A website overhaul

A brand-new design, introducing a Bookstore and featuring chapters from my two forthcoming books, 'The Foreign Aide' and 'The Marathon Years'.

My new novel

A psychological thriller, set in an earlier Mid-East war but still just as relevant today. The official launch is in June, but you can read the book for free now. Sample a few chapters on the website — and then, if you wish, join my review team and order the full book.

Last time I described my new book as 'a psychological thriller with a Western narrator hopelessly out of his depth in the Middle East, someone whose poor judgement and ill-considered actions had disastrous consequences — for himself and everyone around him.'

Let's face it — it wasn't a huge surprise when the bombs started falling in the Middle East once again. But the timing was depressingly perfect, coming on the same day when I started offering review copies of my book.

'The Foreign Aide' is not a political treatise. As I started the book, I just wanted to write a gripping story set in a country I loved and mourned. I arrived in Beirut in autumn 1974, a few months before the 15-year civil war broke out. Until then, I'd lived and studied and worked in London and the South-East of England, and I considered myself pretty cosmopolitan and worldly-wise. But from the moment I stepped off the plane, Lebanon blew my mind! (That's the way we used to say things back then.) With its breathtaking scenery, extraordinary characters, crazy adventures, and heated geopolitical debate, it was life on the edge, perilous and thrilling. Until the country fell over the edge. The excitement and the tension I felt, and ultimately the tragedy I witnessed was what I wanted to capture in my story.

I published 'The Lebanese Troubles' as an ebook in 2010. Writer friends told me it was a terrible title: people would think it was a factual history — and who was interested in Lebanon anyway? But I insisted on my choice, and backed up my mistake with a terrible cover. The result? A few friends read it. A few strangers gave me positive reviews. That was it, and the book languished unmarketed and unnoticed on Amazon for years till I eventually snuffed it out.

But then Gaza happened. And we had a gung-ho US President who was spoiling for a good fight. It prompted me to re-read my book, and I began to realise that this 50-year-old story had present-day relevance — in more ways than one. And the narrative seemed to hold up well. So I decided to republish, with a better title and a better cover. And this time in print too. And — why not? — an audiobook.

For those versions, you'll need to wait till June. But if you'd like to get a free digital copy of 'The Foreign Aide' right now — an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) — then all you have to do is start reading the opening chapters on the website, and then follow the instructions to sign up for the whole book.

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With the world's eyes focused on events in the Middle East right now, and a book that seems so relevant, you might be wondering why I'm not bringing the publication date forward. I'm tempted. After all, 'The Foreign Aide' has been through its final edits. It would be easy to press the button on a print-run now.

But I don't want to make the same mistake as last time, when I assumed that after downloading the book onto Amazon, my job was finished and readers would just find it. With over 200,000 books being published every year in the UK alone, you have to be famous or lucky or brilliant to have any chance of getting noticed by the reading public.

Photo by Alejandro Barba on Unsplash

But there are ways to build real marketing momentum, even for an unknown author. For example, there's good evidence that a flurry of honest, thoughtful reviews posted on Amazon and Goodreads on a book's launch-date and shortly afterwards gets Amazon's attention. It makes commercial sense for them to put extra weight behind the products people are most likely to want and they are most likely to sell.

So that's why I'm offering free review copies of the book — not indiscriminately, but to people who are likely to enjoy a novel of this type, and who, hopefully, will review the book on its merits. (In other words, not just because they know me, and they're doing me a favour!)

I'm starting the marketing campaign now, giving myself three months to develop my Advance Reader list, and also to introduce 'The Foreign Aide' to potential influencers with Middle East interests and connections — journalists and prominent bloggers, personalities, authors and other artists.

I'm learning that there's so much more to being a writer than just writing.

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