Bad Bishop
Bad Bishop
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L. J. Shen on Bad Bishop
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.
Why she wrote it
A trope she couldn’t leave aloneThe arranged marriage at the center of Bad Bishop is not a new obsession for Shen. In a September 2020 Goodreads Q&A, she was asked whether she’d return to the trope after The Kiss Thief, and her answer suggested something was already taking shape. She named a specific condition: she’d only go back if she could find an angle that hadn’t been done.
I love the arranged marriage trope. I’m an avid historical fiction reader. So I will probably write more of them if I can find different spins TO them. I think I have an idea I haven’t seen in our pool of books before.
Bad Bishop, published five years after that remark, pairs the arranged marriage premise with two warring crime families and dual-perspective narration. Whether this is the idea she had in mind in 2020 is unconfirmed in any available source, but the lineage is visible.
Shen has been consistent across interviews about why she writes what she writes rather than chasing reader expectations. The answer isn’t about genre loyalty or market positioning. It comes down to a conviction about what fiction is actually for.
Art is uncomfortable and surprising and thought-provoking, and if you know what to expect, half the fun is gone. So I try very hard to follow my heart and my heart only when it comes to my books.
How she wrote it
Routine without a mapShen’s daily writing structure is rigid in its container and loose in its content. She works in a fixed block of time, in a fixed place, with the internet off, but the story itself is not planned in advance. The structure holds the discipline while the characters drive the direction.
I’m a creature of habit and can’t really ‘wing it’. I write in my office, 5 times a week, for three hours each day (give or take). While I do, the internet is not working, and I made some notes the previous day what I want to write, so I know where I’m going and what I want to accomplish each day.
Within that daily structure, Shen resists full outlines. She feeds chapters to a paid alpha reader as she goes, which means the story is being assessed in real time rather than as a completed whole. That workflow depends on characters who are willing to derail a plan.
I am generally not good at outlining an entire story, my characters seem to love to surprise me, but I roll with the punches and let them lead the way.
Once a draft is finished, Shen steps away from it deliberately. The pause is not a break from writing; it’s a diagnostic tool. She treats the gap between drafting and revision as the place where structural problems announce themselves.
When I’m done, I put the book aside and let it ‘sit’ and simmer... This is the time where things that didn’t click while I was writing need to come together.
Bad Bishop gives Tiernan Shen, the Irish mafia heir, chapters told from his own point of view, a craft choice that requires Shen to inhabit a psychologically difficult and morally gray male perspective. Writing men is not new territory for her, and in a 2017 Bookshelf Obsessions interview she explained why it feels natural rather than effortful.
Honestly, I love writing men. I grew up with strong men by my side and I’d like to think that I know how the male mind works pretty well, so I’m very comfortable writing men.
bookshelfobsessions.wordpress.com, “Author Interview – L.J. Shen - Bookshelf Obsessions”Shen also draws on an unusually wide net when it comes to creative fuel. In the same 2017 interview, she pushed back on the idea that inspiration has a single or prestigious source.
Everything. Music. TV. Movies. Books. Real life. Nature. Random conversations. Everything inspires me and I am very lucky to be living in a world where art is affordable and ready for me to consume.
bookshelfobsessions.wordpress.com, “Author Interview – L.J. Shen - Bookshelf Obsessions”What she wants us to sit with
Discomfort as the pointNo available interview addresses what Shen wants readers to carry specifically out of Bad Bishop, which was published in November 2025 after the existing interview record closes. What the record does preserve is her standing position on what fiction should cost the reader. She said this in 2020, across the same conversation where she first signaled a new arranged marriage idea, and it amounts to the closest available statement of intent.
Art is uncomfortable and surprising and thought-provoking, and if you know what to expect, half the fun is gone. So I try very hard to follow my heart and my heart only when it comes to my books.
Shen has also spoken about what draws her back to fiction as a reader and writer, not as a craft statement but as a description of appetite. The pleasure she names is the pleasure of crossing into unknown territory, which maps directly onto what she builds: morally gray men in worlds that don’t operate by ordinary rules.
I love getting lost in a different world that is new to me and getting to know my characters.