In Praise of Wives, Paramedics and the Ford Focus

So, we were heading home from Oxford on Tuesday night, on the way back from me addressing the C.S. Lewis Society. They were a lovely bunch, and a number of the university’s Doctor Who Society came along as well, and I managed to vamp around my theme to reasonable effect until I ran out of words and became possibly the only speaker in the Society’s history to confess to not much liking Lewis’ work. Hmm. That ambassadorial career may never come to pass.

I should say now the stuff I didn’t immediately say when I first started letting people know about what’s to follow: we’re going to be absolutely fine, and so is everyone involved. (‘You buried the lead’ said Peter Anghelides. I might have said I’m glad I didn’t.) Consolation is welcome, but not required. These are the sorts of things the English have to say at this point. I offer this article mostly because I think it’s interesting. And because if I feel motivated to write something down I’m usually also motivated to show it to an audience. There’s comics and other news at the end of the blog, after the Captain Britain cover, if you want to hop past my waffle.

We were only a few minutes from home. Caroline was driving. We were listening to Trumpet Child by Over The Rhine. I remember a thought, from ten minutes earlier, about how terrible it would be for a car to suddenly appear in our path. But that’s not so odd. It’s the way I’m made to have that thought on almost every car journey. I await disaster. Caroline must do something similar, in a much more sunny way, because she’s the sort of driver for whom the speed limit is a law of physics. I remember a steady train of vehicles coming in the other direction, but I’m told that actually we’d just come to a point where a car was waiting to turn, and other cars were pulling up behind it.

A car arriving at the back of that queue at full speed decided not to join the queue at all, but to accelerate into the other lane to overtake it.

I’ve got a single mental picture of a car suddenly being in front of us. There’s a kind of label attached, the emotional memory, which is: this is going to be a much bigger impact than any I have known. It’s like I ran down, in that impossible mind reaction speed way, every collision I’ve ever experienced, all those roller coasters and childhood landings, and concluded that I was going to have nothing to compare this to. My brain almost said to me that it was sorry, it had no idea. There’s no internal reply, nothing that can be done. No time for the next thing, which I guess would be terror. Perhaps that’s just as well. We had no time to tense up before we hit.

There’s an ‘it must have happened, but I don’t quite have it’ moment, and then I’m lying at an odd angle in my seat. Not an angle I’d have chosen to sit. I know my air bag is there, I remember seeing it and the other one, but I have no mental images of them. Which is odd, because I’d have thought I’d register that as interesting. I can’t breathe.

I don’t tell Mum and Dad that bit, when I tell them about this, four days later. But then Mum says that Dad had a bad night in the chalet where they were on holiday on Tuesday night, couldn’t breathe, had to have some oxygen. (This is not an emergency for him.) He was already claiming his general illness that night as proof of the non-causal link he and his brothers have with their loved ones. But he didn’t know about the breathing bit. I offer that as detail, I don’t find myself with a need to believe it.

Caroline says she came out of a moment of nothing and then had tremendous déjà vu. She sat in the remains of the car thinking she was dreaming. (But she hadn’t been dreaming at the wheel, we’d been talking about the music all the way home.) Then she smelt smoke, and realised the car was filling with smoke, and the windscreen was cracked, and she tried to open her door and couldn’t, and she started to bellow at me to get out of the car on my side. Just thinking about that bellow makes me feel all fond and rather tearful. I think I said I couldn’t breathe. Like that’s not a contradiction in terms. She bellowed at me to get out of the car. I opened the door, and fell out, and she climbed after me.

I’m glad I couldn’t breathe. Because it made me focus completely on myself for that moment I was lying there before she shouted, and so I had no moment of fearing for her life. I was struggling to make my lungs expand. After a moment stumbling about, zooming towards what am I going to do without any air, I was able to suck in enough to tell me I was probably going to be able to do it again. ‘Are you all right?’ people were asking me. Loads of people. I think over a dozen had stopped. One man in a suit marched over and, sounding almost angry, gave me instructions on preventing shock, then marched away. Caroline stumbled out beside me, and bellowed that everyone should get away from the car, and everyone did. I weirdly thought that my bag and a loaf of bread and pint of milk we’d just bought at the garage were in there.

