I also read a reasonable amount of nonfiction. I like to read histories. I'm not much on bios, though I can be tempted, particularly if it is a bio of a writer. I also read odd & sods that catch my fancy at any given moment.

I am not a terribly good sleeper, and a habit of mine since childhood is to read before bed. This works out to three or four books a week. When you read that much, sooner or later sheer ennui drives you to check out everything.

However, I did discover Sisters in Crime. Moreover, when faced with the massed evidence of who was writing what, it became pretty clear to me that (for the most part) the most exciting and entertaining mysteries were being written by women. Furthermore, SinC was making a concerted effort to provide beginning writers the tools to get published. So it was a no-brainer. I joined.

I will say that I have become much more aware of the different point of view women and men bring to the same issue. In fact being a member of SinC has pushed me much further away from the unisex/nurture theory of development. This probably wasn't what Sara Paretsky had in mind.

I took it on in the general "what the hell, somebody has to do it" manner. It sounded fairly straightforward. And of course being connected was all the rage. In theory we will all live in our cloistered cells and gather e-rosebuds while we may. In fact of course it is significantly harder to implement than imagined by the great web thinkers you read in Wired. And it requires more tedious work than imagined by folks raised on Star Trek: The Next Gen Management Theory ("Make it so!"). In fact it seems to me to be a step back into the last century with slower, more bureaucratic processes required. What the SC has been trying to do for the last year is figure out what the hell those processes are and implement them.

In real terms this mean I am the stinker at the back of the room now at work. Whenever someone comes up with a starry-eyed "Let's do it on the web!" they get a three decibel raspberry from me.

My rejection letters usually include some kind of detailed observation from the editor, and often this refers to the humour. More than one has been offended by some of the humour, although I have got some feedback to the effect that they liked it but the humour made the story unsuitable for their audience.

Another problem is that the humour tends to blur the genre. For the most part editors seem to be genre sticklers. Their audience wants a hardboiled to be hardboiled, and a cute cozy to be cute. Cozy editors do not believe their audience would be amused by a particular view of life. And I am not a member of any of the sub-audiences. Which is to say I don't write, say, lesbian mysteries, which would give me access to another genre ghetto. Lately I have actually moved away from the mystery because I want to give my viewpoint -- which appears to be the sticking point -- free range. So the latest novel is about finding love amongst the lab rats.

"Love amongst the lab rats": is it the rats or their keepers for whom love is flourishing?

I have a great rat as a character but he may hit the cutting room floor. I was going to use a real life episode I witnessed, but I suspect that it is too gory and would be considered over the top by most readers. In actual fact the real rat was a female, but I changed sex because I figure that making an aggressive blood drinker a woman would provoke too much controversy.

On the other hand, what I have seen of the second tier of agents (i.e. those interested in taking unpublished authors without references) and their marketing efforts is not impressive. For the most part they seem to be intent on making you as much like last year's mediocre seller as possible. Then they shrug and tell you your work isn't original enough.

Personally I'm going to try a marketing blitz before I go the self- publishing route.

Also, I suspect I'm like most mystery readers in that I have a morbid fascination with crime. I follow obscure stories and read the local court page with an enthusiasm that most Americans reserve for more important issues like Elvis, or Princess Di, or if you're a real intellectual, presidential politics.

If you mean who has most influenced my writing, I wouldn't even know where to begin. I probably admire Mark Twain the most. Oscar Wilde, Anthony Burgess, would be next.

But I probably am influenced more by writers who are not generally admired in that "great Pantheon of super quality" way. These are writers from whom I have absorbed some of their craft. Barbara Paul has taught me a great deal about writing without her being aware of it. Sue Grafton, likewise.

Writing and inventing both sprang from the same source in me: my interior existence. I tend to spend rather too much time inside my own head. I am one of those odd people that do not connect terribly easily with anyone else. Most of what I am interested in the rest of the world finds boring. I was at a party a couple of weeks ago that I enjoyed enormously. I spent the entire time out on the deck discussing how to alter the properties of epoxy to suit the required strength/stiffness of any given fabrication need (in case you never thought about it, what glue is and how it works is fascinating; take some out from under the sink and play with it) with one guy. It is rare for me to find someone whom I can talk to so I spend a lot of time thinking about things in an extended monologue.

Writing is mostly an attempt on my part to communicate. It is also the way I work out things for myself. So for example "Primates" is an attempt to describe the pointillist mural resulting from our rather linear need for company. While writing it I find I incorporate a number of events, that I did not connect together until they hit the page and I then notice them.

Inventing is mostly the pleasure of solving a jigsaw. This is the problem, can I see a better way? Is it truly better? What do I need to do to make it work? It is very gratifying to have a definite problem and solve it.

Writing, because of the lack of feedback, is more frustrating as an outcome-oriented event.

I joined e-SinC because there was not a chapter in my town and it was unlikely to ever happen. For 90% of the members this will always be true. Can the e-xperience ever equal real life? I doubt it. But it's a damn sight better than sitting alone in a room and wondering if it is all your fault. (It is. But don't worry: no one will ever notice, and I swear I won't tell.)

And finally. If you have to write a book...hmm. How to phrase this delicately...well, could you try to write something, anything, man, anything at all except a sword-and-sorcery fantasy or a cozy. Although now that I think about it, if you combined the two genres it would probably be so strange as to be engaging....

"Harumph" said Dangolph, thoughtfully stroking the silky green hair on her toes. "This looks suspiciously like the work of an environmentally insensitive, Christian fundamentalist, wymn hater."

"But how can you see all that merely from a corpse!" spluttered Lesstoil.

"If you were in touch with your inner self like Dangolph is," Stonwa cried to the befuddled human, "you would be able to see. Wouldn't you, Dangolph?" Stonwa's well-curved bosom panted with passion against the restraining leather of her corset, heaving against the lacing of the uniform that signified her achievement of Witch third dan .

Dangolph ignored the banter of the lesser minds, apparently wrapped in thought. She idly prodded the corpse with her walking stick, the great middle branch of power given her by Redrick of the holly woods.

"Enough!" she cried. She raised her head abruptly, her cheeks fluttering in and out, reminding Stonwa of an Alsatian with which she had shared more than a few unforgettable adventures.

"The evildoer went this way." Dangolph announced pointing the heavy knobbed stick towards the horizon. And with that began the greatest adventure a dwarf, a witch and an Alsatian had ever known...

Whadaya think? Publishable? I mean, Bridges of Madison County made it.