Relationship expert Gay Hendricks and his wife (Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks) have written relationship bestsellers such as Conscious Loving and The Conscious Heart. When Gay Hendricks decided to turn to the mystery/thriller genre, he partnered with Hollywood screenwriter Tinker Lindsay for 2012's The First Rule Of Ten, which introduced a young Tibetan-Buddhist private detective in Los Angeles named Tenzing Norbu (he goes by the nickname "Ten"). This was also the first fiction title for Hay House, better known as a publisher of self-help, transformation and spirituality books. The second book in the Tenzing Norbu Mystery series, The Second Rule of Ten, was recently released.
In The Second Rule of Ten, Norbu investigates the unexplained death of his former client Hollywood mogul Marv Rudolph and searches for the sister, lost during World War II, of wizened Los Angeles philanthropist Julius Rosen. With two cases and an unforeseen family crisis that sends him back to Tibet, Ten finds himself on the outs with his best buddy and former partner, Bill, who is heading the official police investigation into Marv’s death. Cases and crises start to collide. When Ten mistakenly ignores his second rule, he becomes entangled in an unfortunate association with a Los Angeles drug cartel. As he fights to save those he loves, and himself, from the deadly gang, he also comes face to face with his own personal demons. Working through his anger at Bill, doubts about his latest lady love, and a challenging relationship with his father, Ten learns to see the world in a new light—and realizes that in every situation the truth is sometimes buried beneath illusion.
Both Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay stopped by In Reference to Murder to take some "Author R&R" (Reference and Research):
Gay Hendricks
Research is actually one of my favorite parts of writing the Tenzing Norbu mysteries. Ever since I was a youngster I've been fascinated by Tibet, eastern religion and other themes that play out in the books. Part of the excitement of researching the books comes when I discover something in an ancient Buddhist text that we can use or play off of in the mysteries. Tinker recently uncovered a spectacular nugget in an ancient text that we plan to use in the books, so I know she enjoys that aspect, too.
Another part of research that I find absolutely fascinating is having real-life conversations with experts in unusual fields. For example, the amazingly knowledgeable guys at the Far West gun shop in Santa Barbara always are willing to take time to answer my most obscure gun-related questions. Writing these mysteries has brought me into contact with a remarkable range of interesting humans, from real-life Tibetan lamas to crime scene techs to undercover border agents.
I've lived long enough now remember how difficult research used to be in those pre-computer years. All of us should bow at least once a day in the direction of Silicon Valley to give massive credit to the folks at Google, Yahoo and other search sites for making so much information easy to get to. I worked as a research psychologist at Stanford in the early 1970s, long before the computer age got underway. I remember sometimes having to wait weeks, even months to get scientific journals and essential books I needed shuttled from some distant university library. Now, it only takes .3 seconds to find a lot of the things I need.
Tinker Lindsay
My mother bred bloodhounds. At any given time at our house, there would be several bighearted hounds snuffling the edges of their outdoor dog-runs, and at least one litter of pups in the basement, their tiny wrinkles tightly packed around their miraculous snouts. The bloodhound’s sense of smell is so finely tuned that its scent-identifications are admissible as proof in a court of law, and I learned of their amazing sniffing talent firsthand. On weekends, my family would pack up the hounds in our Pontiac station wagon and drive to tracking meets. Once there, I would provide a “scent” – sometimes an old sock, sometimes a scrap of T-shirt – and off I would scamper, laying trails with my sneakers across grassy meadows and groves until I found the perfect tree to crouch behind. Soon the deep baying of hounds, noses lowered, on the scent, filled the air, until one joyous scout, tongue lolling, ears flapping, would find me. Placing giant paws on my chest, he’d tongue-swipe my cheeks as I dug out the little packet of raw liver that served as his reward.
So I learned early the importance, not to mention joy, of following a scent to its source. For me, every story idea holds within it many such old socks and T-shirt scraps, begging to be tracked down. Sometimes they take the form of a date in time or a particular location; sometimes a memory of an article I once read, a story someone once told me, or an actual experience from my own past; sometimes, it’s just a flicker of intuition – “I wonder if it’s possible to…” or “It seems to me that there should be a person that…” Then the hunt begins.
For The Second Rule of Ten, the second in our detective mystery series about Tenzing Norbu, an ex-Tibetan monk turned P.I. in Los Angeles, my tracking led me, in no particular order, to: a what’s-wrong-with-this-picture visit to an underground techno-rave at a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles; a series of interviews about celebrity deaths with the media coordinator at the L.A. County Coroner’s office; a daylong looping drive-by of one of Brad Pitt’s homes, courtesy of a weary but willing paparazzo; a steep hike into the cliffs of Malibu; and on and on it goes. For me, doing research has the heady and delicious feel of those first days of falling in love. I can’t get enough of my lover-story, or learn enough about every detail of its world. The hard work of discernment and culling comes after, but at first, everything is charged with my ardor for knowing all.
What has been most fascinating to me about working on this current detective series is the ways in which my co-author, Gay Hendricks, and I not only share and amplify each other’s research, but in some cases experience the collaboration actually affecting the story at a deep, almost psychic level of consciousness. On more than one occasion, I have followed up on a “plot-trail” introduced by Gay, and found a stunningly rich vein of truths and possibilities where we thought we had only one. His ability to key into rich veins of reality, without having necessarily “known” them on the level of fact, is thrilling to me, and unusual, to say the least. This is especially helpful, given that our protagonist is himself an intuitive investigator trying to live mindfully, and consciously, as he solves crimes. (It also helps that Gay Hendricks seems to dwell in the land of conscious-living pretty much 24-7!)
Which brings me to my final thought on research. I believe that, like the brain, the act of research ideally includes two hemispheres – left and right, intellectual and intuitive, conscious and unconscious, material and spiritual – you get the picture. Facts matter, but feelings matter at least as much, if not more. When an event or choice starts to “feel” true to me, and is also drawn from factual truth, when both hemispheres are working in concert, real story-telling magic happens. Then my writer-heart starts to bay with joy, for I know the little bag of liver treats is soon to be mine.
The Second Rule of Ten and its predecessor, The First Rule of Ten, are both available via the Hay House website, as well as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online and indie bookstores. You can also follow Gay Hendricks on Twitter and Tinker Lindsay via her website.
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