Another question from the Sisters in Crime panels I took part in over the last few weeks.

What do you read while you’re writing, and why?

I had fun listening to the other panelists’ answer to this. It’s enough to say we all approach what to read or not, and why, with different outlooks and specific understanding of our own needs.

I had to think a little about this one because I realize my reading-while-writing habits have changed over the past couple of years.

When I started, I was still finding my voice, creating a character and trying to understand her and how she saw the world. I had to stay focused on her and the other characters, to listen to them carefully and define them specifically and individually. It worried me a little that if I were reading a contemporary author I liked too much, I might unconsciously adopt a bit of her or his voice, which would confuse me – and any readers – later on. So when I was working on MURDER IN THE ABSTRACT, the first in a series about Dani O’Rourke, I didn’t read about other youngish, contemporary professional women. I read from the hundreds of thrillers Tim had on the shelves – Lee Child, Ian Rankin, James Lee Burke, John Lescroat, and more.

Later, when I knew Dani well enough, I relaxed that rule, but thought it wise to break up the crime fiction, which was becoming such a steady diet that I could see the plot patterns too easily when I started a book. But while writing THE KING’S JAR, I wanted to know her world even better and it was then I became addicted to periodicals that cover the world of high end art, the art auction houses, and art-related crime. The only problem with that is that I saw – and see – wonderful plot ideas behind every $100 million painting sale to an anonymous buyer by and anonymous seller! One such story even contributed to MIXED UP WITH MURDER, the third in the series.

Now, I’m relishing wit in fiction, the writer or narrator who comments amusingly on society directly or indirectly through her or his prose. It fits with what I’m working on, but because some of those authors are classic, it’s also always been in bounds when I’m writing. Austen, Trollope, Wilde, Dorothy Parker…even Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” which was discussed on one of those recorded classes you can take while you drive to and from Sisters in Crime panels.

My To Be Read piles, however, crowd the bookshelves in every room, and include everything from The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, and Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey, to psychological thriller writer Sophie Hannah’s slim book of poems, Pessimism for Beginners. And the real question becomes, should I write or read this afternoon?