Perceptions are very weird. I’m sucking in tiny gulps of air. Cars are moving round things, roaring off past. Not everything about me works as it should. There’s the wreck of another car in the middle of the road, and I can’t see anyone in it, and I have a mental filing card that says ‘possibly the driver is dead, there will be emotions about this later’. But then I hear people saying that he’s there, and magically, dreamlike, there’s now someone stumbling around about the same distance from that wreck as we are from ours. I look back, and comprehend the wreck of our car.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Ford Focus. Now I love that make and model with all my heart. I am going to be its spokesman forever. Its front end has completely collapsed, in the way that only a nearly head-on collision with something moving very fast would do.

Nearly head-on. She’d started to swerve towards the verge.

I’m standing there, able to stand, after something that did that to my car. It looks like it’s been in a fatal accident. We have not. Those airbags and seatbelts and windscreen and collapsing front. My next car is going to be one of those.

I gradually find that I can take in bigger gulps of air. So I’m starting to think: we may both be going to survive. Which is suddenly the best moment of my life. And then it’s limited again by: I might need medical help for this lack of breathing urgently. Adrenalin might be keeping me up. And there’s all sorts of things about me that aren’t right. And I don’t know how important they are. People keep asking me if I want to sit down on the verge, but that seems impossible.

I embrace her because now the bellowing’s over she looks really afraid. Like now she can be. Like now, as the driver, it’s another sort of fear for her when she looks at the wreck of the other car, and her mental index card system isn’t as stern as mine can be.

‘We have to talk to him,’ she says, and leads me stumbling over. The other driver seems as stunned as we are. She asks if he’s okay. I can’t remember what he said. It never occurs to me, before or after, to be angry at him. It’s as if that would take an impossible effort, be so deliberate.

There’s another car in the wreck, but I couldn’t tell you anything about it. We’re told later that the driver of that one declined medical attention and left. I don’t know why, but, in the way that my brain puts together random happenings into character and plot, I’ll always associate that unknown person (unknown to me, I mean) with the man in the suit who marched off. Like that sang froid was something determined kicking in and he was on his way to save the world.

Then the nice lady comes over, and leads us away from the man in the middle of the road, and is on her phone, as many others have been, only she’s saying things like ‘RTA’. She puts us in the back seat of her car, and puts blankets over us. In her car, Radio 2 is playing a documentary on Dusty Springfield, and the thought in my head, being this sort of analytical guy is, will I now always associate ‘I Only Want to be with You’ with this? I think maybe, probably not, and not necessarily in a bad way. I’d really love, now, to find nice lady and thank her. I don’t know anything about her.

Caroline is shivering hugely now, under her blanket. She’s got an injury to her nose, and her lips are raw from where her teeth have bitten them. She tells me I’m the same. We look like we’ve been in a boxing match. I want to tell her it wasn’t her fault. ‘It was your fault,’ I say. ‘I mean, it wasn’t! That’s what I was trying to say, I meant it wasn’t!’ I hadn’t meant for a second that it was. She understands that’s what I mean. We hold hands.

I’m starting to realise that there’s something really wrong with my right hip. I can’t sit comfortably. And I still have that weight on my chest, but it’ll move with my breathing. I carefully inflate my lungs all the way, and it moves along with that, and that definitely is now the best moment of my life. I can’t quite bring myself to believe it. ‘Keep talking to me,’ I say after Caroline’s had her eyes closed for a while. ‘I’m not going to sleep,’ she tells me, ‘I’m not leaving you.’ We both sit there staring ahead, thanking the nice lady whenever she appears, holding hands, from time to time shuddering in bursts that set each other off.

