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Hi everyone,

First -- to all of you who played The Keeper Game – the game has now concluded and I am waiting to hear from the winner (whose name is posted on the game page www.thekeepergame.com) whether she would prefer a Kindle or a pair of pink boxing gloves. It will be interesting to see if the lady is a reader or a fighter. She could be both, of course!

I found the stats fascinating: 37.4% of players were Warriors. 31.6% scored the profile of Thief and 31% were Healers. Probably a good thing that the pragmatic, feet-on-the ground types are in the majority rather than the obsessives or the touchy-feelies BTW even though there are no more prizes to be won, the game is still active. So if you haven't tried it yet, give it a spin!

Here are the two banner ads I ran on MySpace to advertise the game. As I said before, I'm all for subtlety in my books but when it comes to promotion I have no shame. One was intended for a more general public and one was targeted at martial arts and fighting sites. I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which

It was an interesting experience running the ad. One has to conform to strict rules concerning size and layout but it is fair to say that MySpace is not nearly as strict as Facebook. Facebook commercials are very uniform-looking (pretty much like Facebook itself) and do not allow for great artistic freedom. Furthermore, you get slapped down for sloppy spelling, poor grammar and for misleading the consumer: Play the game. Live forever. Obviously a misleading promise. Bad girl.

And then, thanks again to all of you who responded with ideas to my previous blog. I will be making very good use of your feedback next week when I head to New York to attend the annual Thrillerfest convention. I'm very excited – this will be my first attendance and I'm looking forward to the panel discussion. I just hope we draw a good audience. Unfortunately, our discussion goes head to head with two other panel discussions that are scheduled for the same time slot. One of them has the catchy title of "Will you sign my bra?" I'm actually not quite sure what this debate will be about but I rather think it may draw more interest than ‘How international is the modern thriller market."

Anyway, wish me luck! I also have a forty minute taped radio interview scheduled with a very impressive interviewer by the name of Pia Lindstrom. Ms Lindstrom is the sister of Isabella Rossellini but she is known in her own right for her skilled interviewing technique. To say that I am slightly apprehensive is putting it mildly. Ms Lindstrom obviously believes in thorough preparation and has asked me to send her copies of all my books in advance of the interview. My problem is that I can hardly remember my early books. My memory is feeble and I have difficulty remembering the twists and turns of the plot lines. Furthermore, as I am a fickle woman, I tend to forget my heroes as soon as I move on to the next man in my life. Fingers crossed...

Thanks again, everyone! My panel discussion takes place on 11 July and I'll report back to you guys soon after. Have fun and I hope the weather where you are, is as spectacular as it is over here.

Hi everyone,

In July I’ll be heading over to New York City to take part in this year’s Thrillerfest. Thrillerfest is the big annual convention dedicated to thriller writing and is usually described as a kind of summer camp for thriller writers and fans of the thriller genre. Thrillerfest

I need your advice! I've been asked to take a seat on one of the panels and the topic of discussion will be the following:

"Are authors and readers really living in a world without frontiers? How international is the modern thriller market? Or are readers only interested in their own country, their own culture?"

How do you guys feel about this? Are you interested in reading suspense novels set in exotic locations or do you prefer to stay on home ground? With home ground I'm referring to the US and the UK. And what about characters? Are you comfortable with characters other than Americans or Brits?

A writer who will be on the Thrillerfest panel with me is Eric Van Lustbader. Van Lustbader wrote a groundbreaking thriller called “The Ninja” many years ago and he has since taken over the Bourne franchise from Robert Ludlum. Bourne is American, but as you’ll know from watching the movies and reading the books, he doesn’t go home very often. Also on the panel will be my friend, Deon Meyer, who will be making the journey to Thrillerfest from Cape Town. (For those of you who are interested -- there’s a very unflattering photograph of the two of us at a book signing somewhere among my MySpace pics.) Deon writes his books in Afrikaans and then has them translated into English and he makes a point of setting his crime thrillers squarely within the borders of South Africa. He has won awards for his fiction in Europe and has now made the break into the American market as well. Obviously, these two writers do manage to work in a world without frontiers.

I’ve had mixed experiences myself. When my second book, The Other Side of Silence, was published eight years ago, my (then) agent did not even bother to submit the manuscript to American publishers. He was convinced they would turn down a story that takes place in South Africa and he did not want me to get a reputation for having my scripts rejected. However, Windwalker, my third book, did get published in the States and this book is set partly in Namibia (Keep in mind that this was before Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt had their baby over there and placed this forgotten corner of the world on the map).

Certainly, I cannot claim that my editor was happy when I first pitched the idea to her. A story of a hero who kills his brother on the very first page of the book and then hides out in a ghost town in the middle of a desert -- even if it is the oldest desert in the world -- did not exactly rock her boat. I tried to sweeten the deal for her by mentioning that my hero will be dressed in rubber for most of the narrative (he’s a diver) but unlike me, she didn’t find this concept sexy at all. What convinced her, in the end, to go along with my story was the fact that the book falls apart in two sections and the one half is set in a spooky Palladian mansion in the English countryside: you can’t get a more stock thriller environment than that.

Joking aside, I do believe publishers are getting more adventurous. Consider John Burdett, a highly successful writer with whom I happen to share an editor in the UK. Burdett is the author of the "Bangkok" books, which are set in Thailand and his hero is a detective who goes by the wonderful name of Sonchia Jitpleecheep! And then there’s Alexander McCall Smith's “The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency” (set in Botswana), which has done phenomenally well in both the US and UK. His curvy, "traditionally built" heroine, Mama Ramotswe, so beguiled filmmaker Anthony Minghella, that he did a TV series based on her adventures. Even New York Times bestselling authors Jon Land and Barry Eisler have characters who take journeys off the beaten path. In Eisler's case, his hero, John Rain, is half Japanese.

Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts and I will make good use of them during the panel discussion. FYI here is the link to the page on my website that gives the details of the location and time of the panel I’ll be doing. For those of you who are based in the UK – and more in particular in London – you will also find details on this page of an event in September where I’ll be talking about my writing and doing signings. http://www.natashamostert.com/events/

Thanks everyone! Let me know how you feel about this topic? And please be quite upfront about it. If you prefer your heroes home grown – then do say so – nothing wrong with it. The same goes if you prefer reading about serial killers in Samoa or the Antarctic