Daynote - Tue 19 Nov

No snow in my part of Scotland (we're in a maritime county with a lot of salty air close to the coast, so it has to be really cold and a lot of snow before we get much) but another cold, crisp morning. A perfect day to get some editing done.

ON DECK: A wee 135 words in aggregate across a dozen scenes or so. This is on PROJECT SHARD, a currently over-length SF novel I'm editing with my agent's notes. So adding words is not ideal. However, there's a whole bunch of fixes and additions to the story that I need to do before I start cutting in earnest and I find it's always good to slap on the new clay before you start getting the chisel out and knocking lumps off the story.

Personally, I need to know I have all the elements in place before I can begin tightening up and clarifying the prose. I've got about 11,000 words to lose now, but I suspect that will climb to 20-25k words in new additions before I then need to trim the whole thing back down. Hopefully the end result will be a tighter story AND will do all the things it's not currently doing narratively.

Also this week I'm prepping for a dayjob trip to London, where I'll also hopefully squeeze in some book stuff in the evening. I also just scheduled my first ever interview with a radio station - WESU in the US. I'll be appearing on their drivetime 'Hoot and Holler' show with Ed McKeon at some point in January when the hardback releases in the US. I'm really looking forward to it.

TOOLS: I've got a new phone coming, as my iPhone 11 is starting to creak a fair bit. Very exciting. I tend to upgrade on a 5-6 year cycle, then get the battery of my old phone replaced and pass it on to family. It does mean that I generally see HUGE jumps in performance and capability (I went from an iPhone 5S to an iPhone 11 and it was a staggering difference). It feels like the difference will be less this time, but I don't know if that's just because the form factor hasn't changed all that much. It will certainly be nice not to have charge it three or four times to make it through a day out of the house. But I'll need to do a bit of research to figure out what this phone is capable of, since all the tech press assumes you're upgrading from last year's version and already know what it can do, mostly.

LISTENING: Really enjoyed the hundredth episode of the Read and Buried podcast this morning! Congratulations to Frankie on reaching triple figures. If you missed it, I was on episode 99.

WATCHING: We watched an episode of THE FRANCHISE last night, which continues to be hilarious. Then we decided to give DUNE PROPHECY a go. It was pretty good, using the visual language (and props) of the two Villeneuve films in a very consistent way. Great script and solid performances. But it was also one of those setup/hook episodes that's all about establishing context, motives and characters. I'll be interested to see where it goes from the (admittedly compelling) opener.

READING: More THE PEACOCK AND THE SPARROW last night, which I see has been receiving accolades by the dozen this last week. Very well earned.

UP NEXT: More editing on SHARD. With travel coming up I'll have some on-the-move writing sessions, which are sometimes very productive, sometimes less so. With any luck, I'll get through some of the chunkier edits by the end of the week. That's if I'm not too busy fiddling with the new phone.