Hello again readers!
After the hecticness of June, July was a far quieter month, mostly because I didn't make it to the Harrogate crime festival, which was going to be the busy middle of a busy month. In the end, I couldn't make it, and I also took a couple of weeks off from social media, daynotes and everything else, weathered a couple of heatwaves and touched some grass. Knowing when to take a break is half the battle, and I'm glad I did.
But that didn't mean the writing stopped. I made slow-but-steady progress and laid the groundwork for the edits I know are in the pipeline. And, of course, though this edition (and next month's, which is similarly event-light) is going to be shorter than usual, I still have plenty to yap about. So, it's time for another edition of The Decrypt, my monthly newsletter on all things writing, publishing, craft and media. I'm approaching 60k on a secret novel, my Secret Things are still in flux, I'm anticipating a much-needed actual week off and then a whole bunch of editing and I'm getting ready for a busy last quarter of the year, kicking off with Bloody Scotland in less than two months.
Let's get to it.
The month started with some really terrific news, which was that I was lucky enough to be on the longlist for the McIlvanney Prize for my second novel, SOLITARY AGENTS.
My friend Tariq Ashkanani won the McIlvanney at Bloody Scotland last year at the same time as I won the Debut Prize, and he's back on the longlist this year alongside me and a who's who of Scottish crime and thriller writing, from debuts to veterans I've been reading since my teens:
It's a genuine honour to be longlisted and I'm really, really looking forward to the festival this year. We'll find out in early September who's on the six-strong shortlist, so I'm crossing my fingers.
The Friday of that week, I headed to Waterstones Kirkcaldy to talk about SOLITARY AGENTS and had a really nice, intimate event.
This was my first book event where I popped along myself and was interviewed by a bookseller (in this case the wonderful James) rather than by a writer friend in front of a crowd mostly composed of family and other writer friends. And it went really well! My friend Lorraine did come along, very kindly, for moral support, as she lives in Fife, but everyone else there was a reader who liked the look of the event. Plus everyone who came along asked a question at the end and everyone bought a book! So I'll call that a success.
On the 10th of July, I got a very nice review in the Express from Matt Nixson, which featured this absolute banger of a pull quote:
The ever-inventive Goodman is one of our finest new spy writers and Solitary Agents is perfect for fans of Mick Herron, David McCloskey and Alex Gerlis.
I'll take that!
That week I also received, unpacked, signed and repackaged more than fifty copies of the second book for Goldsboro Books. Huge thanks to Pavla and her team at Goldsboro for organising this shipment, since I couldn't make it to the planned signing back in June. You can pick up a signed first edition copy from Goldsboro now, but they appear to be going fast.
Later that week, the Express also put up an article I wrote for them, counting down my current eight favourite spy authors. It was great fun to write and I think I got a good balance of genre veterans and newer writers. Of course, I could have listed ten more, but you only get so much space, even online.
Speaking of lists, the ever-brilliant Spybrary posted the first iteration of Tim Shipman's Best Spy Books of 2026 (it's a living list he updates through the year) and my novel SOLITARY AGENTS came in at number 3! I met Tim at Capital Crime in June and we had a really lovely catchup over coffee, so I'm really, really pleased that he enjoyed my second book even more than my first. And to be listed third behind Michael Idov and David McCloskey, two of the current allstars of the genre, is quite a thing. I have a proof of the book Tim rated so highly, LONDON STATION, apparently on the way and I can't wait to dig into it.
The rest of the month has passed pretty quietly, with my local paper doing a story on the reception for book 2, but otherwise mostly just me quietly writing another book. It's been a welcome respite from the heat and busyness of the last couple of months, and it's good to be at home. I had a lot of FOMO about missing Harrogate, and the chance to catch up with writing friends, readers and publishing folk. But many of those people will be at Bloody Scotland in less than two months time, so I'll survive missing one festival.
It's been a slow-and-steady month on the words production front, doing about 26 hours of writing over the course of the month, adding up to a little over 13,000 words.
So, about half my usual productivity rate. But it's still 13,000 more words than I had at the start of the month. And if I've learned one thing over the past few years, it's that peaks matter a lot less than the distance between peak and trough. If your overall average output stays relatively consistent (rather than crashing between massive spikes of output), over time you're going to produce more and better work, more sustainably. For various reasons this was a low-energy, low-speed month. But the work still got moved forward.
Next month I definitely have edits coming in (possibly two sets) so progress on this particular piece (Project DRIFT) will slow or stop entirely while I handle those. But because I kept going this month, I'll hopefully have a decent amount of momentum to pick up DRIFT again once the edits are in the can.
I'm also definitely taking an actual break in early August, with some proper time off and away from screens. I did a bit of that on the marketing side this month, but even though I wasn't posting online I was still (slowly) continuing to draft. But I can feel the summer burnout hovering, so a week or two away from it entirely is definitely called for.
It's an extremely quiet month on the events front coming up, although that's largely because Edinburgh is basically one big month-long event in August, so I will probably be going along to a few Fringe shows, heading to the Edinburgh Book Festival for a panel or two and hanging out with friends and family.
