Scrap-booking my Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2013 Seattle event speech

I'm on a research trip now in Sevilla, Southern Spain. It's almost violently hot and most days are spent hiding out in my air-conditioned apartment, plotting and planning my current work-in-progress, another thriller, while sensual nights are spent eating up the Sevillano atmosphere - more on that, with photos, in my next post.

Sorting through papers today, I found the speech I wrote at the Edgewater Hotel, Seattle at 4pm on the day of the ABNA '13 event - Saturday 15th June. I wrote it on the hotel computer and so had no record of it other than the printed pages I would read from - running late I didn't think to email it to myself - just printed it out to read when my five minutes of scary 'fame' came.

I am posting it here in its entirety, to scrap-book it, for myself. I have always found the inspiration behind stories and novels intriguing. I am propelled by a desire to know why people do what they do. I am insanely curious, always have been.....and hope to always be this way.

I am the person who will have chats with little old ladies at bus stops and in those precious five minutes, while waiting for the bus, I usually manage to get people's life stories out of them. I think I have a knack for it - the journalist in me, but the bottom line is I find other people far more fascinating than myself. This scrap-book entry is a little bit of archival spot-lighting........I want to remember the ABNA 2013 moment forever, and make no apologies for it.

I have no clue who reads my blog - if anybody - but when I post I write for myself.......the fact that it's a sort of diary entry, permanently stamped into the digital encoding of the world, makes no difference to me. So, here it is:-

"I want to thank Amazon Publishing for their warmth, support and amazing hospitality, for their total professionalism in helping to get my novel ready for its October 2013 release, and for totally getting my story. Their respect for authors and their generosity of spirit has made this experience totally

mind-blowing.

I want to thank Publishers Weekly for their incredible review of my manuscript. It has kept me going, and on a permanent high, since I read it all those weeks ago at the semi-finalist stage.

I want to thank my amazing family who live and breathe my novels with me, for their patience, love and support.

The Hidden began as a trip to a local bookshop in Melbourne, Australia, one of my daily visits, many years ago. I discovered a beautiful book about harem women who lived in the Ottoman Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. It fascinated me, and plunged me immediately into a two-year obsessive research journey into the lives of these harem girls who lived in the palaces of the time. From there I dived into the political history of Egypt, the 1919 Nationalist riots and the stranglehold of the British over the Egyptian people.

I started asking questions. Would it be possible for a harem girl to break free of the traditions imposed on her and live a different type of life? In 1919 Cairene Women were protesting in the streets against the British rule, so things were changing.

From there my research took me deep into the Egyptian underworld, the world of espionage and terrorism. I found myself in war-time Cairo living the spies and the prostitutes in the brothers there. I made friends with the soldiers and listened to the stories about counter-espionage, the impending German invasion and who was going to make it out alive. I lived in this world for two years as I bought every single non-fiction book I could get my hands on about the era. I lived in second-hand bookshops and unearthed some amazing stories.

So The Hidden was born. I wanted to write about what draws people to certain types of lives. I carried on asking questions; why would someone plot to assassinate a king? Why would a young man join a terrorist group? Why would a family try so hard to keep the story of their lives so secret? Why would a young girl, the daughter of the sultan of Egypt, want to challenge every single tradition she had grown up with?

My fictional harem girl Hezba wrote a diary about her life in 1919. Her only legacy to the daughter she never knew is this diary. Her daughter was raised without an identity of her own. It was hidden from her. Her mother spent her whole life fighting against the identity forced on her. The Hidden isn't just a political thriller, it's a story about identity, about nationality, and about the sins of our ancestors and how their actions become genetically threaded through to future generations.

I adored writing this story. I lived it through my research, through writing it. It helped me deal with my own issues of nationality and identity.

I pitched it many publishers but it was rejected many, many times. Eventually I self-published it to Kindle Direct Publishing and the response was amazing. Then I entered the ABNA competition and here I am.

So to end, I just want to say again thanks to Amazon, who made this all possible. They got my story. Writers have it tough. I was prepared to carry on writing to the end of my life with no publisher in sight, but now, well.......I am just so happy. Thank you."

Lovers of thrillers & suspense novels - here's your reason to buy The Hidden

All 25 semi-finalists in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) 2013 received a review of their novel, as part of reaching that stage of the contest.I am so grateful to Publishers Weekly for my review. In case you didn't know I went on to win the contest in my category. My novel will be published on October 22nd 2013 by Thomas & Mercer in the US. If you love thrillers and suspense novels (as I do), I'm sure  you'll love The Hidden. You can pre-order by clicking here. Don't forget to send me your thoughts when you've read it. I am grateful for all reviews and comments, and if you contact me through my website I'll send you a reply. Thank you. 

