So, as well as having book two released, book one has been given a fresh cover. The blue cover is my original, first book, and has nothing new in it - if you have the black and yellow cover book then you don't need to buy the blue cover.

The new book is a bit bigger and has the red cover, and of course a different name, but it's similar enough that people might make a mistake and pick up the wrong book.

Here they both are so you can compare them.

So - original book on the left, new book on the right. I just want people to know so that they don't get the wrong one by mistake.

So, my second book is out in the shops. Amazon have also been delivering their copies (and it's now back in stock in their store). Over the weekend I've been getting messages through my twitter account and the odd email.

I've even noticed one of the better MPs ordering a copy. Hopefully, once he's finished with it he'll pass it to Phil Hope, the minister for Social Care as Phil's predecessor Ivan Lewis didn't think that ambulances had anything to do with social care.

I'm actually yet to see a copy myself - there is one sitting at my local post office that I shall pop down and get once I've finished posting this.

What I would like to do is ask a favour.

I have a tiny ego, it sits somewhere just above my spleen and is a fragile and dirty little thing - it seldom gets any chance to be polished.

What I ask is that if you read/buy/see my book I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts on it (even if you think it's bad). Some of the ways you can let me know about your thoughts on the book are this.

• Twitter - You can either Direct Message or '@Reynolds' me.

• Blogs - If you can stick a review up on your own blog I'd be extremely grateful - I have a Google alert for the book title, but if you'd like to leave a link to your post in one of my comments you can be sure that I don't miss it.

• Flickr - I'd love to see what shops my book gets to. I'd like to see where it ends up, especially people who are saving it to read while on holiday - if you tag your photos 'BST2' I'll be able to find them.

• Email - My normal email that hides behind the spam shield of 'How to contact me' on the sidebar on the right.

• Delicious - Again, if you use the tag 'BST2' I'll be able to find it.

• Amazon - If you would be so kind, I'd love you to leave a review on the Amazon page. I think it'll help me sell more books, which will make my publishers (and me) happy.

UPDATE: A quick warning - the first book has a new, blue, cover - the new one is a bit bigger and has a red cover, I'd hate it if someone bought the wrong one by mistake.

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The free, complete and fully open for remixes downloadable edition will be along soon. The reason for the short delay is that Harper are making sure that it really shines - from what I hear it sounds like it's going to be something lovely. As soon as I know something I'll pop it up here. Remember that the original can be found here at archive.org.

More on that when it appears.

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.

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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...)

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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*.

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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.

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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).

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

Journey with us to a state where an unaccountable panel of censors vets 95 per cent of citizens’ domestic internet connections. The content coming into each home is checked against a mysterious blacklist by a group overseen by nobody, which keeps secret the list of censored URLs not just from citizens, but from internet service providers themselves. And until recently, few in that country even knew the body existed. Are we in China? Iran? Saudi Arabia? No – the United Kingdom, in 2009. This month, we ask: Who watches the Internet Watch Foundation?

An excellent article that every UK user of the internet should read.

I slid myself into the seat opposite Mohmar, why he kept picking this cheap takeaway shop as a place to meet I'll never know. He was finishing off his kebab, given what I'd been doing earlier in the day, the thinly sliced meat covered in chilli sauce wasn't what I wanted to look at.

I stared out the window and watched a double-decker bus go past.

"You wanted to ask me about dragons?", he said to me not looking up from the remains of his meal.

"Yeah, dragons", I tried to take even more interest in what was happening outside the window, normal folks going about normal business never needing to have the sort of insane conversation I was having. But talking to Mohmar was the only way I could get the information I needed.

"You know birds are dinosaurs", he said to me seemingly out of the blue, "that's what dinosaurs turned into after the extinction event. Feathers are just modified scales."

"Sure", I replied, "but I'm not talking dinosaurs, I'm talking thaumavores - big honking dragons."

"Yeah, but think on it for a minute. Dragons feed on magic, that's what 'thaumavore' means. When the amount of free magic in the world started falling they couldn't get enough to eat."

I shrugged, "If you say so".

"Think of it like this - you know Barnaby, the river troll who lives under Westminster bridge? He just looks like a big smelly homeless guy right, don't look unusual at all? Well, imagine picking him up and sticking him in a place where the ambient level of magic is higher, say Stonehenge. Put him there and he'll get bigger and greener and those warts'll turn into horns and before you know it he'll be a troll again".

I tried to picture Barnaby in his true form. It wasn't a pleasant thought.

"You've got to think of it like this", he continued picking absentmindedly at a bit of salad, "without a certain level of magic in the world the dark creatures, the thaumavores, start to lose their defences, so they changed into things that made it easier to hide."

