Why do I set my fictional crime novels in Spain?

It hit me one freezing February morning in 1990 or thereabouts. I was shivering on the platform at Weybridge Railway Station at the time. As I looked around at the same old miserable commuters suffering the damp, polluted air while staunchly defending their regular patch of concrete, I began to question my sanity. Did I appear the same to them? Was this all I had to look forward to for the next twenty-five years? Then came the dreaded announcement. Leaves on the line. It was that day’s original excuse for a twenty-minute delay. Once again, the 07.41 to Waterloo would be packed and I’d be jammed outside the toilet with someone’s newspaper rustling in my ear. Great. Super. I thought, as the completion of the day’s tedious tasks ahead would now slip further behind due to no fault of mine. That was enough. I was done. Beam me up, Scotty.

Not having any desire to strip naked on a pebble beach feigning my disappearance to a distant pig farm, I chose the next best escape route. Thankfully, my parents had retired to Nerja, Spain many years previously. I would join them and work out what to do after my arrival. I was forty-odd years of age, almost divorced but still way too poor and young to retire or do nothing. Surely, there was still time to reinvent myself, but as what? Fate would soon intervene.

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What has Frank Gehry to do with Rioja wine?

Frank Gehry

“You can look anywhere and find inspiration,” is just one of the Canadian born, American architect’s many stabs at verbalizing his long-acquired wisdom. He’s now ninety-one and enjoying a well-earned retirement after a lifetime of stamping his creative signature on building plots around the planet.

Much of Frank’s imagination was fueled by fish. Since childhood, when his grandmother would keep live carp from the local market in the bathtub (before cooking them), he was fascinated by their movement and the way light reflected from their scales.

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What Drives Creative People?

The Sled,” by German Artist, Joseph Beuys

Slopes or Gallery?

What does this toboggan say to you? Weekend at the Sierra Nevada? Wrong. Prado Museum in Madrid would be more like it. This is Modern 20th Century Art, “The Sled,” by German Artist, Joseph Beuys 1969. It’s on display at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

The creative mind is a wonderful thing, even if sometimes verges toward the insane. Sled? Art? Well, some people like it enough to put it in one of the world’s finest galleries. Personally, I want to turn it upside down and polish the runners, otherwise it will leave rusty tracks in the snow. Not cool.

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Nuestra-España

Nuestra España - For Lover's of Spain

Running parallel to the Nuestra-España blog is a Facebook Forum bearing the same name. The idea is to attract support for creative people in Spain of all nationalities. With book sales flat, art galleries struggling and photographers wondering where the next shoot or wedding is going to come from every creative person is suffering. The Nuestra-España Forum is a place to showcase their work, link to their sales pages, or just leave a message of encouragement.

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Spain, a magnet for immigrants and tourists but a smoking fuse for residents

There are over 300,000 British immigrants living in Spain, another million or so who own property here who pop back, and forth and last year over 80 million tourists visited her shores. Spain is now the second most visited country in the world. What attracts them and do the Spanish appreciate this relentless invasion?

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