I spend several months each year in Andalucia, southern Spain not far from where Sergio Leone filmed his spaghetti westerns. Part of the landscape is Europe's only desert but in general I have come to love the bare, arid mountains with orange, almond and olive groves on dusty slopes. One downside of the region has been the spread of plasticulture, small village sized areas of plastic greenhouse type plantations.

Andalucia, and in particular Almeria, has learned quickly that fast track growing of fruit and vegetables under plastic (to retain what moisture there is in the ground) is a little goldmine.It is probably the most lucrative business there is in that part of the world.

I decided to enter some competitions, not that I have had much luck in the past) but when I look at other entries I notice a lot of bandwagon jumping going on. The current flavour of thrillers seems to have moved away from kickass heroes with a heart of gold, to psychological thrillers such as 'Girl On A Train'.

I'm reading it now and I must say I have noticed the structural simialarity to 'Gone Girl',  a two-hander, alternating chapters. getting into the minds of the two main characters. It's an effective formula and a mile away from Jack Reacher or Jason Bourne.

i wrote the first three chapters of 'Misconception', the surrogacy thriller I mentioned in a previous post. and I'm pretty pleased with it as an entry to the Crimefest UK competition. Until I got home and reread it and now feel it could be a  lot better. It is based on a one-off TV drama I wrote some time ago which in turn is based on a true life surrogacy issue I was involved with personally way back in the day.

At that time I wrote a TV play called 'The Maternal Triangle' and sent it to the BBC. It caused a bit of a stir and resulted in a mini survey in the drama department. The outcome was that no one would believe a woman would act as a surrogate and if she did she would have to be over thirty.

How things have changed.