Friday, January 4, 2013
Peter David (PAD) is a long-time writer of comic books (back when I was buying comics on a regular basis I was a fan of several titles he wrote), television scripts, novels (both original fiction and TV/movie/comic book tie-ins), a regular column in Comics Buyer's Guide, and a blog which is both informative and entertaining - I check the latter pretty regularly. Unfortunately, I've been off the web for a while (because dial-up SUCKS when the rest of the world expects a fast connection) so it wasn't until I checked his blog today that I discovered that PAD had a stroke roughly a week ago while on vacation with his family in Florida.
The good news - he's still alive and, reading between the lines of the blog updates, seems to be all there, mentally. But it sounds like physically things are rough, and the doctor's are seeing enough things that concern them that's he's still in the hospital rather than moving to rehab.
No big surprise, when word broke, people asked how they can help - PAD has a lot of folks who love his writing. The Davids have health insurance but also have copays and plenty of additional unanticipated expenses will no doubt appear as PAD struggles to recover. They're currently requesting that folks who want to help buy one or more of PAD's ebooks, though several possible sites. These are the titles that produce the quickest and largest flow of royalties to PAD. Purchasing his older titles and trade paperback collections of comics he's written also helps, but in a smaller, slower way.
Here's the blog post with details on the ebooks, for anyone who wants to help. Having read some of his work (both in comics and prose form) I can definitely recommend his books - they are creative and fun and filled with great characters, and I for one am looking forward to reading some of his most recent prose work - I'm just sorry it took this to get me to get off my backside and order the books.
A while back I recommended holding our loved ones close and appreciating the time we have with them - the last few weeks seem determined to drive that point home in spades.
JMH
