“A Reason for Dying,” by Wilfred Bereswill, debuts Spring 2008, published by Hilliard & Harris

I met Wilfred Bereswill at a St. Louis Writers Guild talk featuring Qui XiaoLong, an author whose work I’m just coming to know and and admire. Qui spoke on Perspective and Distance, such as in his “Case of Two Cities” book (an Inspector Chen Cao book) Qui possesses that rare mix of charm, erudition, humor, and self-effacement. It was a grand evening.

Wilfred Bereswill

Afterwards, I chatted with Wilfred and discovered 1) his work often took him to China; and 2) He had a book coming out this spring. I’d assumed he and Qui were friends, but in fact, they’d just met that night. They’d had a chance to visit about an hour before his talk.

I asked Wilfred to tell us what he terms “my brief history as a writer”:

It started in 2004 when I wrote a journal out of boredom traveling around China for a month. My 85 year old ex-nun aunt read it and convinced me I should write something.

In 2005 I started writing A REASON FOR DYING and pitched it to the Chief Editor of Hilliard and Harris at a conference in the fall of 2005.

In the summer of 2006 I finally heard back from the editor. She liked it a lot, but detailed some work that it needed. I re-submitted it to her in December 2006.

In March of 2007, Hilliard and Harris accepted “A Reason for Dying” and it will be coming out now, this spring, 2008.

I’m probably the only writer who didn’t dream of writing since I was a kid. My only skills were business writing. Bottom line, I had a great story to tell, but no skills. I developed the skills as I wrote it with the help of the St. Louis Writers Guild and Sisters in Crime.

Visit Wilfred’s website to read the first chapters of A REASON FOR DYING and learn about its sequel, A REASON FOR TERROR. You can also check out his blog here, “A Reason For Blogging: A look into the mind of Wilfred Bereswill