In the estate agency business, they always say location, location, and location are the three most important factors when choosing a house. I’m starting to think the same thing may apply to writing a thriller as well.
I’ve just published the second in Black Ops series of e-novellas – Black Ops: El Dorado, the follow-up to Black Ops: Libya. Thriller locations, and indeed plots, have a tendency to be all the same. The Middle East. Russian gangsters. Al-Queda terrorists. Plots to blow up the White House. To be honest, we’ve read most of them already.
But a few months ago, I read a story in the New York Times about how the drugs cartels in Columbia had switched from cultivating cocaine to illegal gold mining – because the gold price was now so high it was more profitable for them.
Gold? Drugs cartels? Illegal mining?
What more could a thriller writer ask for?
All of a sudden I had a really original location for a short action-adventure story.
And one that hadn’t been done to death already.
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