So many ambulances arrive. Paramedics knock on the window, climb in, that paramedic look on their faces. What’s going on here, then? Let’s have a look at you. Caroline is given oxygen, and I start to worry, suddenly, desperately, like it’s now allowed for me to do so, that she’s worse off than I am. With a smile, we’re told not to nod in response to questions, because our heads might fall off. No, they say, the smiles fading, really, don’t nod.

Have I ever told you how much I love paramedics? From way back. From when I worked on Casualty, and got to know some. So many hero stories. Which aren’t the ones they like to tell. Most of the ones they like to tell I couldn’t repeat here. Regular customers they get to know, famous shouts, stupid reasons for being called out, what they got away with saying. A lot of the paramedic tales from the seasons I worked on Casualty were true. As I said in one of those episodes, when everyone else is running one way, paramedics are running the other. They always seem so whole because of it, so satisfied. Not that they don’t grumble, of course. They moan, they mutter, they fume. They do eight shouts in a shift and go home and get the best sleep of anyone on the planet.

Caroline is fitted with a cage around her neck, led out of the car, put on a spinal board, and rolled off into an ambulance. I keep looking at her and nodding at her. A police officer, the only one of these kind people whose name I know, takes a statement from me while I’m still sitting in the car.

The paramedic that finally got me did so deliberately, in that several ambulances had arrived, from both Oxford and one on its way back to Swindon, and the Swindon crew insisted to the coppers that they had jurisdiction, and proudly won it on the basis that it was where all three patients wanted to go.

My paramedic asked me what I did for a living. She has a niece who loves Doctor Who. She has a book in her herself, her own set of paramedic stories. Maybe when she retires. She’s been doing the job thirteen years. Five shouts today. Everyone nice, no abusive ones. I felt comfortable enough, towards the end of the journey, to add that I’d worked on Casualty. I don’t usually do that. Medical staff hate medical shows. Of course they do. And this one just goes ‘hmm’ about it. When we get to A&E at the Great Western Hospital (where my Dad’s been treated so well so often) she delivers me to the nurses, and I don’t get to hear the rundown of the handover, because I guess patients don’t, but she does go in to see Caroline and pops back to tell me ‘she’s absolutely fine’ before going on her way having given me my third best moment of my life that day. Good night’s sleep for that one.

I don’t know if it’s the shock or the morphine that they squirt into my mouth, but although I’m just lying on a trolley, time whizzes past. I scare the other people lying outside the x-ray department with my scream as I have to sit up to get a board under my back. And when you’re being told finally to stand up, to see if you can, is that really not just the most comedic time to get cramp? I’m hopping from one leg to the other, shouting swearwords when I land on either. The doctor and nurses are all excellent. Caroline actually limps over and sits beside me before I can move properly. I get to tell her the answer to what floored her, because the policeman came to see my while she was in x-ray. ‘Tell her from me,’ he said, ‘that she did nothing wrong at all.’ And I can see something settle in her when I do.

So now we’re home. We both have seatbelt injuries, which means we have a band of bruising across our chests, and a dirty great mass of bruise on our right and left hips respectively. Caroline’s got knee and ankle injuries from the steering column, and is going back for physiotherapy. I seem to have wrenched the muscles in my right side, so I have a slow docking procedure to sit down, and can’t get up from a lying position without help and the first, second and third worse pain I’ve ever felt, but at least that’s declining each morning. Those who’ve broken bones will be laughing their rugged arses off at my wussiness about extreme pain. You can kind of make deals with the everyday level of pain, knowing how much it’s going to hurt when you reach down for something. But the spasms as you walk along feel unfair. It’s like I have Tourette’s, making little yelps as I go about my business. Laughing hurts. There was a joke on Futurama the other day I still can’t let myself think about. Gareth’s episode of Doctor Who last night is pending action at Injury Lawyers For You. (‘Towering Inferno!’ Ow ow ow!)

