The Decrypt - July 2025

Hello!

It's time for another issue of The Decrypt, my monthly newsletter on all things writing, publishing, craft and media.

So, uh, it's been a good month! Once again so much so that my attempt to rank the good things has failed and I'm going to have to resort to just going by chronology. But in short I did some amazing events, I won an award for my debut novel and I got to announce my second novel!

Grab a drink of some description, hot or cold depending on location and preference, then settle in and let's get to it.

It's been a really busy month for events!

I started July by chairing historian Iain MacGregor for Night Owl Books at his East Lothian event, held at the amazing Harbour Chapel in Dunbar.

We had a fantastic evening and a really wide-ranging discussion, as well as a good chance to natter about the industry - Iain is also the Head of Non-fiction for the publisher Head of Zeus, so I got some brilliant advice about events, promotion and balancing a writing career with the day job.

Next up was a group interview with the brilliant Scots Whay Hae! Podcast as part of the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize.

Honestly one of the best parts of being shortlisted for this award has been meeting the other writers. I already knew Claire Wilson (we're both represented by DHH Literary and met last year - at Bloody Scotland!) but the rest of the group is amazing too. We have a group chat now, since meeting in Stirling.

After that I did a livestream interview alongside Foday Mannah with the UK Crime Book Club, although I misunderstood the invite and showed up thirty minutes late, a bit flustered. But it was still a great conversation.

On Wednesday 16th, I did a private event for Arcadia Abroad, who I visited previously in February for an author talk. This time around it was a half-day with their Creative Writing MFA students, including a walking tour of Edinburgh's Old Town and writing workshop. It was great fun. Of course, I forgot to take any pictures.

Then!

Well.

Time for Harrogate, aka the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. I first went to Harrogate last year, just before A RELUCTANT SPY came out. I was very much there just to hang out, meet people and go to panels and I had an amazing time. This time, however, I was going as an award-shortlisted author with a book out. It was quite a different experience, but no less wonderful. Significantly more wonderful, in fact.

I went down a day earlier than last year, for the award ceremony on the Thursday night at the Old Swan Hotel, where the winner of the Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Outstanding Contribution Award and the McDermid Debut Award were to be announced. And, well, this happened:

I know that it's kind of a cliché to say 'Oh, I didn't expect to win' but I really, truly was taken by surprise. I did write a thank you speech (though it felt like tempting fate to do so) mostly because I've seen enough people get up on stage without one and then forget to thank very important people that I really, really didn't want to do the same. But it was incredibly surreal to actually read it out. Walking up to the stage felt like an out-of-body experience and I didn't fully come down from it until a day or so later.

It sort of started to sink in when we were up on stage after the ceremony for press photos and I found myself standing beside Abir Mukherjee (who won the Crime Novel Of The Year for HUNTED) and Elly Griffiths (who won the Outstanding Contribution Award). Everyone was so lovely and I don't think I've shaken so many hands in such a short amount of time in my life.

One of the things you learn pretty quick in a writing career is that there's a big difference between goals - things you can actually control and work towards - and dreams. You can set out to write the best book you're capable of, but you can't really set out to win an award. There's too many factors at play, not least who you're up against. And it was an amazing shortlist that I already felt so proud to be included in.

Still can't quite believe it, if I'm honest. But the cask on the shelf behind me is apparently real.

A couple of other high points were a really nice lunch with my agent and several of his fellow clients, signing books at Imagined Things and Criminally Good Books and, of course helping my friend and fellow author Alessandra Ranelli wish her dad a happy 75th birthday while we promoted her book MURDER AT THE HOTEL ORIENT.

The rest of the weekend passed in a massive blur of panels, very late nights, not much sleep (my second hotel was unfortunately right above a very loud nightclub) and meeting so many readers, book bloggers, publishing folks and other writers. It was everything I'd hoped for and more.

Then, a couple of days later, I got to announce my second novel with Headline Books! I've been sitting on this particular secret for a long time (this is very usual in publishing, the sweet spot in my genre for announcing a book is 6-9 months ahead of publication) so it's a real relief to have the news out there.

Look out for a cover reveal in the very near future. I'm really pleased with it and I hope fans of the Legends Programme will be too.

After that bit of excitement, I had a bit of a break looking after my friend's dog for a few days, then a quiet few days before the last event of the month, which is tonight at Blackwell's in Edinburgh - one of several launch events for MK Hardy's THE NEEDFIRE, published by Solaris. I was lucky enough to beta-read this book as it was being drafted and I cannot wait to see Mo and Erin talk about it.

Crikey. What a month!

If June was a month of planned rest and a tiny bit of outlining, July has been a month of lumpy progress and low-ish word counts. That's not all that surprising (see above) but I sometimes have to fight quite hard to stave off a bit of the old panic that used to set in whenever I felt I was 'losing' my 'momentum'.

These days, I know for a fact (because I've done it multiple times) that I will always get back on the writing horse, and that lower word counts around events and tightened availability will be offset by higher word counts and good progress at other times. But the little voice of doubt still surfaces.

To put this in context, I've done about 11,000 words this month and worked for about 20 hours (give or take) on writing. But for the year so far, I've drafted 122k and cut 30k in edits. So I'm not exactly slacking. I'm 45% ahead of my drafting total for the entirety of 2024, with five full months remaining in the year, so I'm reasonably confident that I'll be back around my total for 2023 (of around 177k) or possibly even back to 2022 levels (201k) by Christmas.

It's important, I think, when you start worrying about any one particular day, week or month in this game to think on a longer scale - seasons and years are where the writing actually adds up. And if you think long-term, panic and pointless self-reproach is far less likely.

