I know I only just finished the latest novel, but I am thinking about the next one. There are a few options I would love your thoughts on.
Option One: Ciao Bella in novel form, modelled on Bonjour Tristesse, obviously not the same as Ciao Bella, but with similar themes and of course the central character of my Dante-reading, opera-obsessed and womanising father. 
Option Two: Another chick-lit, this time with a strong tennis theme. Central characters include Rafa and Roger types but they hate each other, think Jake the gypsy and Rupert Campbell-Black in Riders.
Option Three: A novel based here called The end of Mahara, which is a comment Olivia came up with while describing the coming-of-age of a friend of hers, meaning that for Mahara her carefree childhood days are over now she has to cover herself. Three central characters; one expat wife, one housemaid, and one Emirati whose lives somehow intertwine. Will probably also end up being chick-lit as any fiction I try to write tends to turn into chick-lit.
Or none of the above, suggestions welcome….
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2012
I am most drawn to the third option, having lived in Qatar for a few years as an expat myself. It is quite a challenging story to write I believe. I would very much like to find out your take on being an expat in the Arab world. You say their paths will cross?? I don’t know how it is for you in the Emirates but in Qatar, outside work, it was impossible to interact with Qataris. I don’t know one single Qatari woman for example. As an engineer, I met with my share of Qatari men, but I don’t have any insight whatsoever into their family lives. Maybe the reason was that I was single at the time, a black sheep, if you will. I wasn’t, how shall I say, much welcome in the family circles 🙂 You might have observed for yourself that expat wives are very possessive of their husbands. I am not sure what good it does to them at the end.
Well, in short, I would really look forward to reading such a book. Comparing your observations with mine would be very entertaining.
Thanks Melda, I agree on the expat wives, very odd indeed. I had an idea that they could be involved in some kind of car accident so that’s how their paths cross, or a book club perhaps, and the maid works for the Emirati. I agree though that we rarely interact with each other.
I loved all of your French themed books! Would love to read more romance stories, possibly Paris (The city of love!) :). I would love to see how option #2 evolves. Tennis is a favorite sport in our family of eight. My daughter is a junior in college and plays tennis at Monmouth University located in New Jersey, USA.
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