Break Out The Freebies!

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, you have the chance to acquire a lovely fresh copy of my first, funny, novel for free. That's right, not one penny will it cost you from around 12 noon Gulf Standard Time right through to the same time tomorrow - 24 hours of untrammeled freebiness with a dollop of free ebook on the side.

All you have to have is a Kindle or the Kindle reader for PC, iPad or any other device.

You just click on this here easy to use YES! I WANT A FREE COPY OF SPACE link to Amazon.co.uk. Or if you're in the US or India you can CLICK HERE for amazon.com!

And that's all there is to it!

Why should you want a free copy of Space? Well, for a start it's free. Secondly it's funny (if at times a little risqué, not a read for the faint hearted or easily shocked, you have been warned) and comes with a laughter guaranteed or your money back promise. As I have explained before:

Space spoofs a genre that I have come to call the ‘airport novel’; that comfortingly large slab of silliness that you invariably turn to when you have to survive a seven-hour flight. Just like the Avian Obsession and the Maltese Balcony and those other man-in-race-against-time-against-unfeasible-odds-to-save-the-world-against-shadowy-cabal-led-by-megalomaniac books, Space is a fast moving page-turner filled with baddies and secret agent babes. Unlike the majority of them, Space is also intentionally and successfully funny.

Main character Dr. Ben Jonson is transformed from being a happy middle-class GP into a wilful killer, chased across Europe by police and various intelligence agencies. His odysseyette (it is so a word. I looked it up on the Internet) brings him together with a psychopathic CIA agent in a catsuit, a sex worker from Weybridge and a devastatingly effective computer virus that causes widespread societal breakdown. It all ends up with American bombers, the police and army, the Russian Mafia and a number of highly eccentric octogenarians coming together under a stone circle somewhere in Southern England.

In Space, the baddy spends most of his time with his hand up his pneumatic secretary’s skirt, the good guys are kooks and MI5 safe houses are staffed by pink-haired camp people. The book darkens a little when the action starts moving, but it never stops being irredeemably daft. By the time we’re ready to resolve things at the end, there’s lots of slightly strange sex going on. I always find that strange sex is so much more interesting than ordinary ‘boy meets girl and gets it on’ which, lets face it, has been done before.

 The offer comes to you courtesy of Amazon's Kindle Select programme,  which means I can only sell Space over Amazon for three months, but can give it away for five days within that period. This is the second giveaway day of my five. It's a bit like having three wishes, except there are five of them and they're not wishes. And if you're a Kindle Prime subscriber in the US, Space is permafree!

Do share the news far and wide. The more people who download Space free, the happier I'll be! If anyone fancies leaving a review on Amazon, that'd be just lovely but there is no obligation so to do whatsoever.

Content warning - Space is published in the US and UK only and does have a number of rude bits in it. So if you're easily offended, please don't read it!

From Dubai to Moscow

 (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Could this be the story of the making of the worst film of the year? Those long in the tooth may remember I posted in 2007 and again in 2009 about a film script called 'Dubai', written by 'tyro' writer Adam Cozad and duly sold to Paramount.

A copy of the script was posted online but has now, tragically, been taken down. As I pointed out back in 2009, when it became clear that the GFC meant 'Dubai' was DOA, it was a slab of utter crap layered with some more crap and sprinkled with crappy hundreds and thousands. Written by a man who had not only never been to Dubai but wouldn't know Dubai from a pickled wombat if it hit him in the back of the neck, it trotted out every tired, vapid cliche in the book and complemented these with some woeful silliness, racism and a nice dose of unbelievable stupidity.

You might think I'm going overboard here. Trust me, I'm being kind. As I said back in 2009:

We are introduced to our hero in a shot where he is playing his regular game of tennis with his gorgeous wife. The camera pulls back to reveal that the game is taking place on the helipad of the Burj Al Arab. The whole thing goes downhill from that low point with such pace that it's like being on a theme park 'drop' ride.

