My friend Richie from up the street asks me, “When do you find time to write?”

“Late at night is the second best time,” I tell him, “for me anyway.” He waits for the rest of my answer.  ”But my favorite time is before sunrise.  Five a.m.  While you’re still sleeping.”

Richie cringes just at the sound of  ”five a.m.”  ”You set your alarm?” he asks.

“No, I just wake up some mornings and know it’s time to write. I awake the hound (Simone, our Italian greyhound) and we go downstairs together. She goes back to sleep on the sofa and I pour a large mug of Kona coffee and head for the keyboard.

Here’s the third question that helps us understand how readers and writers connect.  Earlier we looked at the connecting power of humor and laughter, as well as a common concern by readers and writers for characters in pain.

Now we come to poison and dying, and at a time like this I wish I were a mystery writer.  Agatha Christie loved to kick off her mysteries with a good old-fashioned poisoning.  Her 80 mystery novels have sold about four billion copies in 45 languages. They say that everybody loves a good mystery, and apparently everybody also loves a good poisoning.