Peter James and Emirates Airlines Literary Festival of Literature

All things being equal or schedules working out, I would have been at the RNA Winter Party last night...instead I had to find a willing photographer to take the pics I normally do. The wonderful Talli Roland did a wonderful job and her pictures of the evening are here.

Now I have to thank the wonderful DJ Kirby for taking this photo of my wonderful agent, Carole Blake (she's Peter James' agent too!) and one of my closest friends, Brigid Coady, holding a proof copy of THE CORNISH HOUSE. So even if i wasn't there in person I was there in book form. (Biddy was hand delivering a copy of the book to the RNA for entry into the Joan Hessayon New Writers Award- thank you Biddy!)

Now, thankfully to take my mind away from a party I was attending the inaugural open door event of the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature....official post here....

It was a beautiful night to be sitting in a 'square' under the stars in my favourite part of  Dubai - the Bastakiya. It was a full 'square' as Isobel Abulhoul welcomed us to the first event of the programme of 'Open Door' evenst and thanked the Sharjah International Book Fair for loaning Peter James for the eveningss. The lovely Aspen quizzed Peter on many things and he entertained with his responses which included tales of his visits to Greek monasteries and favourite crime writers. He says the writer that influenced him most was Graham Greene and particularly Brighton Rock. He said all writers could learn so much from Greene especially how to deliver a character in two sentences.

It was wonderful to see the queues to buy his books...especially his latest thriller Perfect People. The line for to meet Peter after the talk snaked through the beautiful new home of the Festival...Dar Al Adaab (House of Literature).

A perfect evening and one excellent start to a new step for the festival....

An Unusual Review for a Compelling Book - WITHOUT ALICE

Life as usual has been crazy and provided its own set of guidelines which don’t always match mine... 

The lovely DJ Kirby whose book WITHOUT ALICE came out this week is on a blog tour. She knows from Twitter that I'm a blogger (bad one at the moment) and a reader as well as a writer. So the brave woman asked if I would be part of it. I was honoured to be asked and terrified at the same time.

DJ is a delightful woman that I have met in person once briefly and we should have spoken more, but alas on that night it was not meant to be. Nor was it on Monday night when she held her book launch in London. There was a tube strike and on top of that DS2’s delayed train and his forgotten coat with wallet in it (another story altogether), which prevented me from attending.

This has all left me in a quandary. I read WITHOUT ALICE – in one sitting and I loved it. However that doesn’t make a book review does it? I had planned to sneakily interview DJ during the launch and wrap it all nicely up with photos of the event…

Can’t do that now and as I write this on Wednesday afternoon and my blog post is due up tomorrow. I feel it is a bit late to fire off a bunch of questions. I know I would find it more than inconvenient if someone emailed me and wanted a response asap.

So I’m back to a book review…In desperation I dug through the recycling to considered the weekend papers’ book reviews where they all but tell you the whole book which is fine in a way (many times you don’t need or want to buy the book afterwards – both good and bad). But that is not the type of review I wanted to write nor is it 'me'. So here goes my review…

As I mentioned above – I read WITHOUT ALICE in one sitting. It is compulsive. I needed to know how it was going to work out. I needed to know how I was going to move from thinking the ‘hero’ a complete and utter ***** to wanting him to succeed. I won’t tell you the answers, but I will tell that it happened and all the while exploring the theme of birth and rebirth. DJ is a natural story teller – she had me hooked.

So that’s my review….an utterly compelling story that gives hope (and oh should mention – I wept too – have a hankie ready you’ll need it)