I consider myself very lucky. Since starting this blog I've had a couple of people send me books to review, something I'm more than happy to do.

The latest book that I was given (and I have another one on the review pile) is Blue Lights and Long Nights by Les Pringle.
Les is an ambulance man through and through, he joined the Birmingham Ambulance Service in the early 1970's. This book is the story of his first eighteen months in the job.
I was immediately struck by Les' writing, full of humour, wit and self examination it reminded me of all the thoughts and feelings I had when starting the job. Even including the worlds crappiest van for the driving test.
It's a very easy read and I read it in one sitting. He tells a number of stories and gives you all the interesting details without ever leaving you thinking that the story has gone on too long.
What is shouting out from almost every page is that the job hasn't changed since the 70's - sure, we have better equipment and more drugs to play with, but the messroom culture, the sorts of patients we go to and the problems with management are all the same as they are now. One story from more recent times its told, and it is only the 'insider' in me that had me noticing the small difference between the past and present.
Les' writing is so good that, even though I know the material inside out, I was still drawn to read more - he's a very engaging a writer. If you like this blog, then you will also like this book and I cannot recommend it enough.

You also might want to buy mine at the same time - More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea. It should be in all good shops (and some dodgy ones I guess) by the weekend. As soon as I've the details for the download version I'll throw them up here. Also, for those interested I did a scrap of radio yesterday - you can listen to it via iPlayer here for the next week, my bit starts around the 17 minute mark (and thanks to @jamrock for pointing that out, thereby making my life easier).
Disclaimer: All my Amazon links make me a bit of money from stuff that is bought from them.

Back to work with a nice little (twelve hour) late shift. Late enough to lay in bed, but not late enough that you feel like dying at 4am that morning.

As I'm back to work after a long absence I'm being 'third manned', another ambulance person is on the truck with me in case I freak out and go mad or something. It's a good way to ease you back into work should you need it - something I didn't really need so my 'third man' had a lovely easy shift.

As for the patients, well it seemed that I went to most of the stereotypical jobs during the night, missing only the 'elderly person on the floor', 'urine infection' and 'demented nursing home patient'. We missed an 'assault' just by virtue of the police getting there first.

What was surprising was that we needed to 'blue light' four patient's straight into the resuscitation room - but at least it means we earned our pay.

Our first job of the shift was a very pleasant gentleman who had a problem with his heart - we took him into hospital and, unlike most of my other patient's I got to talk to him the next day when he walked up to me in the hospital and shook my hand and thanked me. It doesn't often happen and so I think that this handshake will stay with me for some time.

The rest of the shift was fine, with lots of nice patients and nice relatives - the only exception was a drunk in a pub who'd injured themselves, we had to scoop him up off the floor while making sure we didn't aggravate his twenty friends who were all around half a pint away from falling over themselves all while trying to prove that they liked him the most. It had something to do with football is all I know.

So it was a good shift, if busy and when some time passes I'll no doubt write more about some of those patients.

-----

I've just heard from my publisher that "More, Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup Of Tea" is back from the printers and that it should be in shops for the weekend.

I've just phoned the resource centre at work to let them know that I'm fit to return to work. My first shift is a Sunday late shift - and I can't wait.

(Of course, give it two weeks and I'll be screaming to come off the road again...)

-----

On Saturday I shall be at the MCM London Expo indulging in my inner nerd. If you ant to stop me and have a chat please do feel free - I don't bite*.

-----

For those that are interested, my calendar is starting to fill up with PR/Marketing stuff around 'More Blood, More Sweat And Another Cup Of Tea' - more of which as it approaches. There is at least one national TV slot lined up.

-----

How do you check to see if an ID card is genuine? Flick it with your finger and see what noise it makes. (I wish I had the energy to find the actual government website that gives this advice).

-----

*Insert standard joke 'unless you want me to...' which is, I believe, a legal requirement.

I'm mentioned in this column for 5th estate,

Scott Pack, publisher of The Friday Project, shares this philosophy. Acquired by HarperCollins last year, The Friday Project operates under an innovative publishing model - releasing titles under Creative Common licenses and distributing digital copies of books for free. According to Pack, they “have always experienced positive sales as a result of giving away free books.” When the Friday Project made one of their most successful titles, Blood, Sweat and Tea, available as a free downloand from their website, sales immediately jumped. The results of giving away free books has been so consistently positive, in fact, that Pack plans to find even more for creative ways to give the follow up, ‘More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea’, away for free. “We are looking to make More Blood…available for free on any platform we can, as well as creating an Issuu widget so that anyone else can share it as well.”