Everything we see on telly has a car crash in it. Our Sky Plus list is like the car crash channel, where you’re never more than fifteen minutes away from a car crash. Even going along in space on Galactica the other night they ran into something! What’s that about? And could people and things stop getting near me on the lower right, please? I have an exaggerated need to leap away from that, and that just leads to more yelping.

We were incredibly lucky, in that there were no broken bones or internal injuries. It’s not a matter of luck that Caroline managed to swerve, got us out of the car, made me realise I could breathe. I say to her that she saved our lives, but I don’t think either of us really knows what that means. The other night I bumped into her when I was reaching for something and she burst into tears. She’d like you to know she doesn’t do that a lot, because as I found out, she’s tough.

We owe a lot to the construction of the vehicle, and to so many lovely passers by and police and paramedics and Great Western Hospital staff. My brother was kind enough to drive us home, my Dad having told Mum to specifically not call him to come and help that night.

My two closest friends got in touch within a day. One of them got back to me again by text early the next morning, saying he’d had a dream that my house was also flooding, and that was surely unfair, and we had a phone call in those early hours because I was awake. The other sent me an initial e-mail full of care, and when he was sure I was okay sent me another saying well, I was bound to use this to further my Hugo Award campaign. (Because my two closest friends’ male sympathies are filtered, respectively, through a life of careful duty and the works of Ian Fleming.) So it gives me great pleasure to mention the latter friend in this context. I may wire up the blog to play ‘Hearts and Flowers’. Next time you see him, he’ll be feeding the starving, or possibly head to foot in plaster, injuries sustained while attempting to feed the starving.

My Dad was worried enough to call me during the F.A. Cup final. I slept at my desk for some of last night, because it turned out to be the most comfortable place (what does that say?), and thus took a call from Neil Gaiman at six in the morning. Or did I dream that?

Many, many friends got in touch. ‘Tell me now,’ asked John Molyneux, ‘is the IPhone okay?’ Ow ow ow!

And that’s it, really. Lessons learned… not many, really. Possibly that there’s no point in me worrying about this stuff being about to happen all the time, like that’s an immunization against it doing so. Being glad to be alive is a good feeling.

So, here’s the news bits. Phew, we got there! Hope that wasn’t too much of a sob story.

ITEM! I’m sorry I couldn’t make the signing of the first issue of Captain Britain and MI-13 at Proud Lion comics in Cheltenham. We’re rescheduling. The issue’s had some fantastic reviews, and is, I’m proud to say (this is another ambition of mine fulfilled), the Pick of the Week on I, Fanboy, my favourite podcast:

http://www.ifanboy.com/content/potw/05_14_2008_-_Captain_Britain_and_MI_13__1

I look forward to hearing the podcast itself, which should be out tonight and available on ITunes.

My friends at Forbidden Planet tell me that they’ve had a very high number of subscription requests, and the issue seems to have sold out in London around lunchtime on the first day. Restocks seem to be in limited numbers, at least for now. So on this side of the Atlantic at least, that’s a major hit. It’s all thanks to Leonard Kirk’s wonderful art. He makes the words I put in the bubbles, as my Mum puts it, seem much better. The whole business of getting the ongoing title up and running has been a great experience, which I would have made more for but for all the above, and I hope you lot like issue two as much as you seem to have enjoyed the first one.

Here’s an interview I’ve just done with Comic Book Resources, including a couple of pages of art from issue two. That’s Tink from Wisdom, in her battle armour:

http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=16432

ITEM! I’ve contributed a short piece to Flood, a downloadable charity comic, all proceeds from which are donated to the British Red Cross:

http://adgros.blogspot.com/2008/05/flood-available-to-download-today.html

It costs £3.75, and is well worth it, sorry my bit sounds so miserable, it didn’t at the time!

ITEM! The DFC is a new British weekly comic for children, available only through subscription, and out soon. This is something everyone in the industry over here should get behind:

http://www.thedfc.co.uk/

Because it may be the way of the future.

