The Decrypt - October 2025

Welcome folks! It's the last quarter of the year and another month has passed, so it's time, once again, for The Decrypt, my monthly newsletter on all things writing, publishing, craft and media.

October was a quieter month in all senses, which was honestly a bit of a relief after a very busy, exciting and occasionally stressful summer. But I turned 44, did some podcasts and events, wrote a lot of words and there's still plenty to chat about, so why don't you set yourself up with your libation of choice and let's get down to it, shall we?

The month started with a whole bunch of podcast recordings - right at the end of September we (myself, Tariq Ashkanani and Marco Rinaldi) sat down for a Bloody Scotland takeover with the excellent Sean Watkin for his Incident Room podcast - that should be out in early November. It was loads of fun, talking about our experience of the festival, what it was like to win the three awards (the Debut Prize for me, McIlvanney Prize for Tariq and Pitch Perfect for Marco) and the importance of the festival to the Scottish writing scene.

A few days later, we repeated the panel (though it came out first, since it was a livestream) with the UK Crime Book Club, which was lots of fun:

Thank you to Sam Brownley for a great session. Check out their channel for a massive backlist of panels and author interviews.

That weekend Valerie and I went to a lovely wedding reception (congratulations Andrew and Sarah) and got caught up with some old friends, then the next weekend I was looking after River The Dog again.

I'd intended to do some writing while looking after River, but I was feeling a bit tired and rough so I mostly read books and watched daft films. But it was a nice weekend.

After handing back River's lead and heading home, I did an interview with AJ Hawley for his World of Crime podcast. I met Alex at Harrogate this year and it was a delight to talk to him about everything that's happened since.

The same week, I interviewed Gareth Brown about his new book THE SOCIETY OF UNKNOWABLE OBJECTS at Waterstones West End in Edinburgh, in the same setting as I interviewed Chris Whitaker earlier this year. It was a bit darker and more wintry, but the warm welcome from the attendees and Gareth's excellent answers made it a lovely, magical evening.

The following couple of weeks have been pretty relaxed, with just a signing trip to St Andrews and Dundee and finally a return to Earlston High School for another visit with the Advanced Higher English class, which I'm really looking forward to (I'm writing this newsletter a couple of days early). I've been off from the dayjob for the last week of the month and it's been much needed

Of course, along the way there's been a lot of book signing - I try to pop into every bookshop I'm aware of that's stocking the paperback and it's become delightfully easy to find over the last couple of months. It's been a joy meeting so many booksellers and seeing the paperback in so many places.

So - not exactly a busy month, but a lot quieter than many in this wild year.

The relative quietude of the non-writing side of things has, however, not really been reflected in the writing, though I've kept the ball rolling throughout the month. I've been handling a fairly typical mix of tasks for a writer with books under contract - copyedits, proofing, drafting, outlining and working on pitches. The two main projects were SOLITARY AGENTS, which is now in the copyediting and proofing stages and PROJECT DRIFT, which is now at about 30k and is rolling along nicely.

I have, however, been struggling a bit to find real momentum with this book, mostly because I thought I'd experiment with part-outlining, i.e. my usual approach but even more barebones. I've got the very large plot beats but not the small, chapter-by-chapter ones - I'm only doing those as I reach each part of the book. So far it's... not really working for me. So I suspect I'll pause a bit next week and spend a couple of days nailing the outline for the rest of the book, then go back to my usual approach, which is to have all the chapters planned out roughly with a brief synopsis for each, then micro-outline in details week-by-week as I write, a few days ahead.

It may also, bluntly, just be a bit of burnout. This week off I'm currently enjoying definitely felt very welcome, so perhaps when I get back to the desk next week I'll find my pace and focus again.

There's also two unknowns which might affect the timeline for DRIFT (which isn't under contract and hence doesn't have to be finished by any particular date). The first is a contracted project I can't talk about yet, whose edits may appear any time (though likely early next year). And the second is another potential project that isn't guaranteed, but may need to be written in the same period.

But if I've learned one thing in the last few years it's that you're always waiting for something in publishing-land, so you're always better off using that time to push projects forward. Work (mostly) happens in the interstices of life and publishing. And, looking back at last month's newsletter, I said basically the same thing - proving the point, since I added 23,000 words over those two months.

I also got a Very Exciting Email this month that I can't talk about, but which was extremely welcome. One of those real pinch-me moments. Suffice to say that things I had hoped would happen are happening and appear to be going very well.

November is going to be another busy month on the event front!

I'm going to be dropping in to the Edinburgh Writers' Club on Monday 3rd November to chat to the members, which I'm really looking forward to.

Then, on the 15th of November I'll be doing two events in one day, starting with the Book Blether mini-festival at Denny Library alongside Marion Todd and Kate Foster, which is my first ever Live Literature event.

After that I'll be heading down to Glasgow to chair an event at the Aye Write festival with Vaseem Khan and Kim Sherwood, talking about their adventures in the Bond universe, writing books with the Fleming Estate.

On the 20th of November I'll be back in Glasgow, this time to do another Live Literature event at Ibrox Library with Neil Broadfoot, Andrew Raymond and Natalie Jayne Clark.

And finally, rounding out the month on Wednesday 26th, I'll be having a wee reunion with my fellow Bloody Scotland Debut Prize shortlisters at Waterstones West End (although sadly Natalie Jayne Clark can't make it to that one). I'm really looking forward to that too.

Phew! What a month. And in there I'm going to hopefully push DRIFT forward by another 15-20,000 words. Unless plans change or I get more Exciting Emails.

Reading

A wee bit more focused this month, as I've been reading books for panels and such.

