As most of you guys probably know, I was lucky enough to be approached by a prestigious publishing house a few months ago, who wanted to turn Desperate in Dubai into a real book. Yes, a real book that I will be able to hold, smell, and place proudly on my bookshelf :)

The book will, Inshallah, be launched in summer 2011, initially in the Middle East and South East Asia regions, but hopefully, if it does well, it will also reach other parts of the world as well.

When I started writing this blog in 2009, I never expected more than a handful of people to actually want to read it, and I certainly never imagined that it would ever materialise in book form. Which is why, even though DID was written in chapters, had characters, a plot, dialogue, and all the other necessary ingredients for a novel, it didn't actually read like one. It read, and felt, more like a TV series, with a new episode every week, too many sub-plots to keep track of, and a cliffhanger after every episode. After all, I had to do something to make my readers keep coming back every month to read more!

Now that it's a proper novel, I've had to make a lot of changes in order for it to flow like a novel should. I've had to make the plot tighter, I've had to remove sub-plots and characters that weren't going anywhere, and I've had to make things much more concise. After all, it was no longer a never-ending story. It had to reach a discernible conclusion.

I've also had to change a lot of the events in order to maintain my characters' real life anonymity. A few names have been changed in order to protect identities, as well as certain events. Desperate in Dubai, is now a work of fiction, inspired by real people and real stories.

I hope you won't be too harsh when judging it as a book, I hope you don't expect it to be exactly the same as the blog you've come to enjoy, and I hope you understand why I've had to make the changes!!

I'll be removing all the old posts in a few months... with the new changes in place, it doesn't make sense to keep the old story up really. It's going to be difficult as the blog is really close to my heart, but hopefully the arrival of the book will more than compensate for that!

If you haven't already, please sign up to my Facebook page. All the latest updates are there :) I can't reply to any of the comments anymore as the blog has been blocked by my telecom provider in the UAE! I guess it was a little too hot to handle ;)

Thank you all for contributing to my journey and for sharing every moment with me. It's largely due to your support that I have managed to achieve my dream of writing and publishing a novel, and for that, I will be forever grateful.

Ghostwriter xxx