How do people cope with being full-time sport fans? Watching Murray/Tsitsipas last night was so stressful. It felt like a final. I can’t imagine going through that every week.

The Guardian is reporting that people who didn’t get the alert are mostly on the Three network. As I am.

Hey, what happened to my government warning? It’s twenty past three and I haven’t received it yet!

Conventions conventionally drink the real-ale bar dry too early.

Here at Eastercon, apparently we’ve drunk the bar dry…

… of low-alcohol beers.

On my way to Birmingham for Eastercon. Been a few years since I’ve been to a con. It’ll be good to see folk.

Just after midnight last night I finished my novel, Casino Soul. The first draft, anyway, or maybe only the zeroth draft. There’s a lot to do to make it anywhere close to good.

But that can wait for later. For now I’m feeling a combination of elation and deflation.

92,000 words and two years elapsed. Writing takes time.

Extremely rare software update this morning: Scrivener for Mac updated to version 3.3. A huge number of changes from 3.2.3, and I can’t help but wonder if they’d be better off doing more frequent, smaller updates, just so we know they’re still there.

The best writing app.

The first band I ever saw live, back in (fuck!) 1980, was Stiff Little Fingers.

I’ve seen them a few times over the years. Tonight I’m at The Roundhouse to see them once again.

Look at the new Interzone: it’s a paperback book! I like it.

I’ve written here before about Nick Cave’s newsletter, The Red Hand files, and lately I’ve taken — slightly hyperbolically, perhaps — to saying that I think it might be his greatest creation. Today’s issue knocks it right out of the park.

He writes about worrying about singing flat, because he’s going to duet with Johnny Cash. Even Nick Cave worries about not coming up to the mark. And then — well, just read it.

And in the last paragraph, after the signoff, he introduces another hero of mine, just in passing.

Wonderful.