ITEM! I’d like to say something in support of Benjamin Ong Pang Kean, the staffer at Newsarama who interviewed me about Cap the other day. He framed a question about our Muslim character, Faiza Hussain, in a flippantly stereotypical way, using the word ‘Jihad’ like it was a synonym for ‘like, totally pwned’. I reacted negatively and brusquely and moved on, saying I’d nearly said something much ruder in reply, but then finished the interview. I didn’t expect that question and reply to appear in the interview itself, but it did, and it’s caused vast tumult. Benjamin’s boss has apologised on Newsarama’s behalf. I haven’t commented in public up until now, because I’m not the injured party. Various Muslim folk, who are the injured parties, have appeared in comments sections, and often they’ve reacted the same way I did: oh for goodness sake, but let’s move on. Although, understandably, several have been much angrier than that. It’s true that Benjamin said something awful, something really quite terrible, but the context indicates it was rattled off in a punchy tone of voice and then posted in ignorance. Now, ignorance is a huge and hideous part of racism. Ignorance isn’t a defence. But it’s not synonymous with real bigotry. I know I’ve said really quite terrible things, posted really quite terrible things online, and then regretted them minutes later. I’m sure you have too. And I’m sure a lot of the people calling for Benjamin’s job have. I’d like to see him able to put his head back up over the parapet and talk with the Muslim folk in the comments lists, and for the rest of us to shove off and leave them to it. As you might imagine, I’m going to be screening comments on this bit pretty damn carefully: you’d better be either very erudite or very peaceful.

ITEM! I really enjoyed the Bristol Comics Expo, getting the chance to see a lot of old friends, and to be on a panel with Alan Davis, Mark Farmer and Laurence ‘The Punisher’ Campbell. While I was there I did a few interviews, first up being this one with Comic News Insider:

http://cni.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=339129

ITEM! Geoff Ryman informs me of some SFnal pleasures at Jodrell Bank in June, including a Brian Aldiss interview:

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/visitorcentre/events/2008_first_move_2.html

ITEM! Claire Weaver, an acquaintance of mine, but possibly better known to you as a Clarke Award judge, doyen of the British SF scene and SF short story writer, has recently gained a place on the screenwriting course at the American Film Institute. Tutorial fees are high, and her visa restrictions prevent her from working over there, so she’s raising money to support her cause. I’m intending to do more to help (possibly some sponsored something… word rate over a week, signing, sitting up… any ideas, anything you lot could join in with?) but for now there’s a button on her website that lets you chuck a fiver at her. I for one welcome it:

http://claireweaver.blogspot.com/

And that’s that. Until the next time, ow. And Cheerio.

Summer Loveliness

I’ve been getting up really early this week because the Summery weather outside has been so delightful. As long time readers may know, I get a bit mad and feral in Summer, and end up staying up all night, keeping my sandals on in the house, and washing my hair in the sink. I once returned from a day at the cricket with half my face tanned and half sunblocked, with a straggly beard, looking like Robinson Crusoe. I can imagine no greater joy.

And amongst all that, I have been fecund! Two thousand words of prose a day, keeping up with the comic work, all sorts of side projects taken care of, cricket on the telly (Usman Afzaal yesterday!) and then out in the evening to sit in the courtyard of the Crown and stay up late talking nonsense about music with my friends in town. Apart from the continual background worry that keeps freelancers, like young prey animals, on their toes, this is about as good as it gets.

Plus, some great TV at the moment. I thought ‘The Sontaran Stratagem’/’The Poison Sky’ was about as good a new Who as ever was, a great script from Helen Raynor. What I liked most about it was that it did a thing typical of Russell’s moral perspective: it didn’t settle on ‘the military is bad’, which it looked like it might for a while, horribly, but interrogated that point, and visited the pride and attraction of brave soldiery, and concluded that there was something worthwhile on both sides. The Doctor’s not the final authority on what’s right, but is a person with an opinion, albeit one he’s thoroughly considered, and that can change. Terrific stuff, and very much part of something I’ve noted here before, Russell’s ‘anti agenda agenda’: that a fixed belief system, no matter how heroic the character who holds it, the Doctor included, is a worrying thing. And that amongst such stonking old school action. Great stuff. Battlestar Galactica is also being imperiously great at the moment, delivering big dramatic character deaths in ironic and painful ways, and working fastidiously towards an ending that’s obviously been planned in detail. Fantastic work from Jane Espenson on the last episode, especially. Like the above Who, it’s an exercise in grey areas.

