Something I wanted to tell you

I wish this was an April Fool’s day joke but for one thing, I’m not a fan of tricking people and secondly, it’s true. Tomorrow I’m going into hospital for some fairly major surgery so I won’t be around for a while. So today I am frantically finishing off some loose ends and trying not to freak out totally.

I feel that the nature of the surgery and related details fall behind my personal privacy line but I will say that it’s not cancer-related and that whilst pretty awful and frankly terrifying for me, I should make a full recovery and not suffer any long term problems. In fact, this surgery should end some long term problems that have been worsening over the last 18 months.

However, as I have no idea how long it will take me to recover enough to be back online and getting up to mischief here, I thought I should let you know the reason why. I will try to send some sort of “I’m still alive” update through Twitter and FB but I will be in hospital for anything between 2-5 days so don’t worry if it’s not for a while.

I have prepared the next Tea and Jeopardy episode to go live next Monday, no matter what state I’m in, so at least that won’t be disrupted too much.

Whilst I’m away

There are all of the other Tea and Jeopardy episodes to enjoy of course, and if you haven’t seen it, the new Patreon page with a very silly video.

If you happen to visit somewhere with a local Waterstones, I’d be so grateful if you could check out their SFF displays and see if anything has actually improved on the gender parity and increased diversity of authors front. I haven’t seen any evidence so far, other than in the Leeds branch, but I understand they were pretty damn cool already. If you have the time and means, pictures of display tables would be fantastic (please make a note of the branch and date you visited).

If you’re in need of a good book to read, for the love of all that is good in this world, buy and read the Predator Cities series by Philip Reeve if you haven’t already. I’m reading The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell at the moment and it is so good it makes me feel all needy and insecure about my own writing (perfectly natural). There’s the Copper Promise by Jennifer Williams too, anything by China Mieville (of course) and my husband is currently devouring the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie (I haven’t read them yet).

I have no idea why I’m burbling about this. Nerves I suppose. All being well, next week I’ll be back at home, binging on Adventure Time and Black Books and re-watching HBO’s Rome (OMFG so good!) and the worst will be behind me.

But now I am scared and just want to stay and home and write more books. Life, eh?