Now that I'm working on the sequel to MANDARIN YELLOW, I appreciate how useful and important using a beat sheet is. For the first time I truly have an overview of my book and am able to shift around chapters at will within the context of my view (literally and figuratively) of the whole. This has been immeasurably useful to me.

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The reasons were many. First and foremost, I love to write, but all of my published writing before MANDARIN YELLOW involved nonfiction — various aspects of American history.

Second, I love to read crime novels, especially hardboiled or noir mysteries. I also love reading crime novels that are set in modern times, but have an historical bent to them (such as The Poe Shadow  and The Dante Club, both by Matthew Pearl).

Third, I have been fascinated by Chinese culture and history for several decades, and from time-to-time have thought about writing something that would reflect my interest in this civilization.

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Do you finish reading every book you start? If not, do you feel guilty when you quit before the end? I used to try to finish every book even when I felt the book wasn’t worth completing. Somehow, somewhere along the way when I was young, I came to believe that if you start a book, you should finish it. On those occasions when I quit early, I felt guilty. Now I know better.

I find that for every book I buy and start to read, I somehow also acquire two or three others that I mentally designate as “to be read someday.” It’s a fact of my book life I cannot escape: The more I read, the farther behind I fall in my reading because I keep buying books. So, I’ve asked myself: why waste my limited leisure reading time finishing books that do not live up to my expectations?

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How important is a book’s cover? Aren’t we taught from a young age that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover?

Do you really need a cover that will knock your readers off their feet? No, you don’t, but it sure helps sales and it might get you some reviews you otherwise would not get.

When I browse in a bookstore, I find my books, first, by looking for authors I enjoy reading (then I look at the titles); next, I examine the books of authors I’ve never read if I’m attracted to their books by their covers (which includes their titles); and, last, I read the pitches or synopses on the back covers of the books I’ve selected after the front covers have reeled me in.

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Actually, I write with six fountain pens, one of which I carry with me. The other five I keep at home and use at my desk, switching out the one I carry every two or three weeks. But don’t be misled by the title of this post. I also “write” with my computer’s word processing software, but only after I’ve written the first and second drafts using a pen. That’s how I wrote my first mystery novel, MANDARIN YELLOW, and it’s how I perform much of my day-to-day writing.

It all started when I was in law school and used a ballpoint pen to take class notes. I was forced to write so fast just to keep up with the lectures that I found myself pressing against the paper with more and more force as my hand became tired. After a few weeks I developed a painful blister on my finger, followed by a callus, but a callus that remained tender to pressure for the balance of my three years in law school. By the time I graduated, I was looking for excuses not to write manually (but there were no PCs yet).

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