It’s been an interesting week.
On Wednesday I was going about my day job when I encountered a man who might well have been thought to be sunbathing, given that he was in the back garden of a house and it was a fine, sunny day. However, when you start talking to someone and they look at you but neither move nor speak in response, you begin to suspect that something is up. I did, at least, and so I called 999. A paramedic attended and then called for an ambulance. Although I didn’t find out the exact cause, it was certainly the paramedic’s belief that he must have had some form of seizure and collapsed. Then, apparently unable to move and out the the baking sun, he’d started to suffer from heatstroke. I don’t know how long he’d been there; the house’s resident hadn’t been into the back garden for a few hours. To the best of my knowledge there was no lasting harm, which is a relief.
Now, I’m not saying that someone sunbathing in their garden should be a reason for an immediate call to the emergency services, of course, but I think it’s a lesson worth bearing in mind. If there’s any doubt that a prone person is where they are intentionally, it might be worth checking.
In rather cheerier news, I got three books in the post on Thursday! To be precise, these three books:
That’s Joe Abercrombie’s HALF A WAR, the third in the Shattered Sea trilogy, TRACER by Rob Boffard, with whom I had a Twitter ‘fight’ over use of the words ‘In Space’ on the cover of a scifi book released this summer, and CONQUEST by CJ Somersby, who happens to be a friend of mine. I’ve already read HALF A WAR, and it is a fitting conclusion to the series: Abercrombie shows his normal disdain for tropes and includes a fair bit of tragedy, but stops just short of inflicting the level of misery he might have in his books for adults. The result is a novel to cap off a series that shows war and conflict as suitably horrific, whilst still leaving some elements of hope for at least some characters at the end.
Then on Friday, I got this picture from a friend, of a display in Nottingham Waterstones:
And then, AND THEN, the event that caused the title of this blogpost… my short story ‘Redemption Waits’, recently featured in Grimdark Magazine #4, has been requested for the StarShipSofa podcast! This is a Hugo Award-winning weekly podcast that, just in the last couple of months, has featured readings of short stories by George RR Martin and Neal Asher, among others. Needless to say I am delighted about this, very grateful to Jeremy Szal, and very much looking forward to hearing my own words read back to me… I think. I mean, what if I hate it when I hear someone else reading it? I guess I’ll just have to live with it :p
Anyway, more news on dates and suchlike as we get it.
Finally, happy news as I start gearing up for NineWorlds in August (don’t forget that I’m doing a short talk on Bisexual Erasure at some point between 9-9.45am on the Saturday, and appearing on the Disability & the Apocalypse panel at 10am on Sunday). I WILL HAVE A FRIEND! Eleanor Hollindrake: artist, former member of the Nottingham Trent University Rock Society’s Exec and former bandmate of mine in AJediCravesNotTheseThings (even if that particular band didn’t actually play a gig) will be there too, so I won’t be all alone in the big city. Go check out Eleanor’s art and work – Dragon Mouse is beyond amazing, who wouldn’t love a kids’ book about a mouse that wants to be a dragon? Also, I can confirm that should I ever write a book which needs a map (or even can have a map, never mind needs), Eleanor would be my first choice to draw it.
This evening, I’m off to see Ant-Man. Hope everyone has a good weekend!