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What I do is write, and I try to write as closely as I can into what I call 'the mystery.'

I'm not a big fan of introducing a bunch of new mysteries into a story without really knowing where they're going because you just end up struggling at the end to make sense of them and make it all seem like you planned it all along.

Writing a mystery is like drawing a picture and then cutting it into little pieces that you offer to your readers one piece at a time, thus allowing them the chance to put the jigsaw puzzle together by the end of the book.

The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.

How do you solve a mystery? How do you write a book? The techniques for starting both are surprisingly similar. Find an intriguing question and, pen and dagger tucked under cloak, search for clues.

You run the risk, whenever you build your story around a central mystery, of either letting it go too long, or revealing it too soon and then taking the wind out of the sails of the narrative.

I want the reader to know what's going on. So there's never a mystery in my books.

Writing a mystery is more difficult than other kinds of books because a mystery has a certain framework that must be superimposed over the story.

I'm not a fan of endless mystery in storytelling - I like to know where the mythology's going; I like to get there in an exciting, fast-paced way - enough that there's a really clear, aggressive direction to where it's going, to pay off mystery and reward the audiences loyalty.