Daynote - Mon 6 Jan

And we're back!

Daynote - Mon 6 Jan
Photo by Zara Walker / Unsplash

Back to it today, and a dark and cold walk through the woods. Although the shortest day is long past, the tilt of the Earth means it's still pretty dark in the mornings when I get out on my morning walk. And very muddy this morning after some brief snow yesterday to boot.

My first podcast of 2025 came out on Friday, Episode 4 of the new 'Unfortunately...' podcast from fellow writers Courtney Floyd and Mona West. I had a brilliant time talking to them and you can listen on the link above or the embedded player below.

This is also my first podcast with a proper microphone and it's kind of a shocking difference. Definitely worth the investment.

ON DECK: I ended up doing a bit of writing at the end of the year to get SHARD finished. I have a couple of tiny tweaks to do before I send that to my agent, but today was scheduled to be the start of my proper draft on PROJECT SCARLET (after writing a sample last year) so I was determined to get going on that. And I did!

I had a great session, getting two scenes and 1,689 words drafted. It feels really good to be stretching my legs on a new draft for the first time in... well, a really long time. I'm past the point in my skills progression where drafting is the only writing work that feels like 'real' writing (let me tell you, editing is absolutely real writing work) but it's still the only part of the writing progress that has a certain unconstrained excitement to it for me. So I'm very glad to be back into it.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: One of the key tools I use when I'm writing thrillers or fast-moving SF is an app called Aeon Timeline. It used to be incredibly expensive (like over £100) but is now a more affordable $65 (with optional yearly updates for $35 a year) and it's been heavily worthwhile for me. And if Scrivener has a steep learning curve, I'd say Aeon has a learning cliff if you want to do anything more complex than a very basic linear timeline.

A timeline showing intersections between character viewpoints
Very, very mild spoilers for A RELUCTANT SPY if you can decipher my chapter titles

But for precisely determining when things happen in your story, who is where and why you can't have Character X arriving at a location three hours before they even left, I don't think it can be really beaten on a Mac. Highly recommended.

LISTENING: I really enjoyed this Always Take Notes interview with Phillipe Sands, the barrister (most notably for the Chagos Islanders) and author. Absolutely fascinating.

WATCHING: We watched a ton of stuff over the Christmas break, including DUNE PROPHECY (good), BLACK DOVES (superb) and WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (hilarious). And January is chock full of good stuff too.

READING: I finished THE SEVENTH FLOOR from David McCloskey over the break too and thought it was fantastic. Check my socials for a fuller review, but it's that rare thing, a really well-done homage that doesn't end up as pale pastiche, but deepens and broadens my appreciation for the original while also doing its own thing. Fantastic.

LINK: You should read this column by Ian Dunt about New Year's resolutions. It's a fantastic piece on the importance of goals, variety and (critically) rest. And it's not going to tell you you'll get six pack abs if you just have enough discipline.

UP NEXT: It's going to be full steam ahead on PROJECT SCARLET from now until, I think, March/April. A couple of tweaks as above on PROJECT SHARD, but I'm going to do those outside of my normal writing hours over the next few days. But for the forseeable, it's all SCARLET, all the time.

Onward!