• The Quiet American by Graham Greene - I've read a fair bit of Greene (Our Man In Havana was part of my dissertation twenty plus years ago) but hadn't managed this one, until I got it on Audible. An excellent narration and vintage Greene, though the 'espionage' elements of the story are nearly entirely off-screen, tragi-comic in nature and deeply overshadowed by the pain and ennui of the characters. But boy, could Greene write a sense of place and time.
• The Society of Unknowable Objects by Gareth Brown - I read this before interviewing Gareth in the middle of the month and had a great time with it - it's a really interesting blend of real-world setting, magical whimsy and some deeply dark stuff that verges on horror. At the event I suggested the microgenre label 'whimdark', which Gareth politely laughed at and then moved swiftly on.
• Quantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan - I'm reading this in advance of an event with Vaseem and Kim Sherwood in November and really enjoying it - it's a classic small-town mystery (with Q from the Bond novels as the investigator) with the added twists and turned that setting it in the Bond universe entails. And it's carried off with Vaseem's trademark dry humour. Excellent stuff.
• The Long Walk by Stephen King - I wanted to read this before I see the film adaptation (which apparently changes the ending fairly drastically) and it's vintage King, in the good sense. Engaging characters, pace (literally), striking imagery and a creeping, steadily increasing dread. This is my 'treat' novel for the month that I'm grabbing sips of in between other books.

Watching

Some great stuff this month:

• We've continued watching the new SLOW HORSES - I'm greatly enjoying it still, especially Christopher Chung's absolutely bravura performance as Roddy. And the changes to the core plot from the book give a lot of the cast lots more to do and led to a delicious moment of double-crossing that was extremely well done.
• I watched APOCALYPSE Z recently, a pretty good Spanish zombie movie on Prime. I've enjoyed a couple of apocalypse movies made in Spain - BIRD BOX: BARCELONA was also good fun.
• I also watched THE ETERNAUT while dogsitting and enjoyed it - it's fascinating to see the different interpretations of common fictional tropes in different languages and places, though I'm sure I'm missing a ton of cultural context. It took a pretty hard turn into wacky SF towards the end though.
• We re-watched ALIEN: ROMULUS since it was vaguely spooky and it's spooky season and it was as much fun as I remembered, though Valerie agreed with me that it was very, very heavy on the callbacks and fan service. But gorgeous to look at.
• I also did a rewatch of INTERSTELLAR while on holiday. I'd forgotten how much of that film is shaky-cam of people in spacesuits sitting in cockpits. But it's still an excellent piece of realist SF. And the time dilation stuff in it still absolutely messes with my head.

Playing

Pressing buttons and flicking thumbsticks.

• The main event gaming-wise this month was the launch of BATTLEFIELD 6, which has been polished and refined to a high shine since the beta. I enjoyed the campaign (though the plot was, uh, thin) but the real value is in the excellent multiplayer, which is a real return to form. Going to get a lot of mileage out of this one. And the new battle royale mode, REDSEC, looks like it'll give WARZONE a run for its money.
• I also played the server test beta for ARC RAIDERS, which is an excellent extraction shooter with a really interesting art style and vibe I can only describe as FALLOUT meets TALES FROM THE LOOP dressed in the style of an 80's Spielberg movie. The gameplay is fantastic too. Looking forward to playing this one with my buds who enjoyed HELLDIVERS 2 with me.
• I've also been playing a bit of KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE II, which is an open-world RPG set in 15th century Bohemia. I played a tiny bit of the first game but bounced off the long, slow, pretty janky intro, but so far the new one seems to be a lot smoother and better put together. The swordplay is kind of clunky, but the world is incredibly beautiful and the writing is great. I'll play it a lot more once I've had my fill of BF6.

• This piece by Jenna Satterthwaite on 'sales track' is really interesting and the discussion in the comments is also worth a read.
• I enjoyed this series about 'rebooting the blogosphere' by Stephanie Booth, though I suspect the long-form blog will always remain a niche pursuit - they were only so common in the early Noughties because of who was online (nerds, writers and nerdy writers). I don't think the world is going to dissolve into 7 second AI video slop entirely either though. We'll likely muddle along in the middle ground.
• This AMA by a Big 5 Marketer was excellent reading and illuminating stuff.
• Loved this live episode of the Read and Buried Podcast with Elly Griffiths and LV Matthews.
• A great interview with m'friend and colleague Nicholas Binge on the Writer's Routine podcast.
• A really good interview with the literary agent Ed Wilson on the Page One Podcast.
• A great episode of Always Take Notes with the novelist Sarah Perry. What a journey she's had.
• Rounding out the podcasts, here's Annabel Campbell on the British Fantasy Society podcast talking about THE OUTCAST MAGE.
• A great lecture from Leigh Bardugo on the 'the art of discomfort' in creative work.

Over the course of this month, the leaves have turned golden everywhere and begun to collect in drifts, the mercury has dipped in the thermometers and, here in Scotland at least, the clocks have gone back.

October is my birthday month, so I will always have a soft spot for it. But it's also when the cold and dark can begin to make the daily grind a little tougher. The instinct is to burrow into the duvet, sleep longer and eat a lot of soup, but the modern world rarely makes allowances for old seasonal impulses like that.

At times like this I take solace in the routines and trying to do the things that feel a little harder when the sun goes down at a quarter past five in the evening - eating well, getting enough sleep and moving my body around. I don't always succeed, but I keep trying nonetheless.

As we tumble into the last couple of months of 2025, I hope you find a good balance of duvets, soup, keeping yourself moving, getting out into what sunshine there might be and getting the work done, whatever it may be.

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.