August is going to be a relatively quiet month. I'll be heading to Glasgow this coming Saturday to sign copies in various bookshops around the city, then doing a tour on Sunday of Fife, Tayside and Perthshire with my friend and fellow author Gareth Brown, author of THE BOOK OF DOORS and the forthcoming THE SOCIETY OF UNKNOWABLE OBJECTS.

But after that, with the exception of possibly going to some Edinburgh Book Festival events in town, it's going to be a month for family and friends, with as little travel and book stuff as possible. I might stealth-sign a few copies while I'm passing through Edinburgh, but August is my brief window of calm and writing time before Bloody Scotland in September - (a lot) more on that in the next newsletter. I'm doing two panels and I'm up for the Debut Prize, so it's going to be a heck of a weekend.

Do also stay tuned to my daynotes and social media for some bits and pieces of exciting news though - while I'm not doing any events in August, things will still be happening with both A RELUCTANT SPY and SOLITARY AGENTS.

Reading

I am once again beta reading and reading for events, but I'm also keeping a few other books going too. It's been a spy-heavy month.

• Berlin Wolves by James Conway - This is the spy book I've been reading to blurb. I met James at Capital Crime and we had a good natter about writing contemporary spy thrillers, so I asked to take a look at his, and I'm very glad I did - multiple time periods, Cold War fallout, up-to-the-minute covert shenanigans - I'm really enjoying it. It's not on submission yet, but I suspect this one will go quick when it does go out to editors, because it has a hell of a hook and blistering pace. If you like my work, this is one to look out for I think.
• The Power Of The Dog by Don Winslow - I'm still reading this, slowly, because it's a bit of a chunky book. Still really enjoying it. Still finding parts of it incredibly bleak (but it's a cartel novel, so that's understandable).
• A Spy Alone by Charles Beaumont - I picked this up on Audible and I'm also really enjoying it. Very gritty and realistic, but with a streak of humour in it that I really like.

Watching

This month we've mostly been finishing stuff off:

• We finished MURDERBOT and I thought it was a very fine adaptation. All of the changes made sense, the tone of the books was captured very well and the minor differences in how I visualised it versus how it appeared on screen didn't take me out of the story. Excellent stuff.
• We finished Season 4 of THE BEAR and it was fantastic. The last couple of episodes in particular were astonishing TV. I'm really intrigued to see where the fifth season goes.
• We finished the last season of THE HANDMAID'S TALE. I thought the penultimate episode was excellent, but I really felt the finale was by turns rushed and maudlin and a little too focused in tying everything off with a neat little bow. I'm glad they got to tell the complete story they wanted to tell, but I also think it could have been a season shorter (the last two seasons in particular felt like they were going in circles) and didn't quite stick the landing.
• I saw 28 YEARS LATER at the cinema with a friend and really enjoyed it. Impeccable post-apocalyptic/folk horror vibes. It veered into the absurdist in the second half but in many ways it was a pretty clear return to the gonzo feel of the first film. I'm glad I saw it in the cinema, the apocalyptic landscapes were amazing on the big screen.
• We started watching DEPT Q on Netflix and, despite the brain-breaking TV geography of many of the shots (which make zero sense if you know Edinburgh well) it's pretty compelling stuff.

Playing

Here's what's new with the pew pew pew.

• Still playing WARZONE, although I made the mistake of buying the battlepass, which turns the game into a kind of joyless grind. Won't be doing that again.
• I've started playing the odd round of HARDSPACE: SHIPBREAKER (which I've completed twice) because it's an intensely zen game about cutting up giant spaceships. One of those fantastic games for putting on a podcast and just zapping things for a while.

It's been another good month on the ol' internets.

• This is a very useful guide from Dave Cook on running a comics Kickstarter, but I think a lot of it could be applied to other kinds of creative projects.
• I've been linking to The Honest Editor a lot (including at least twice more below) but they're just really good posts! Here's a great one on how book auctions work.
• And another on how to write a synopsis.
• And this most recent post interviewing the PR director for Penguin Random House. You should probably just subscribe, honestly.
• A great post from Beth Reads Crime on what it's like to visit Harrogate.
• A really interesting piece about giving, receiving and structuring feedback from Brandon Taylor over at Sweater Weather.
• Loved this travelogue/biographical piece about John Le Carré's time in Corfu from The Atlantic.
• It's been a couple of weeks since I read it but I'm still thinking about this piece from Caroline Crampton on why she's quit social media as part of her writing career.
• In a similar vein, this post about 'deleting your second brain' and the obsession with personal knowledge management also struck a chord.
• Finally, I did an interview with Scottish Field about some of the books I love.

I know that June is technically the precise middle of the year, but to me July has always felt like the actual pivot point. In June we start our swing back towards the cooler months and shorter days, but it's July when you first notice that slight dimness a little earlier, the temperature ranges shifting, fruit beginning to ripen.

I'm glad to be going into a quieter month, after two very exciting and busy months in a row. I've got editing to do, a lot of books to read, a new novel to draft and a garden to get presentable before we really get into barbecue season. But I'm also looking forward to the cooler months, to the extremely exciting weekend of Bloody Scotland and to being able to wear a jacket again outside.

For a lot of people this is peak holiday time, with kids off school and temperatures soaring. If you've had the chance for a bit of a break, I hope it's left you feeling rested. And if you've been running at a hundred miles an hour, I hope there's a patch just ahead where you can stop, take a breath and enjoy the summer sunshine and a very good book.

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.