I had a very grown-up weekend. Jane and I had lunch at a little French place down in the Valley, A la Bonne Franquette, a spot I’d never noticed before, but it was fantastic—then we caught Materialists at the cinema across the street.
I bought myself a new dictation rig, like actual physical hardware, this week. The Plaud Note Pin.
I'm in the middle of a five-week treatment for some kind of skin cancer on my chest. It's a topical cream. I have to rub it in twice a day and it burns away a couple of layers of skin over the course of the month taking with it whatever cancerous little nasties were hiding within the epidermis.
I found myself home alone last night, and with my new Neff oven finally installed, I figured it was time to check out some features.
Earlier in the day, I’d picked up a small rolled pork loin, and I spent some time reading about the oven’s built-in meat thermometer and steamer function. I couldn’t quite figure out how to use the steamer and still crisp the pork crackling at the same time, so I put that aside for a future cook.
I was reading the early reports of Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian strategic bomber bases, wondering ‘where have I read this before/?’
And then I remembered.
I didn’t read it. I wrote it a couple of years ago. In Zero Day Code. Chapter 17.
Over the weekend, a reader hit me up with one of the best questions I’ve been asked about the Cruel Stars trilogy. They wanted to know why I don’t spend much time describing what the characters look like. Why don’t I tell you whether Lucinda Hardy has red hair or how tall Sephina L’Trel is? Why leave McLennan’s face to the imagination?
It’s miserable here. The weekend is upon us, and it's cold, bleak, and rainy where I am. So, I’m sending you a weekend read. A chapter from For Her Eyes Only, in which my kickass heroine, well, kicks some. I hope it amuses you as much as it did me when I wrote it.
If you are an Amazon atheist, I’ve now got the pre-order ready to go everywhere online, which is why you’re getting this extra mail out.
All three books are available for pre-order here.
Remember that time I was supposed to be writing a very serious history of Sydney and I started messing around with a time-travelling aircraft carrier, and that turned into Weapons of Choice? Yeah so, whoops, I did that again. This time I stumbled into something that surprised even me.
Spy-romance novels.
Just wrapped a five-hour shift uploading books to the various online stores, and lemme tell you—I am feeling it. It’s been a while since I’ve done a big indie publishing run, and tomorrow’s release is shaping up to be the biggest one yet.
Or, at least I think it’s Launch Week. I’ve got a couple of new books out this week, which I wrote about on ASB last Friday. They’re very different (Romance!), but also the same (SPLODEY!) I’ll post an essay here about it later this week.