, but I realised I hadn't actually finished the DLC for the first game that I picked up in a sale a while ago. This experience has been another example of why I think all games should ask you if you want a quick refresher on the controls if it detects your last save game was more than a month or so ago. Because I kept accidentally dying and falling off things when I hit the wrong button. Still a beautiful game though.

Another excellent month of internet:

• Absolutely loved this in-depth interview with Adrian Tchaikovsky on How I Write. Really thoughtful questions and extended, detailed answers.
• This video from The Overview Effekt is also a beautiful and fascinating exploration of orbital dynamics and what distances actually mean in interstellar space.
• The Honest Editor had a great post answering the question of what, exactly, midlist really means.
• I enjoyed this retrospective of the work of Agatha Christie on Quick Book Reviews.
• A great interview with literary agent John Baker over at Write and Wrong.
• An excellent free talk on publicising your book, from Authors Talk and publicist Kindall Gant.
• Loved hearing my friend Lyndsey Croal talking about her writing journey over at the Page One podcast.
• A very interesting breakdown of how much a non-fiction book earned from author Laura McKowen. Always curious about how different parts of the publishing industry work.
• A great post from John French on establishing a creative routine.

I know that 'Blue Monday' is a twenty-year old marketing campaign for a travel agency and not, actually, a thing, but like all good advertising it definitely resonated with an actual thing that people feel. In the UK at least, January is indeed a pretty gloomy month.

This January has been no exception to that, with a lot of cloud, rain, wind and bad news. I personally had a fairly stressful month for a number of reasons, and the grim weather and grimmer newsfeeds really didn't help with that.

In months like this one, I've found that writing kind of shifts into a different mental place for me, becoming both an escape and a source of reassurance and control when other things are tough to manage. No matter what else is going on, I can get some words done, nudge the story forward a few notches and feel like something is within my control. It's worth remembering that, in happier times and warmer months, when writing can occasionally feel like never-ending self-imposed homework.

I hope that your first month of 2026 has been a good one. And if it hasn't, I hope that reading, or writing, or making something with your hands has given you a reprieve from worrying and dealing with * gestures broadly * everything.

Remember, the light is coming back. Here in the UK, we'll gain over three and a half minutes of daylight every day in February. Keep your eyes on the sunrise and keep on going.

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.