 It now appears that 'Dubai' spent a couple of years in a cupboard somewhere at Paramount before someone realised they'd wasted real money buying the unlovely turd-like thing and decided to use it as the script to relaunch the Jack Ryan franchise. And so 'Dubai' became 'Moscow', with a number of writers, including ('briefly' according to Slash Film) Cozad hired to rework the script into, presumably, something at least viewable by mentally retarded macaques - a major task if the script that was 'Dubai' was to be polished to gleam like true Hollywood gold.

It remains to be seen if the film will open on the helipad of the Burj Al Arab or perhaps a game of tennis in Red Square. Will there be a snowy dacha and a sexy vodka love scene on a bearskin rug in front of a open fire? A skating scene with perhaps someone dying under the ice? There's bound to be at least one sauna/steam bath scene. And, of course, lots of gangsters and oligarchs. Will the idiotically helpful Sikh crane driver make it through?

It almost makes the whole thing worth watching. Not.

(Thanks to an eagle-eyed pal Talal who spotted the 'Moscow' news and my old post and put two and two together)

Fake Book Reviews. A Confession.

books (Photo credit: brody4)

I have to confess to being unsurprised at the 'established authors create fake reviews' furore. Authors are not gentlemen.

The latest head to fall, apparently, is crime writer RJ Ellory. The whole thing was started by novelist Stephen Leather, talking on a panel at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. He crowed, idiotically, about the way he creates 'sock puppets' - alternative Internet personae - to big up his books, including creating false reviews and *gasp* tweeting false praise as well as dissing 'rivals'.

What annoys me is the line sniffily taken by mainstream media commentators such as The Independent's Terence Blacker, "You'd expect this from self published writers, but surely not established authors".

Would you now?

As traditional publishing has struggled, and largely failed, to come to terms with the challenges of the Internet Age, publishers have wasted no time in pushing their authors to blog and tweet in promotion of their work. That many authors aren't very astute users of the Internet should come as no surprise - the poor darlings mostly like to sit in sheds and write fantasies, not leap about Twitter dressed in a silver lame thong and squealing 'My book, read my book!'.

I have myself spent much of the preceding decade dealing with the infuriatingly analogue types known as literary agents (only latterly would they accept submissions online and there are still die-hards who won't look at email). A chummy, clubby and massivly analogue industry mired in a business model predicated on massive inefficiency, publishing has struggled to redefine itself, and largely failed. As more focus is drawn to the industry, we start to see more of the underhand, self-serving behaviours of 'big publishing', including authors writing blurbs for unknowns to please powerful editors and agents. A practise little better than sock puppetry, IMHO.

As it happens, not one of my reviews for Olives - A Violent Romance, is me in disguise or any friend or family member I have pressed to write positively. Many reviewers have encountered me online or at a conference of some sort, part of the reason people buy books. Many have been sent my book for review, the clear deal here is you get an independent review of your work. I am very proud of the very many positive reviews Olives has garnered and can see no reason why I should jeopardise that by cheating.

Besides, I'm not even totally sure about the value of reviews. I can trace no discernable impact on e-book sales resulting from any one review of Olives, although I do think there is huge value in a collection of positive - thoughtful - reviews of a book being available to readers. The trouble is now, they can't be entirely sure whether those reviews are the 'real deal'. This is where reputation - as so often it does online - comes in as an important factor. And that reputation has to be earned - it can't be faked for long.

