Daynote - Mon 10 Mar

Ah, false spring. A couple of days of the haar burning off from the morning sun and you think that's winter done. Then Monday rolls around and it's below 10°C once more, the wind is buffeting the coast from the direction of Norway and everything looks desaturated again.

It's London Book Fair this week. I'm not going (it's very much a trade fair, so the only authors who show up are the Extremely Big Names) but there's always a palpable buzz in the industry, since exciting things can happen. Last year at LBF is when my TV deal started to come together. So I'll enjoy the frisson, even though I don't expect any exciting news this year.

ON DECK: I was in town both days this weekend, which meant I had some waiting for trains to do. Did a little writing in the cafe of the National Portrait Gallery (a very nice space) on Saturday, then on the train itself on Sunday and got 1,771 and 805 words respectively. I don't normally write on the weekend (it feels too much like homework) but when I'm close to the end of a book I end up sneaking in little bits of writing here and there, including at the weekends, because I can feel the end so close by and I just want to get there. Plus the sun peeking through the fog and the visibly cheerful Edinburgh population was very motivating.

This morning, I got a solid 1,661 words before my walk, in the aforementioned fog and wind and damp. Still working my way through all those little scenes I outlined last week. Some of them are coming in a bit long, but I'm getting there.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: This weekend I had call to do a bit of searching to try and find some obscure maps. It's been a little while since I've tried to do something that's harder to find than a Wikipedia page (which is often my jumping off point for more in-depth research) and I hadn't realised just how appalling Google Search has become now that it's being steadily overrun with LLM-generated garbage, ads and 'sponsored' results.

So I thought I'd try giving Kagi a go. It's a paid search engine, so there's no ads, or incentives for the engine to serve you any given result over another. And it's really good, especially for finding stuff on the 'old web' - hobbyist websites, Blogspot blogs (ironic, given Google owns that), forums and more. I successfully found exactly what I was looking for after a half dozen searches. It feels like using Google did fifteen years ago, when it was a cutting edge search index that genuinely felt like magic, instead of whatever it's become now.

I'm working my way through my 100 free trial searches, but seriously considering getting an annual subscription.

LISTENING: This episode of The Rest is Classified about intelligence sharing with Ukraine is a very good overview of the current risks and situation.

WATCHING: More ANDOR over the weekend. The delivery of the line 'Never more than 12' by Andy Serkis in the middle of the three 'prison' episodes of this series is one of the best cliffhanger endings I've seen, in any genre, in absolute years. It's so good.

READING: More GOGMAGOG over the weekend when I wasn't writing or sitting on trains. The prose is so lush and dense. Loving it.

LINK: A sobering post from Mark Lawrence on the realities of current attrition rates among debut authors and the brutal calculus of the current heavily conglomerated publishing industry.

UP NEXT: Pushing ahead at full speed on PROJECT SCARLET. We're off to a gig in Glasgow on Wednesday with a day off to follow, which I'm really looking forward to. But with a little luck and a following wind, I might get this book's draft finished? this? week?

We'll see! Onward!