to death", he said. "The number of people who ring me up saying `You killed him!'. I say I didn't kill him, so-and-so killed him." Clavell said that he did not plot his books. "I write it pretty much as you read it. Of course I may have to go back and change something because of what I have written later, but usually it just runs through. I always have trouble deciding when to stop. I didn't know how this was going to end until I got there." "Obviously, with 1,700 pages of manuscript, I can't keep in all in my head", he added. "So from time to time I will say to my wife, 'Give me a number from one to 500.' I then look at the page corresponding to the number she's just given me, and see if anything on that page makes me want to know what happens next, or what happened just previously. The magic of storytelling is to want to make people listen breathlessly, if you're telling the story orally, or turn the page, if you're writing it. That's why, at the end of every one of my chapters, there's a big fat hook." "The only thing that makes a best book – I don't like 'bestseller' – is that somebody tells them", he said. People who read my books expect to be entertained, to be forced to turn the page, to learn something on route. Gai-jin is a very easy way of learning about Japanese characters, characteristics, attitudes toward sex, food and politics, which apply today... If people are going to give me two or three weeks of their time, you have to repay them. I have to entertain them, I have to instruct them, and I have to allow them to learn something." Reception The book was a best seller. Proposed adaptation In 1993 NBC, who had huge success with a TV version of Shogun, announced they would broadcast an eight-hour mini series based on the book for the 1994–95 season. The series would have been a co-production between NBC Productions and RCS Video, the Italian-based international producer and distributor. "Gai-Jin will establish a landmark in international television co-productions and a new relation in the industry between the United States and Europe", said Paolo Gilsenti, managing director of RCS. Clavell and Susan Baerwald were to be executive producers. Filming was to start February