However, on Wednesday 5th August, I will be heading to North Berwick for Fringe By The Sea, a coastal spin-off from the Edinburgh Festivals in East Lothian. I'm chairing Doug Johnstone for a 20 year retrospective of his career to date:
Doug is a crime writer, science fiction author, musician and creative powerhouse, so I'm really, really looking forward to meeting him and chatting about his career so far. Grab your ticket and come along!
September is going to be busy, so I'm looking forward to a bit of a summer break before that.
Another light month, media-wise, and also because I paused daynotes for a bit I can't actually remember some of the TV we watched. But there was some cool stuff.
Reading
Just a few this month:
- THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER, by Stephen Graham Jones - I picked this up at Cymera Festival after seeing the author being interviewed. And I'd heard plenty of buzz about both him as a writer and this book in particular. It didn't disappoint - a real masterclass in voice, point of view, nested narratives and some gloriously OTT vampiric violence. Just an absolute cracker of a book. (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon)
- GHOST NOTES by Doug Johnstone - This is Doug's twentieth book and the seventh in the Skelf series, about a family who run an undertakers and a private investigation business in Edinburgh. It's also the first of Doug's books that I've read and I'm having a great time - even though I've not read the previous six instalments, he does a brilliant job of giving me enough emotional and plot context to follow what's going on. I'm speaking to Doug in a few days for Fringe By The Sea and really looking forward to it. (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon)
- CRY PILOT by Joel Dane - I picked this up from a recommendation by my friend Erin Hardee and it's excellent - weird far-future biomechanical military SF that kind of reminds me tonally of the Frontlines series by Marko Kloos (in that it's a grunt's eye view of a conflict and told in first person) but is packed full of wild eyeball kick SF concept stuff. I'm only a third of the way in but I suspect this is a series I'll probably inhale in the same way I did Frontlines. (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon)
Watching
A slow telly/film month, but some solid stuff:
- We watched a bit more of PARADISE, though it's not grabbing us as effectively as the first season so far. But we'll finish it, I think, now we've started. Damning with faint praise but there you go.
- We watched all of the final season of THE BEAR in about four days and it was absolutely brilliant, following essentially one absolute nightmare of a shift right before the money runs out. Just an absolutely fantastic TV show.
- We're also about halfway through Season 3 of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON which we're enjoying a lot - some great court intrigue and reversals of fortune, though I am struggling to remember a lot of the context from the second season. And it's very well made stuff.
- Along with everyone else we went to see THE ODYSSEY at the cinema and had a great time. Surprisingly gnarly (the pigs! Hades!) and very well made. Wasn't wild about some of the dialogue choices, but it was a great adaptation.
Playing
Continuing to shoot things and spy on other things...
- I'm jumped back into BATTLEFIELD 6 with the new season and a bunch of new maps and I'm really enjoying it. The gameplay changes are excellent, the huge maps with lots of variety are fun and generally it feels like a really good Battlefield game now. Recommended.
- I'm about a third of the way through 007: FIRST LIGHT and it's confirmed my first impression of being a very, very well made game, but it's also added to that initial impression with a surprisingly engaging plot, excellent script, great characters and core gameplay that's brilliant fun. Some things are a little constrained and on-rails in a way that I don't love and there's a few spy gadgets that are hilariously overpowered, but overall I'm having a great time.
Another fine month of clickables:
- The Less You Want To Do Something, The More You Have To Do It - Kate McKean isn't wrong about that.
- A great interview with Chris McDonald/Chris Frost over on Read and Buried.
- An excellent PubTips post on the correlation between advance size, marketing spend and publisher attention.
- A great TEDx talk from Stark Holborn about human creativity in the age of AI.
- How to read way, way more from John Paul Brammer.
- The Honest Editor on what happens when an editor really loves your book.
- The teaser trailer for NEUROMANCER on Apple TV is very, very exciting.
- Loved this episode of SFFAddicts about how crowdfunding, special editions and high-end indie publishing projects work.
See, told you this was going to be a quieter edition.
It's been a funny old month - the days are shortening and the temperatures (in Scotland at least) have been nowhere near the absurd highs of June, so it's felt oddly autumnal and like everything is slowing down. I think if I'd been away for events I wouldn't feel that way (since it's much warmer down south) but since I've been at home I've enjoyed the quietude and the chance to reset.
I'm deeply, deeply looking forward to some time off in August and also making steady progress on the draft. And I'll be picking up edits, I think, which will be good for both a change of pace and the chance to have those done and behind me, so I can start thinking about future projects. I always find having edits hanging around in the ether a bit of a blocker to starting something completely new.
I have, also, been able to stick to the workouts again this month and I'm feeling physically a lot better. Devastated to report that all those people who talk about how exercise can be 'fun' and how you'll 'enjoy' it are, actually, correct. Apart from the first three minutes of every single run. Those three minutes are still dreadful, regardless of how good I'm feeling otherwise.
If you're about to go off on holiday or you're just back, or if you're exhausted after Harrogate, or if you're like me and you've mostly been at home trying to keep on top of the gardening, I hope you're having a really nice summer. There'll be one more light newsletter in August, then we'll be heading into the busy Bloody Scotland and autumn festival season and, I'm hoping, I'll be able to talk about some exciting stuff I've been (sort of) keeping under my hat. But right now, I'm off to get a couple of thousand words done and then sign off for a week's holiday.
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.