Daynote - Tue 7 Jan
Tuesdays eh?
A bright and sunny January morning here in Scotland. Nice walk, I saw three deer and patted one Labrador.
I'm normally not a fan of Tuesdays as a general rule (it lacks the fresh optimism of Mondays, the 'halfway there' feel of Wednesdays, the energy of Thursdays or the 'nearly the weekend' feel of Fridays) but I'll make an exception for today, because it's my US hardback release day!
That's right my American cousins - if you're after a hardback of A RELUCTANT SPY, today is the day when you can order it. Here's some links.
Some of these are listed as paperbacks, but as far as I'm aware they are the hardback UK edition, shipped from the UK to US retailers. If you pick up a copy, I hope you enjoy it. The audiobook and eBook editions are, of course, already available.
ON DECK: A research-heavy scene this morning, so a reduced word count of 1,097 words on PROJECT SCARLET. But solid progress nonetheless.
It's odd - I've been editing for months and months and months, so it's a bit strange to be back in a drafting space. And with a new book comes the same emotions (though this time springing from new sources, like actually having readers) where I have no idea if what I'm writing is any good or not. Thankfully, I've written enough books now to know that it's really impossible to judge the quality of writing in the moment of composition. So I just shrug, push down the doubt as much as possible, and keep writing.
TOOLS AND PROCESS: My accountant told me before Christmas that now was a good time to think about any hardware purchases I wanted to make for the business as I have as a writer, so I finally pulled the trigger on the Supernote Manta, the brand new e-ink tablet from Ratta. There's a whole bunch of these available now (Remarkable, Boox, Kindle Scribe, Kobo Libra Colour) that offer various flavours of on-screen annotation.
I picked the Supernote because of its Digest feature, which fits with the way I already work, although this will allow me to make proper notes and changes on ePubs rather than awkwardly typing short codes on my Kobo. It will also be fantastic for reading PDFs that I get for proofs of my own books and ARCs from other authors. And I'm looking forward to using the 'infinite notebook' features to do the kind of brainstorming and sketching of locations that I've never managed to do on paper and that feels awkwardly linear when I do it on a laptop.
The major downside is that it's currently back-ordered for 30-40 business days, so I likely won't get it until mid-February. But I can't wait to try it out.
LISTENING: Loved this interview with M.W. Craven on Nadine Matheson's excellent 'The Conversation' podcast. I met Mike a couple of times last year at different events and he very kindly blurbed A RELUCTANT SPY, so this was a fascinating insight into his career and his writing process.
WATCHING: A bit of WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS last night in a hilarious and very self-referential episode about a TV show being shot on the street where the vampires live. We've only got three episodes left and I'm not really ready for it to end. What a great show.
READING: I'm beta-reading at the moment, what may well be the next book from MK Hardy. It's superb. Their debut THE NEEDFIRE comes out in July from Solaris. You should get it. It is also superb.
LINK: John Scalzi wrote a good article the other day about the 'best' ways to acquire his work (because he gets a lot of people asking which way benefits him the most personally). I happily co-sign pretty much everything he said, and I'll probably write my own, since it's a surprisingly common question.
UP NEXT: More PROJECT SCARLET, with a bit of PROJECT SHARD on the side this week only. Oh, and tomorrow, my episode of the Write Now with Scrivener podcast comes out! Looking forward to that, because I can't remember a word of what I said.
Onward!