From headquarters...

My handlers at Hodder have sent me a terrific Carte Blanche mission kit today -- including a nicely embossed 007 folder containing the press release, a slick official website card, and a Technika MP4 player with the Carte Blanche title and cover reveal animation. Very nice! And it did not self-destruct in 5 seconds.

Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver will be released on May 26, 2011, and can be pre-order now at Amazon.co.uk.

A spy in Dubai

The London Evening Standard has a nice article about the UAE playground of Dubai and how it may or may not be protrayed in the upcoming James Bond novel Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver.

The article states that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum "has already given the go-ahead for the film version of the book (working title: From Dubai With Love) to be shot in Dubai, and even offered his private Boeing 747 to fly in equipment and stars, including Daniel Craig." Okay...

While the article doesn't really revealing anything we don't already know about the use of Dubai in Carte Blanche (which is almost nothing), it is an interesting look at the political and financial issues Dubai has faced in recent years.

Click to read: Shaken, not stirred: How Dubai got back in business at the London Evening Standard.

Get a signed UK First Edition edition of Carte Blanche

Goldsbro Books in the UK is offering signed First Editions of Jeffery Deaver's new James Bond novel, Carte Blanche, for £18.99. Release date is May 26, 2011, but you can pre-order your copy now. Know however that they do charge your credit card at the time of purchase.

Goldsbro is terrific UK retailer who offer special editions not found anywhere else. For instance, Goldsbro is selling exclusive signed hardcover editions of Andrew Lane's enjoyable Young Sherlock Holmes series. These books are only available as paperbacks elsewhere. (I was ordering the just listed Book 3, Black Ice, when I stumbled on this signed Carte Blanche.)

Signed first editions of Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks were few indeed. But something tells me Mr. Deaver is going to be less stingy with his signature. Still, it's nice to have a copy locked down well in advance.

Link: With Carte Blanche, Jeffery Deaver tells a Bond tale

Very good article by Philippa Kennedy in The National. Click headline to read.

Carte Blanche is almost ready for printing. Deaver says he has 

"three or four more days of edits, but at some point they will wrest 

it from my hands and take it off to the printers".

State of Excitement: Jeffery Deaver onstage in Dubai

Kevin Collette over at OUR MAN FROM BOND STREET has a terrific exclusive report on Jeffery Deaver's onstage appearance at the Emirate Airlines Festival of Literature from his own on-the-scene correspondent, Nathalie Cloet. Click the links below to Bond with Deaver in Dubai.

Part 1: State of Excitement

Part 2: "With villains, anything goes."

Part 3: A Deaver novel set in the world of Fleming

Thanks Kevin and Nathalie!