I am again obliged to point out various things that are happening in the next few days. First off, I’m the guest on BBC Radio Wales’ All Things Considered this coming Sunday at 8.30am, and it can be heard afterwards here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/radiowales/sites/allthingsconsidered/

Or as a podcast:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/atc/

Roy Jenkins is a very tough interviewer, in the best possible way. I think we get to some revealing stuff.

I didn’t want to mention it before, because it seemed slightly presumptuous, but I’m told it’s fine to say that Iain Banks has now taken a look at the recording script of my BBC Radio 4 adaptation of his novella ‘The State of the Art’ and pronounces himself pleased. Any awfulness, of course, remains my own, and is not his responsibility. We’re now into the exciting process of casting, news of which I shall share with you when I can, and will be recording in a few weeks, for broadcast early next year. I’m really psyched by how rewarding a process this has been so far, and getting Iain’s approval just adds to that.

The first issue of Captain Britain and MI-13 is out next Wednesday/Thursday depending on whether you’re in the US or UK. I’m going to be doing a signing of it on Thursday evening, the 15^th, at the Proud Lion comic shop in Cheltenham:

http://www.proudlion.co.uk/

I popped in to officially open the shop the other weekend (my second plaque!) and found myself part of a warm sitcom about selling comics and actually talking to your customers. There’s already quite a social life developing around that shop, as with all the best comic retailers. Long may it continue.

On the evening of Tuesday, the 13^th, I have the honour of addressing Oxford University’s C.S. Lewis Society:

http://lewisinoxford.googlepages.com/

On the subject of ‘Who and I’, which is just basically an excuse for me to witter.

I’m off to the Bristol International Comics Expo tonight, a yearly treat with loads of bar time with old friends. I’m on a panel at 4pm tomorrow, with Captain Britain legend Alan Davis and new Punisher artist Laurence Campbell. This year I think I’ll spare myself the hassle of heckling the Eagle Awards and just hear the horror stories from the bar.

Thanks to Grant Morrison for expressing a preference in terms of the Hugo Awards during a fascinating interview:

http://www.comicmix.com/news/2008/04/29/interview-grant-morrison-on-final-crisis-and-doctor-who/

Loads of finished Captain Britain pages, looking great at Joe Quesada’s MySpace page:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=92159514&blogID=389229861

I’m very proud to have provided the introduction to How The Doctor Changed My Life, the new Big Finish short story anthology, edited by Simon Guerrier, that’s devoted entirely to the winners of their recent writing competition:

http://www.bigfinish.com/news/How-The-Doctor-Changed-My-Life

I’ve run into several of this lot in the last few months, and they’re wonderfully enthusiastic and up for it. These are the next generation. Do support them when the book comes out in September.

My mate and new Indiana Jones comics scribe Rob Williams has a blog, with a page of gorgeous Indy pencils:

http://www.robwilliamscomics.co.uk/

And finally, if you fancy adding a bit of Captain Britain support to your blog, website or forum posting, here are some gorgeous icons, designed by leading Marvel UK fan Mark Roberts (you know him as The Sword is Drawn). Aren’t they groovy?

Until next time, Cheerio!

