What I'm up to - October 2024

It's been a month and a half since A RELUCTANT SPY came out, so I'm well into the post-release life. With that comes the opportunity to do a bit of re-organisation, re-planning and re-prioritising. Part of that you'll see in this newsletter, which I've simplified and reorganised under some new headings. And you'll also see it in the work I'll discuss below.

Onward!

Journal

Life, community and events

It's been a moderately busy month. Obviously not a patch on launch month, but I've had a fair few events, podcast recordings and other stuff going on. Oh, and I also turned 43 this past weekend.

The very first thing I did (on the second day of the month no less) was my first ever school visit! I spoke to the Advanced Higher class at Earlston High School in the Scottish Borders about my writing, my novel and exciting things like TV adaptations. It went really well and it was very strange being inside a high school for the first time since I left my own in 1999.

A couple of days later I had a very nice dinner with m'friend and critique partner Nick Binge where we cooked up some plans for some stuff that we may work on together next year. Then we both went to the Edinburgh event for Sam K. Horton's debut novel GORSE, chaired by Hannah Kaner.

It was a great event and we had a lovely chat at the pub afterwards. I met Sam at WorldCon this summer and it was a joy to see him talk about his book, especially since we actually launched on the same day (this was one stop of many on his launch tour).

Midway through the month, I recorded an episode of 'Confessions of a Debut Novelist', a superb writing podcast that I inhaled when I was first going out on submission. Chloe was a fantastic interviewer and I had a really great time talking about A RELUCTANT SPY.

I also appeared this month on the Page One Podcast, run by my friends Marco and Tariq. You can also see our discussion in video, if you want to see how often I look at the ceiling when I'm trying to phrase something in my head.

That week I also got to fulfil a small writing ambition during a day job trip to London, which was to find a copy of my book in the 'mothership' branch of Waterstones Piccadilly, which I think is the biggest one in the UK. I signed it as well, then went for dinner with an old friend and their daughter, which was lovely.

This week has also been excellent - I got copies of some new books (see below), and attended a superb Barnes & Noble Zoom session between David McCloskey and Nick Harkaway.

I also recorded an episode of 'Write Now with Scrivener', which should be out in January. I really enjoyed it - the chance to talk about both my writing AND my favourite writing tool? Amazing.

Otherwise, save the brief visit to London, it was a month for getting back to routines. The temperatures have been autumnal but not too cold, so we've had a gentle start to the end of the year and I've managed to get out most days for a walk, as well as sticking to my fitness regime for another month, which I'm pleased about. It's been a good month for seeing friends and family too.

Workbench

Writing, editing and craft

This month I've done about 35 hours of writing work, with a net new word count of about 9,550 words. But I've also cut about 9,900 words from various other projects, resulting in an aggregate count of... well, less than zero.

That's one of the reasons that word count is really only part of the story. This month I worked on two projects, but most of that word count was on PROJECT SCARLET, which is a notional sequel to A RELUCTANT SPY. If you're new here, then please be aware that PROJECT SCARLET is a codename, not the actual title.

I've been writing a sample of this sequel for my editor, as part of the process of selling the next book. So that writing and rewriting covered me finishing a first draft of about 20k words, running it past my excellent crit partners, then rewriting half of it from scratch and doing a fairly intensive edit on the other half.

Now I'm prepping myself for the next thing, which is either going to be continuing work in some form on SCARLET (either additional support/development for the pitch, or kicking off the actual full length draft) or working on PROJECT SHARD, my big SF novel. I've just finished an edit plan for that. So while I wait for SCARLET to resolve one way or another, I will push SHARD along. That's something I want to get better at, as I noted in Monday's daynote. Because publishing, purely through the nature of the industry mechanics, creates little periods of waiting and uncertainty constantly. And if you're going to survive (and maybe even thrive), then it's a good idea to learn how to work through those little bubbles of anxious anticipation.

