Dr Gay Hendricks has reached the pinnacles of book promotion - on Oprah no less - talking about one of his thirty five personal growth best sellers Conscious Loving - so why was he inspired to create a mystery series starring a Tibetan monk turned PI called Tenzing?

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Gay explains why most of us live dissatisfied lives, what he enjoys most about writing fiction, and how the radical adventures he had in Tibet as a younger man influence his work today..

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

How a night of insomnia got him writing

His remarkable mediation discipline

How his collaboration on the Ten mysteries came about

The Netflix deal that will bring Ten to TV

The writers he most admires

And the secret to a truly satisfying life

Where to find Gay Hendricks 

Website: http://rules-of-ten.com/ and https://www.hendricks.com/

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/gayhendricks/

 Twitter: @GayHendricks

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny: But now, here’s Gay. .  Hello there Gay and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Gay: Thank you very much, it's a treat to be here with you Jenny.

Gay Hendricks - The Rule of Ten mysteries

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning  - Why write a detective series? You’ve had a such a very successful career as a psychologist, writer, and university teacher in the field of personal growth, and you've founded the  Hendriks Institute.

Was there a “Once Upon a Time” catalyst that sparked five Tenzing Norbu books? (Five and a half if you include the prequel….)

Gay: Well I think it really started over fifty or sixty  years ago when I first fell in love with Sherlock Holmes and the mysteries of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I read so many of them in the eighth and ninth grade- I remember my eighth and ninth grade English teacher started calling me Sherlock because I always walked into class with a copy of Sherlock under my arm!

I was just totally in love with that kind of a mystery. Maybe I even started thinking back then that I wanted to start writing a mystery of my own someday. I've been a big mystery fan all my life - I don't know how many mysteries and thrillers I've read, it must be hundreds of them by now!

But I always look forward to a good mystery novel. What happened was, one night I woke up one time- about seven years ago now- and I woke up in the middle of the night, just lying there trying to think of what I might do to go back to sleep. I started reading the mystery novel that was over by the side of my bed, but I didn't want to turn on the light because I didn't want to disturb my wife.

The First Rule of Ten - Gay Hendricks

So I decided to make up a mystery novel of my own in my head, just as a way to entertain myself. So I started doing it, and it became so fascinating to me that I just had to start writing it down! So my mystery novel career kind of came out of a night of insomnia one time, and wanting to try and get something done in the middle of the night!

Jenny: It's amazing how many mystery writers I've talked to who have been inspired by reading Sherlock Holmes as a young person! Steve Hockensmith said exactly the same and he has written a number of books setting Sherlock in the West. . . .

Tenzing Norbu has been described by one reader as launching a new mystery sub- genre - that of the  "Mindful PI." Did you have any models in mind for him when you started?

Gay: No, actually I decided I wanted to create something brand new if possible, which was a whole new type of Private Investigator. I read Robert Crais all the time- in fact I just finished a Robert Crais novel about a week ago. I love his stuff.

But it's really a different kind of genre. His hero is often a wise cracking kind of guy. My hero has a good sense of humour,