ABNA Publishers Weekly Reviewer

This sophisticated, first-rate mystery novel/political thriller takes place in Cairo, Egypt. It alternates points of view and shifts time frames to create an outstanding narrative with nail-biting suspense. Yet, it is much more than a clear-cut thriller.

It offers a penetrating account of Egyptian culture, the role of women in society, and the profundity of love. The story begins in 1940. Haran Issawi, chief advisor to King Faruk, discusses with his top security men newly discovered intelligence of an assassination plot against him to be carried out by the Group of the X, a proletarian nationalist organization that seeks to overthrow the Egyptian government.

Meanwhile, Aimee Ibrahim, the young and alluring widow of Azi Ibrahim, an academician who was mysteriously murdered, is asked to come to the university where Azi taught to collect his belongings. A parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string entices Aimee. She opens it and discovers her mother's diary, written 20 years ago. Aimee never knew her mother, Hezba Sultan, who was born into royalty as the only daughter of Ali Sultan Pasha. Now, with this relic of Hezba's past in Aimee's possession, she speculates about what secrets it may reveal. Aimee also wonders why Azi had Hezba's journal and why it was hidden at his office.

Aimee is invited to the launch party of a poetry book written by the university's up-and-coming literary talents where she meets Farouk, who is the editor of the Cairo newspaper, The Liberation, and, unbeknownst to Aimee, one of the notorious "ringleaders" in the Group of X. Even though the encounter irritated Aimee -- she didn't like the way Farouk stared at her -- she couldn't stop thinking about him after their goodbyes. Farouk, too, was enchanted. Their friendship blossoms, yet can they trust one another?

Hezba's flawless diary entries are incorporated into the novel, and they welcome readers into the fascinating yet brutal world of Egyptian harem life in the early 20th century. Hezba's writings tell of her nature as a defiant, impatient and desperately unhappy woman who seeks freedom beyond the strictures of the palace and the societal limitations placed on women. Circumcised at age five and married at age 11 to 50-year-old Khalil al-Shezira in a political maneuver arranged by her father, Hezba's joy is her secret love affair with Anton Alexandre, a member of the Rebel Corp which is agitating for revolution against the British occupation of Egypt.

Hezba aligns herself with Alexandre's rebel activity, and, as the novel switches back and forth in time, it becomes increasingly intriguing how crucial Hezba's journal is to the unfolding of events in 1940. This is a novel that keeps readers guessing -- presumed allegiances are not always what they seem to be when bombs explode and characters are killed and truths are revealed. This is an excellent, well-written, and forceful work of fiction.

May 2013

Two men, a family and an hour of Mediterranean reflection.

The cover of my self-published novel The Hidden, now to be published traditionally in all formats by Thomas & Mercer in the USA.

Yesterday evening I did something I haven't done for a very long time; I spent an hour on my own thinking. I walked to the furthest beach in my town and sat on a towel on the sand, staring at the Mediterranean. It was late, about 9.30pm. The sun was setting.

There was a family on my right and two men talking, on my left. I sat on my towel and watched the night birds fly across the sky. I watched the two men, obviously a couple, newly in love, laughing and talking. Their laughter and happiness had the sound of lustful anticipation. They were totally absorbed in each other, totally smitten.

The family on my right, consisted of a mum and a dad, two children, aged around ten and six and an older woman - a grandmother. The man had planted two fishing rods in the sand, the lines thrown out into the shallows and was doing a spot of night fishing. The children were totally absorbed in splashing about in the puddles of water, keeping a respectful distance from dad and his fishing rods. The women had set up a small bbq and were loading it with charcoal, preparing food. Each member of the family was caught up in what they were doing.

No one took any notice of me, sitting there on my towel, staring at the sea, and that was wonderful. I was the quiet, respectful observer of human interaction and it was a beautiful moment. I occasionally wondered if these two groups of people had noticed me looking at them, but I knew I was observing 'respectfully', not overtly.

Every now and again I lay down and stared at the sky, streaked with red and purple, watching the clouds. I was thinking about my next novel, about the characters growing before me in my mind. Then I got to thinking about people; people I know well; people I know through social media; people I have just met; people I have known for a long time.

The couple on my left, the two young men, were Spanish. I could hear them talking. They were good-looking, in their late 20s. The family was probably Catalan; I caught a few Catalan words on the breeze. I was wondering about their lives, their jobs, their backgrounds, what made them happy.

I starting studying the man with his fishing rods for a while. As it got darker, I noticed he had become  very still, standing there staring out at the sea. I wondered if he was doing what I was doing, meditating on a life filled with the exquisite detail of existence; the fish he would catch, the hugs he would give his wife and children, the satisfaction of eating dinner with his family on the beach at dusk.

At 10.30pm I got up and walked across the sand, barefooted, put on my sandals and found the road home. It had been a beautiful hour spent, deep inside the detail of humanity.