It was a weird bit of deja vu for fiction writer Nury Vittachi when he learned a billionaire had recently bought one of those gigantic new double-decker Airbus jets - the ones that carry 800 passengers and cost about US$300 million - to be his own private airborne limousine.

So, what's the deja vu part, you ask? 'It's a key part of the plot of the next fung shui detective book, which I delivered to the publishers several months ago, but which won't appear until the end of the year at the earliest,' the author wrote on his blog. Last autumn, Vittachi negotiated a three-book deal for his fung shui detective books to be released in parts of Europe and the US, so news of the sale might smear his reputation for original ideas. 'Furthermore, environmentalists are up in arms over the deal - just as they are in my novel,' Vittachi writes. 'One said that buying an A380 for private use was like buying a power station to charge your mobile phone. It's a good quote, but too late to sneak into the book. That's the trouble with being a fiction writer. Reality has this habit of creeping up and overtaking on the left.'