Constellations, Comic Shop Openings and Stuff

Just popping in quickly to mention a few things that need urgently mentioning. I’m aware that my blog at the moment is really just a combination of promotion and social calendar, and I promise I’ll get to some more writerly writing soon. Notably a piece about New York. It’s just that life is busy at the moment and thinks keep popping up. I’m also aware that the blog design could do with a bit of modernisation. I will get there, it’s just that I’m so busy writing things. Here are the things I have to mention:

Notably, and most wonderfully, I’m nominated, alongside Moffat, in the Constellation Awards, Canada’s fan awards for excellence in science fiction television and film, in the category of Best Script. All Canadian citizens can vote, or those attending the Polaris conventions. Hmm, I know quite a few Canadians…

http://constellations.tcon.ca/v.shtml

At 11.30am this Saturday, the 3^rd May, I’ll be popping in for Free Comic Book Day to officially open Cheltenham’s new comic shop, Proud Lion:

http://www.proudlion.co.uk/

Comic Book Resources have put up six lovely full colour pages of art from the first issue of Captain Britain and MI-13, available May 14/May 15 in your local comic shop, depending on if you’re in the US or UK:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=16193

And here's a new interview about the series at Newsarama:

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=155363

On Sunday, I’ll be on one of the teams, probably the Third Row Fandom team (unless I get a better offer), who won last time (I love it how SFX coming second is mentioned below!), at the Sci-Fi London Pub Quiz:

http://www.sci-fi-london.com/festival/2008/programme/event/pub-quiz.php

And I’m looking forward to one of the pivots around which my year turns, the Clarke Awards, tomorrow night, at which I always see so many friends. So I may see some of you on Wednesday, Saturday or Sunday. Until then, Cheerio!

Vision Day

I’m back from New York, and still not fully recovered from one of the most satisfying weekends of my professional life. Much Marvel goodness, including meeting my lovely editors, partying, and Passover with Peter David. But more on that at length when I have time to write a proper piece. Today (in the States) or tomorrow (in the UK) I have something new on the racks, my issue of Young Avengers Presents, featuring The Vision. Here’s a quick new interview about it…

Interview

with lots of lovely Mark Brooks art pages. If you’re inclined to pop in to your local comic shop, do give it a try.

Today I did an interview for BBC Radio Wales’ All Things Considered, which I gather will be going out soon. I shall of course let you know when.

Here’s the Amazon page for Fast Forward 2, the upcoming SF anthology from Pyr Books that I’m proud to have a short story in. I’m told to emphasise that this isn’t the final cover by John Picacio, but a work in progress. However, I feel bound to say that I think it’s lovely as it is.

Fast Forward

And here’s a variant cover of the first issue of Captain Britain and MI-13. I’m pleased just to have a second cover that’s going to be on a batch of the issues, and it’s doubly pleasing that it’s so lovely:

Cover

My travels aren’t over yet, I’m off to record some Doctor Who DVD extras tomorrow. I hope that at some point I’ll get to lie on a sofa somewhere. Or possibly type at my desk rather than on a train, because the novel is getting along, and I’d like to know how it looks when it’s keeping still. Until I see you next, hopefully with a large chunk of travel writing, Cheerio!

Rennes, New York and... Everything!

Right, far too much to do, too little time. Hello on the most wonderful day of the year: the start of the English cricket season! And I’ve done two thousand good words of novel this morning, and am full of the joys. Got back from Rennes in Brittany the day before yesterday, off to New York for the Comic Convention, and many nice meetings and social appointments, tomorrow. Highlights of Rennes: the architecture; the Arthurian theme running throughout; the many local comic shops, stocking the albums like they were, you know, normal, and advertising the new bestsellers with full size display ads at the railway station; the ‘salon du manga’ that just happened to be going on next to our hotel, and my usual adventure into any city’s modern art world, this time involving an encounter with a Guinea Fowl called ‘Presence’ and an adapted bicycle. But enough about that.

I have saved up many, many things of which to tell you. First off, those of you who are going to be in Denver for Worldcon, or who would like to buy a supporting membership (you can find out how for yourselves, I’m not willing to be that shallow… as yet) can now vote in the Hugo Awards:

www.denvention3.org/wcdb/08hugostart.php

In which I’m competing in the Short Form Drama category, for the Doctor Who episodes ‘Human Nature’ and… I’m not actually telling anyone this for the first time, am I? Sorry.