Newsfeed

What's out, what's new and where I'll be soon

As of today, A RELUCTANT SPY has been out for fifty days, which is kind of nuts. We've got over 100 ratings on both Goodreads and Amazon, as well as dozens of reviews, a majority of which are four and five stars.

It's also been an enormous morale booster, in this strange post-release period where I don't have access to any hard data, to have many old friends, colleagues, family members and acquaintances reach out and tell me they've enjoyed the book. I'm particularly fond of the forwarded WhatsApp messages I get from friends and family about how someone's relative or friend picked up the book and missed their stop on the bus or turnoff on the motorway because they got so engrossed.

Every time I get a message like that, I channel Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting:

In November, I'm hopefully recording two more podcasts, maybe meeting my editor for dinner if the timings work out, going to my first book club visit as an author and celebrating Thanksgiving with wife (who is a dual citizen).

I'll also be at a Christmas Shopping event held by Waterstones Braehead on the 22nd of November, along with several other authors, including my friends Nick Binge and Gareth Brown. If you're in Glasgow or nearby and you fancy an evening of drinks, book signings and chatting with authors, please do come along, 6-8pm.

Playlist

What I've been reading, watching and listening to

Reading

It's been a spy-and-thriller heavy month on the new book front:

• Death in the Arctic by Tom Hindle - Tom shares an agent with me, so I was lucky enough to get a proof of this excellent murder mystery. I'm in the middle of reading it now and the tension pre-murder is unbearable. Also, there are literal bears. Polar bears.
• The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry - Ilana was kind enough to blurb A RELUCTANT SPY when it came out, and her own debut novel is finally available on this side of the Atlantic. It just arrived before the end of the month, so I've only read a few pages, but the gorgeous prose and atmospheric locations have made a great impression so far.
• Karla's Choice by Nick Harkaway - Stepping into some pretty big shoes, but Nick Harkaway (who is John Le Carré/David Cornwell's son) is a wonderful writer in his own right (GNOMON blew me away a couple of years ago) and everything I've seen so far leads me to believe this will be an excellent contribution to the Smiley canon.

Watching

• We've been watching the fifth season of WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS on Disney+ and enjoying it a lot. Sometimes what you want is short episodes of Matt Berry giving it the full foghorn vampire.

Clickthrough

This month's internet finds

• I really enjoyed this interview with TV producer and writer Eleanor Moran.
• Dong Won Song has some good thoughts on boom times in publishing.
• An excellent interview with Nick Harkaway.
• And another one, with the Le Carré Cast, also with Nick Harkaway.
• And an equally excellent interview with I.S. Berry
• An excellent episode of the 'Behind the Lines Podcast' about digital warfare.
• A great blog post from agent Caro Clarke on the basics of publishing contracts.

October is nearly always a good month for me - it's Proper Autumn, the temperatures are dropping, plus there's the double whammy of my birthday and Halloween at the end of the month. This isn't a round number year or even a half-decade, so it was a quiet birthday. But I had very nice cake and spent the day with people I love, and really, what's better than that?

In some ways, though, this month, though somewhat busy, has felt like surfacing for air after the incredible peak experience of diving head-first into my launch month. I've reset myself a little, shored up some wobbly foundations, got a bit more sleep and felt my stress levels perceptibly drop.

Now we're heading properly into the colder, darker months of the year, but there's some fun stuff too. Maybe a festive lunch or two, the odd party. And hopefully more time in the evenings to cosy up against the encroaching dark and dampness outside (at least, that's the case here in Scotland).

Whatever happens, I'm going to be doing some good writing work in November and December. But I will be trying to do it sustainably and systematically. I want to end the year with a steady drumbeat, not an erratic crash of cymbals.

I hope you have a very spooky Halloween if you enjoy a bit of liminal terror and that you're entering the penultimate month of the year with a little hope and a lot of resilience. And if you don't have either, I hope you get some 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, Instagram or Twitter, or send me a message on my contact form.