Aleppo State Of Mind

Gerald Lynch blinked at the transition from the late afternoon sunlight to the cool darkness of Aleppo’s covered souk. Wearing jeans and a plain white t-shirt with scuffed sneakers and with a slim bag slung around his neck and over his shoulder, Lynch felt like a tourist. 
The souk was noisy, a bustling tide of people packing the narrow street, a motor scooter welded to a trailer forging its way through the press. The stalls were brightly lit from inside, neon strips hanging crazily from twisted wire stays and broken fittings, sacks of flour, wheat, spices and charcoal lined the way, poor stores selling charcoal, tobacco, spices and sweets butted up against collections of pans and kitchen implements. Lynch slipped through the throng feeling lost as he tried to recall his way around the Ottoman labyrinth. He hadn’t been back to Aleppo in ten years and more and hadn’t seen The General since the end of the Lebanese Civil War. He felt old as the scents of the souk took him back: oudh incense burning, baking, spices, exhaust fumes. He passed a man butchering a lamb hanging from its back legs on a great hook, its viscera shining as the knife sliced into it. 
He turned left from the busy street, passing shops stacked high with bolts of cloth, tailors working on ancient-looking sewing machines that whirred away over their voices raised in cheerful conversation. There it was, just as it had been all those years ago, the little shop front hung with sequinned belly-dancer costumes and kandouras decorated with dangles of little brass coins. 
Lynch stepped into the shop, pushing aside the plastic strips hanging in the doorway. The sound inside was muffled by the clothing hanging on the walls, towards the rear there were shelves of gold-decorated bottles, packets of solid bukhour perfumes and mubkhars, the little jars used to burn incense. Sitting behind a tin desk with a glass top was a thin man. His bulbous, mouse’s eyes flitted constantly around the room, settling on Lynch then darting away in an instant.
From Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy

It's strange to see Aleppo in the news. It's even odder to see it under bombardment, fighting in its streets and in the long, cool alleys of the world's greatest covered souk. The picture that has always sat as the masthead of a certain silly little blog was taken during one of my long wanders around in that very souk, a place where you could still feel the heartbeat of an older, more basic Middle East. At its heart are Ottoman mosques and madrasas, a dark, rich 14th century Armenian orthodox church.

Over the years living in the Middle East, I suppose you get used to seeing places you know and love, places where friends live, embroiled in conflict. F16s glittering above Beirut's corniche, tanks rolling through Kuwait's boulevards, police firing on demonstrators in Cairo and bombs smashing through hotels in Amman all seem so remote on a TV screen and yet have a horrible resonance when you're involved with the places and the people living there. You can just hope they're okay, that the violence passed them by. That they got out before it got too bad. That the water and electricity stay on. You send messages and don't get replies or perhaps reassurances that, yes they're okay and it's not as bad as it seems on TV.

It's never as bad as it seems on TV. I vividly recall meeting some Americans exhibiting at the Dubai World Trade Centre just after the Gulf War (the Kuwait one, not the Iran/Iraq one) who had come out to help rebuild the Gulf. They'd seen it on CNN, in flames. All of it. And they were gonna help rebuild it all. I did wonder how long it would take before the penny dropped. I was chatting to friends in Aleppo a few days ago and being told it was 'no biggie'. Now they're in Amman.

UNESCO is worried about the damage, apparently. I see what they mean - Syria is home to so much that is key to our history, from the crusader castles through to the ikons in that church. But I'd go worrying about the people first - the people in that photo, buying spices in the souk - and over two million more like them.

The Quietest Office

Image via CrunchBase

Apple has an office in the UAE. Operating out of Abu Dhabi media zone TwoFour54, it would appear to be something of a 'best kept secret'.

Where was the fanfare? The dancing girls? The roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowds? Companies typically waste no time at all in trumpeting office openings - look at the fuss Facebook and LinkedIn are making.

Tech website itp.net ran a couple of speculative stories on Apple opening a UAE office back in 2010 - one based on channel rumours of an office opening 'this year' and one quoting distributor Arab Business Machines (ABM) on how the opening wouldn't materially affect their business. And that's it. Nothing else. no announcements, no interviews. No Tim Cooks talking about commitment to the Middle East. Silence.

The only reason it came to light at all is that I mentioned on the weekly Unwired radio show yesterday that Apple had famously never opened a point of presence in the Middle East. In all these years, Apple has provided highly capable Arabic language support (it was very early to market with Mac Arabic language support for the burgeoning desktop publishing market, which it dominated in the Middle East) but never actually been here as such. A listener texted in 'not so' and so I asked Twitter.