Which is good, it's always been my belief that giving away my book leads to more sales and it's nice to see that we have the numbers to prove that. If it didn't sell more I don't think that Harper would let me release book two in a similar way,in fact in a way that makes the free download even more attractive and easier to obtain.

I'm really happy that Scott is handling my book.

The last week was a week off from my 'day job', (is it still a day job if you work nights I wonder), what this let me do was catch up on all the things that I can't do when I'm working. What this really means is that my 'week off' was a week spent in meetings, plotting plans, doing writing work and other such things.

This week is also going to be a busy one, not only do I have forty-eight hours of ambulance work, I also have a PR conference where I am a panel guest. I also have the final changes to the sequel to Blood, Sweat and Tea to have in by the end of the week - with some luck I'll have some interesting news about both books in the near future.

Then I need to start planning out the narrative arcs for my third book, which will be fiction - something that I've never really done before.

I'll also hopefully have some good news about a gig that is quite unlike anything else that I've done before - I'll let you know what that is as soon as I can.

Finally I'm chasing yet another writing job that could be extremely interesting.

But tucked away at the end of everything else is a regular podcast and the possibility of another website.

Oh yes, and I should write some blogposts for this blog before I get carried away...

I think I need to employ an assistant.

All of this means that my time spent doing my 'day job', my ambulance work, will be one of the few moments that I'll have to relax - which is obviously a bit strange.

For those that want to take part, this Monday's question (to be answered in the comments) is, "Tell me about a teacher that made an impact on you". I ask this because I'm reading 'Moab is my washpot', the early autobiography of Stephen Fry where he talks about his teachers. Due to my shocking memory I can't remember any of my teachers, so I'd like to hear about yours.

Coming off nights, I'm writing this before I go to bed - the one good thing about nightshifts is that I get to drive home to go to bed while the normal people are trudging through the rain to get to work.

The draft manuscript for the sequel to Blood, Sweat and Tea has been emailed to my publisher. More news on this as it comes.

Monday's question for you is this -

If everyone has the ability to write a book - what is the first sentence of your book?

When I emailed in my draft manuscript I also posted a little note for the copy editor - I include it here the for comedic value of all the 'gotchas' that I am blissfully ignorant of.

Note for copy editors –
Just some notes to help guide you and alert you to some of the horrific liberties I take with the English language
The [[text like this]] is formatting instructions, not me having some sort of conniption. It’s text that should be rendered in a fashion that makes it obvious that it’s a later comment on the previous post.
I’m particularly poor at getting lying/laying right, sorry about that. Normally I write myself around using these words but I may have missed a few.
Also ‘was’ and ‘were’.
And ‘which’ and ‘that’. I wish I’d paid attention in school.
I like hyphens, en-dash or em-dash, I can’t seem to get enough of them – if possible I’d like them left in as they are part of my ‘voice’ even though I know that it’s not necessarily decent grammar.
I also like ellipsis… (Which I type as three full stops, Word may have changed them into the correct character – I have no idea).
Commas followed by propositions, but sometimes I can’t help myself.
I’ve probably missed a few chances to press my semi-colon button on the keyboard. I like semi-colons but I’m a bit daft about when to use them.
I try to avoid jargon, but sometimes I can’t help myself. If you want to change EMT to E.M.T. go ahead but ORCON isn’t an acronym and so should remain as it is.
Keep an eye out for ‘ and “ I’ve possibly mixed them up – sorry. I’m also a terror for missing or adding incorrect possessive apostrophes, blame my comprehensive school education.
I use newlines and double newlines for timing, I don’t know if layout is part of your purview but some of these double newlines are intended – please bear this in mind if you change some of them (and no doubt some of them are in there by mistake)
Thank you very much for putting yourself through the trauma of trying to beat this manuscript into shape, it’s very much appreciated.

I now have a week off work which means plenty of chance for me to get some of my other projects up and running, as well as a chance to do some administration on this site.

But first... sleep.