Daynote - Fri 7 Mar

Cloudy again today, but very still and mild. The Firth of Forth was flat as a mill pond. A very pleasant walk indeed.

Here's another snippet from my episode of The Conversation with Nadine Matheson, this time pitching the plot for A RELUCTANT SPY:

It's really cool how Nadine puts out these little clips of our conversation, it gives a real sense of what the discussion was like. Plus it gives me fun videos I can post, which is always a bonus.

ON DECK: Solid session this morning - four scenes down, 1,950 words. As you'll see from that combination of numbers, the scenes are getting (a lot) shorter as we approach the end. I'm probably not going to go full-on single paragraph scenes, they'll all be at least a page. But there's a LOT of ground to cover with multiple POVs, so I do need to move quickly.

LISTENING: I really enjoyed this episode of Page One with the crime writer Trevor Wood.

WATCHING: A bit more ANDOR last night. I'd forgotten how effectively it ratchets up the tension in such short episodes. Absolute masterclass in the unsaid between characters.

READING: More GOGMAGOG yesterday and I'm still really enjoying it. It's taken a really quite fantastical and complex turn and the prose is just chef's kiss.

LINK: My wife sent me this browser-based simulation of the galaxy, which I'm pretty sure I've seen before, but which now works in browsers other than Chrome, so I had a few fun minutes spinning my way back and forth through the stars and being boggled at just how large space really is.

UP NEXT: First the weekend (yay it's Friday!) then, possibly the end of the draft of PROJECT SCARLET next week. I counted up the scenes I have left to write and it's a fairly big number, but also they're all fairly short scenes. And I'm in that itchy, excitable, hopping from foot to foot kind of mood I get in when the end of a book is in sight. So we'll see.

Onward!