The result was surprising. Not only did people come out of the woodwork with affirmatives, but one former journalist at The National even pinpointed the office building at TwoFour54 and mentioned that he'd been asked to desist from following up his story. Apple itself doesn't list out any worldwide offices on its website but does identify Apple UAE in its map of training centres.

So there we have it. Apple is actually here on our doorstep. They're just being very, very quiet about it...

Into The Dark

Many years ago, in 2005, I was proud to be one of the sponsors an artshow called 'Into the light', which protested the Amman bombings. Today, Jordan's internet was plunged into the dark in a very different, but just as important protest.

Bloggers and website owners in Jordan are protesting the amended Press and Publications Law, putting up a black 'interstitial' page which reads, "You may be deprived of the content of this site under the amendments of the Jordanian Press and Publications Law and the governmental Internet censorship."

You can take a look yourself by popping over to pal Roba Al Assi's blog here - one of hundreds of sites in Jordan that have gone 'dark' for the day. You can click through to a pretty pissed off post behind the tarpaulin.

They're not kidding, either. The law appears to make the classic mistake, not unlike ongoing Lebanese efforts to bring the Internet into a media law, of confusing the web with print media. Under the law, websites (so badly defined it could include social media, blogs or any other online property) would be forced to join the press association, appoint an 'editor in chief' (a role with some very defined responsibilities) and also opens the door to blocking websites, something Jordan has very laudably avoided doing.

A moderate country with the most competitive telecom market in the region, tremendous intellectual capital and an important regional centre for ICT, IP and software/web development, Jordan's smart and technically capable young people deserve better than muckle-headed legislation hewn from granite by politicians who wouldn't know a website from a wombat.

Let's hope someone noticed how dark it got today...

Hands Off Sharjah!

Cultural Palace, Sharjah (Photo credit: gordontour)

Friends from Dubai made The Great Journey North and visited us many, many years ago. Arriving, they amusedly reported their eldest daughter's reaction as they crossed the border into Mordor, leaving behind the wonders of Dubai - "Oh, but Daddy, Sharjah's so very dirty!"

Years later she came to intern for me and I actually forgot to make her suffer. I'll get her next time.

Why is it that the people of Dubai so dismiss The Cultured Emirate? What is it quite that makes them look down their noses at their neighbours? This was brought to mind the other day when someone on an  expat forum kindly linked to this blog. A person was new to the UAE and was asking about Sharjah - oh, the outpouring of denigration and disgust!

Sharjah is just like Saudi, it's backward, it lacks the facilities and finesse of Dubai - on and on they go. I've lived there for nigh on twenty years now and can't say I've ever found the need to 'move to civilisation'. Not for us life in the noise of the approach to Dubai International or the power cuts and parking space denial of vengeful developers. Sharjah has long been home and there's nothing wrong with it. Sure, it's not Croydon (The Telegraph, many years ago, memorably and sniffily dubbed Jumeirah 'The Croydon of the Middle East') but then we never signed up to live in Croydon. It's the fact Sharjah is foreign makes it more fun to live in.

What about the hooch? You can drink at home or go to The Wanderers Club. What about the traffic? We drive around it. What about the strictness? It's more than balanced by tolerance. And you might like to consider how many 'banged up boozy Brit' stories have graced The Sun from Sharjah in recent years - the answer's none.

And if we want gleaming marble-floored shopping malls packed with cookie-cutter global brand chainstores, over-priced restaurants in fake souks and 'lifestyle walks', we know where we can find 'em - conveniently down the road so we can visit when we want but don't have to live with 'em on our doorstep.

Here's to Sharjah and all that's in it!

Back In Station

Disney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's like a tetanus jab - every time you do it again, it feels worse. It's a sort of disorientation, a mixture of homecoming and going away, of relief at familiarity jumbled together with doubt and loss. What the hell are we doing here (the question we asked each other across a green table cloth in the President Hotel one night some nineteen years ago) and it's good to be back fighting each other against the background of flight-weariness and the strange unreality of leave fading away.

