Daynote - Tue 28 Jan

I am not in Glasgow right now, but I will be heading there later today for The Joy Of Epic with Annabel Campbell, her launch event at Waterstones Argyle Street, for her debut THE OUTCAST MAGE, which I beta read. It's been absolutely amazing watching her journey from querying to book deal to, finally, today, being a published author. One of the great joys of finding writing community for me over the last few years has been getting to cheer people on as they achieve their dreams and I'm really, really looking forward to this event.

ON DECK: Pretty solid writing this morning. I got up a bit late, but got my full 90 minutes of writing for a new word count of 1,613 words. I'm preeeeetty close to the 50k mark and the story of PROJECT SCARLET is coming together nicely.

As above, I'll be going through to Glasgow for Annabel's event this evening, so if I get lucky and get a seat on the train I will hopefully get a spot of writing done on the way there. I have notes from my agent on PROJECT SHARD to break down into an editing plan, so it may not result in actual words being written, but I will hopefully get a good plan together so I can work on SHARD edits alongside SCARLET.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: In my continuing research into the ways I might use my Supernote Manta, I thought this Reddit post from a fellow author was fascinating. The author here has sideloaded the Android version of Microsoft 365, allowing them to edit Word documents on the Supernote directly. You can do this in the native Supernote app called 'Word' which is not Microsoft Word, but can load MS Word doc files.

I've also seen a lot of posts from people who have sideloaded Obsidian, which again is intriguing. However, my Obsidian writing vault is a total mess that I've barely used recently, so my instinct to start fresh and manually transfer over useful notes is pretty strong.

LISTENING: Fascinating interview with Dame Stella Rimington (former Director General of MI5 and now spy novelist) on Crimetime FM. Absolutely fascinating to hear her talk about her rise from clerk typist (after a successful career elsewhere as an archivist) to head of the service. Lots of detail about how she got into spy novels too.

WATCHING: More SAS ROGUE HEROES last night, which continues to be explosively excellent.

READING: A couple of chapters of THE CURE last night, which I'm greatly enjoying. Excellent chapter hooks and a compelling backstory are keeping me turning the pages.

LINK: A hilariously grim Bluesky thread from Jeff VanderMeer about the worst writing workshop he ever attended.

UP NEXT: I'm back on the green line in Pacemaker for PROJECT SCARLET, although I have a run of late evenings coming up with the book events I'm off to for the next three days. Only the first is in Glasgow (which is good, given the travel time) but it'll be tough to keep on top of the word count. Thankfully I'll also have some train journeys and sitting-in-cafes time to get a few words in here and there. The main thing that will suffer is going to be my daily walks, although I'll be doing plenty of trotting around Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Onward!