"I'm still trying to see what this has to do with dragons", I asked.

"OK, so here in the fallen world the levels of magic went down. Dragons are very much like special dinosaurs, so what do you think they turned into?"

"Birds?", I couldn't really fault his logic but in the circles we both walked in, logic couldn't be relied on.

"Correct", he smiled and looked me straight in the eyes, "But, what specific type of bird do you think they turned into?"

"I've no idea. Storks?", I looked out the window again and hoped he'd get to the point.

"Well, you are looking for a type of bird that likes gold - dragons liked to sit on hoards of gold, right? And you are looking for a type of bird that has some serious mythology behind them, something approaching fear or respect."

"Go on", but I suddenly had a feeling I knew where this was going.

"Look at the magpie", he said waving his hands in the air, "Known to steal expensive jewellery, all the better to build their hoard, and if you meet one in the street you are supposed to salute it, thereby showing it respect and avoiding bad luck. They mate for life, just like dragons, and they are one of the species of birds that can talk if you let them. They are also the only bird that can recognise itself in a mirror. And that's pretty rare even amongst you mammals."

I let the insult slide, "So, if I'm hunting dragons, I should be hunting magpies? How do I find a quiescent dragon amongst all the magpies of London?"

"Look to the Parliament of Crows", he said getting up from his seat and making his way to the door, "I reckon they'll have an idea who the top predator is".

I sat and stared at the empty plate, grateful that Tower Hill is only a few tube stops away.

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Yes, yes, I read too much SF/Fantasy and play too many RPGs. I don't apologise, I like my fantasy as an escape from the reality I deal with normally.

A controversial database which holds the details of every child in England has now become available for childcare professionals to access.

ContactPoint was a response to Lord Laming's report following the death of Victoria Climbie, who was abused by her great aunt and the aunt's boyfriend.

But the system, costing £224m, was delayed twice amid data security fears.

The government says it will enable more co-ordinated services for children and ensure none slips through the net.

But in 2007, a report into the project by auditors Deloitte and Touche said it could never be totally secure.

Last summer ministers delayed the database, admitting there were some "issues" identified in testing.

It says 390,000 people will have access to the database, but will have gone through stringent security training.

And it is a certainty that not one of those 390,000 people will be able to be blackmailed or bribed in order to give up a child's details.

Ahem.

I would suggest that giving over a third of a million people 'stringent' security training will be rather harder to do than the government thinks it will be.

Much like getting children used to handing over their fingerprints to borrow library books it seems that we are educating tomorrows generation to be content that the government has all their details.

The hospital was the perfect place for him. In a hospital people die all the time, so if there was a mistake no-one would notice. People also came and went regularly, the effects of his hunger wouldn't be as obvious than if he chose just one person to maintain him.

He'd haunt the wards at night, hidden in the shadows. He'd long ago mastered the skill of being nearly invisible in the dark. Sometimes a nurse on her rounds would walk past him. He'd push himself back against the wall and hold his breath while the nurse passed, oblivious to his presence.

He'd go from patient to patient, snipping out a day or two of their lives. He left no trace and who would notice their lifespan reduced by a few hours? It's not like anyone knew when they would die.

It wasn't blood he drank, nothing so base. What he took was time, nibbling away at the thread of the person's lifetime.

The only time that someone would die would be if they were near death already. He'd learned to avoid those that were too ill. Once, many years ago, he'd been feeding from a patient and he felt their life just slip away. Alarms had sounded at the nursing station and he'd barely managed to clamber through the window before the crash team arrived.

He could still taste that final drop of life. It tasted like ash.

Sometimes he would risk the maternity ward, what baby, with seventy years of life left in them would notice a week or two of life drained away to feed him?

It was only fair, after all he kept darker, nastier things away from the hospital.

Each life tasted different, some had the flowery taste of opportunity, others a heady broth of experiences and regrets.

He'd started to feed from the staff, the doctors and nurses who'd seen so much - he liked their flavour the best because they had witnessed it all, life, death and all that lay between. Their lives tasted of a thousand things at once, each experience adding it's own distinct seasoning to a life well lived.

He'd started feeding from them more and more often, the taste of other lives could not compare to that of the nurses. He knew it was wrong, that to take too much from one person would cut their life short by years, not days but he couldn't help himself.

The nurses would say that it was the work, the shifts, the stresses that aged them. But he knew the truth.

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Yep - I've completely run out of things to write, which means that I might be posting fragments of fiction for the rest of this week - perhaps even a sneak preview of what I'm working on at the moment.

I really need to get back to work. Only then will normal service be resumed.