It's hard to talk about being back to reality when you live in Disneyland, but leave is hardly time in the real world. You've got money and time on your hands, everyone's pleased to see you (they haven't seen you for months, so they're naturally excited. If they saw your ugly mug every other weekend it'd be a different story, wouldn't it?) and you can pretty much suit yourself. The long-distant memory of the grey daily grind of life in the UK is forgotten as you have your 'Cider with Rosie' time off. That feeling of homesickness you get landing back in the Emirates is actually a hankering for a distorted vision of home that's even more unreal than Lalaland, The Home Of The Shiny.

We actually went to the real Disneyland, part of a glorious week in Paris and a chance for little niece Ellen to meet Mickey Mouse, which was a moment of pure magic for a wee girl. I didn't tell her his head comes off, she's too young and there's plenty of time for that yet. I can only marvel at the genius of an organisation that can make you queue for forty five minutes to meet a dancer in a mouse suit then gouge you twenty Euro for a photo of the meeting on the way out. Genius of a truly evil order.

We also spent a brilliant (if heart-rendingly expensive) week in Sweden, which is too long a story to tell. If you ever find yourself in Stockholm, stay at The Grand and eat at Fem Sma Hus in Gamla Stan. Don't ask questions, just do it.

They've opened a Carrefour around the corner. It's hot. I've got the manuscript of Beirut - An Explosive Thriller back from Robb The Editor and there's a load of work to be done before it's ready for publication.

I've got a paw on the hamster wheel and a gentle shove confirms that familiar old squeak is still there. Time to hop on again...

If You Don't Like It, Leave

Song Celebration in Tallinn, Estonia (Photo credit: ToBreatheAsOne)

Last year we managed to carve out a few precious days from the round of visits to family & friends that have become so core to our summer leave routine and visit Tallinn in Estonia. I even posted about it, so stunning were the place and people. It was a double whammy as I'd already decided to set part of my fourth book, Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy, in Tallinn, so the opportunity to do a little resarch combined with a much needed slice of 'us time'.

 We were a true pair of 'idiots abroad' and didn't even bother researching Estonia, so we were very lucky indeed to fall as comprehensively on our feet. This year we decided to go to neighbouring Riga in Latvia, the second of the three Baltic states that saw the 'singing revolution' when the populations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stood in the street in an unbroken line spanning all three nations, hand in hand, and sang. The Russians, perhaps understandably, threw up their hands and went home.

Much against our better judgment we booked with Ryaniair, but it was the only direct flight with reasonable timings. Funny, those 'bargain prices' don't half start to look less attractive when you've paid £70 for a bag, £10 for a seat etc etc.

This is the bit when we actually do some research on the place we've booked to visit - not that we were planning to, it just happened. And, believe me, it's not good. We flicked through websites with growing horror. The travel advice is unanimous - this place is a tip. Currency exchange scams, prostitutes, pick-pockets, cut-purses, thugs on the streets, pricing scams, nightclub bouncers beating punters up at ATMs to extort their PIN numbers. Turns out Riga is the mafia-infested crime capital of Northern Europe.

Nope. Stuff that. We decided to cancel. Of course Ryanair doesn't offer refunds. And Michael 'crawl on your belly over broken glass for a discount' O'Leary wants £160 to change the ticket.

You live and you learn. We're going to Sweden instead.

Is This Space Free?

From around about now, you can download your very own copy of the Kindle edition of my first novel, the highly chucklesome manic romp Space, for free.

That's right. 270 pages of scabrous madness can be yours for no remuneration whatsoever. Free. Nothing. Nada. Sifr. For 24 glorious hours, this most silly of books is, as Lynrd Skynrd are wont to tell us, as free as a bird.

Download Space from Amazon.com in the US here.

Download Space from Amazon.co.uk in the UK here.

Space will make youi laugh - guaranteed (or your money back). I posted about the book and my decision to hit the 'publish' button the other day, so I won't bore you with more detail. But I'd very much appreciate if you could share the word and encourage friends, family and followers to grab their bit of Space while it's still a no-risk buy. Tweet like canaries on crack. Let the world know. This Space is free!