All of you, mind you, can vote in the Eagle Awards:

http://www.eagleawards.co.uk/vote.asp

I’m not represented here, but my mates Matt Brooker, (for inker and colourist), Richard Starkings (for letterer), Tom Brevoort (my editor on FF at Marvel) and David Bishop (who wrote Thrill Power Overload, the history of 2000AD that’s nominated for Best Comic-Related Book), are. And the chaps from Sancho in Ireland would love some votes for Favourite European Comic. The Eagles are currently mired in the latest of their many controversies and problems, this time about the administrators deciding, during an open nominations process, that one chap (Tony Lee) who was popular enough to say ‘vote for me’ and get lots of people thus doing so was ballot stuffing. I say there’s a world of difference between him doing that and actually making up votes, and if you run an open nominations process, you should accept what the public give you. Thank goodness I’m not directly involved. But I may well be there at the back on the night. Shouting abuse. As always.

And you could vote for my boss at Marvel, the lovely Joe Quesada, here:

http://www.americanlatino.tv/awards/inspiring/

As Most Inspiring American Latino. Go on!

My friends at the BBC Archive draw my attention to this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/titanic/index.shtml

The latest in their gorgeous line-up of themed collections of broadcast material, this one putting together a vastly valuable and interesting resource of virtually everything the BBC has concerning the Titanic disaster. Do pop along and add to their page hits, won’t you?

Here’s a new interview about Captain Britain and MI-13, with some more lovely Leonard Kirk art from the first issue:

http://www.comicsbulletin.com/features/120784245582350.htm

And here’s the gorgeous Bryan Hitch cover for issue three:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/preview2.php?image=solicits/marvelcomics/200807-advance/cap_brit_3.jpg

And the solicitation for the first issue of Fantastic Four: True Story is also now up, the copy being written in a pretty mad way (which I have to keep going now for the next three issues) by yours truly:

http://www.newsarama.com/marvelnew/July2008/solicitations.html

Which means it’ll be in your comic shops in July.

Finally, and most importantly, please may I urge you to pop along here:

http://www.matchitforpratchett.org/terry_pratchett/index.html

And donate something to ‘Match it for Pratchett’, the campaign that sees the rest of us trying to put as much into the fight against Alzheimer’s as Terry Pratchett is. This is a cause which I think speaks to every writer. Go on, you owe him for some of those books, right?

I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of old friends in New York, to staying late in some convention bars, to getting to see some cool stuff and to finally meeting work colleagues. I do intend, at some point, to be at the I, Fanboy party:

http://www.ifanboy.com/content/articles/iFanboy_at_New_York_Comic_Con__-_UPDATED

So if I don’t see you on the convention floor, I hope to see you there. Until then, Cheerio!

Fantastic Four: True Story

I'm very pleased to be able to announce that I'm the writer on a four part Fantastic Four miniseries, True Story, starting this July from Marvel Comics.

You may remember that mysterious page of comic artwork I put on the blog during The Twelve Blogs of Christmas. Well, that was from this project, which sees the FF entering the world of fiction and meeting classic literary characters. I'm very excited about this project, I've been itching to be able to talk about it, and now I can!

There's an interview about it, with a few pages of lovely Horacio Dominguez art here:

Interview

And there's another bit of art here, on the page of my editor, the mighty Tom:

Colour Art

Do check it out. Cheerio!

Next Year in Dublin

I'm honoured to announce that I'm going to the Guest of Honour at one of my favourite conventions, the Phoenix Convention in Dublin, in 2009:

http://www.pcon.ie

It's the first time I've been GoH anywhere, and it's doubly splendid that it's this lot, even if it does mean that I'll have the mickey taken out of me the whole weekend. They tell me that the GoH buys the drinks. At any rate, it's lovely news, and thanks, chaps.