Daynote - Tue 16th Jul 2024

I posted this on Instagram yesterday, but I figured I'd do it again here, because why not? I.S. Berry is a former CIA case officer and award-winning author who wrote a phenomenal book called The Peacock and the Sparrow and she very kindly read my book and provided the above blurb. It came through on Thursday evening and absolutely made my week. Again, it's so cool to hear from authors you really admire in this way.

This blurb also featured prominently in a new Instagram reel that I made last week to celebrate two months until the book launches. This reel has gone down really well, with over seven hundred plays and counting. Pretty cool!

I'm going to be posting more of these blurbs over the next two months as we get closer to launch. It feels like it's simultaneously never going to arrive and is also bearing down on me like an oncoming train. Weird feeling.

ON DECK: I finished the outline for my new story Ridealong this morning, getting 1,130 words down. So this outline is now as long as some short stories. Which is a bit daft? But also, my 'short' fiction is quite often actually novelette or novella length, which goes from 7,500 right up to 40,000 words (if you follow awards categories). So a detailed 1,500-2,000 word outline can be expanded into a 10,000-12,000 word novelette. Which is like 10-15% of a novel. So the outlining nearly always saves me a bunch of time.

LISTENING: Back to the Living in the Library playlist this morning, which I've had in heavy rotation.

WATCHING: I watched a bit of THE NIGHT AGENT last night for Reasons. It's pretty good, though some of the 'technical' stuff was... not great dialogue-wise. But I can see why it got so popular - it has a relentless pace, memorable baddies and multiple twists.

READING: At the other end of the spy spectrum, I stayed up past my bedtime finishing MOSCOW X by David McCloskey last night. Phenomenal. I thought it escalated a lot in the second half, but the final 50 pages or so were basically escalation squared (though also believable and completely compelling). It's a very different book to DAMASCUS STATION, his first, with a much slower burn at the start. But I enjoyed it immensely. Recommended.

UP NEXT: Tomorrow I'll crack on with drafting Ridealong. It's been an absolute age since I've written any actual new, draft, fiction words, so I'm really looking forward to it. I should get writing time on it tomorrow morning, Thursday morning and then on the train to York I'll hopefully get a good couple of hours. I'm off to the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival for the first time, and I can't wait. I don't expect to do any writing while I'm there, but I'm going to meet so many other writers, my editor, my agent and hopefully some readers too! It's going to be awesome. I'm only booked in to see one panel (the spy one, of course) so I'll be spending the rest of the weekend floating about, going to some events run by my publisher Headline and just generally having an amazing time. If you're going, please say hello! I look exactly like my profile picture. Which is very often the first thing people say to me when they meet me.