Welcome to An Indie Adventure, Polly Iyer. Tell us, what inspired you to write your book Mind Games?
Way back when, I read a book by a bestselling author that I found so mediocre, I decided I could do better. Ignoring my hubris, I began the daunting task to write one. The book was Threads, and I didn’t publish it until thirteen years later. By that time, I had written and published six other books.
How do you use setting to further your story?
The locales in my books vary. My series is set in New Orleans, a great setting for a crime novel. There are so many colorful aspects to New Orleans, and I have tried to capitalize on them, from jazz clubs and restaurants to the crowded squares filled with locals and tourists. I set one book in Manhattan, where my character is a docent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I tried to give the reader a bit of one section of the museum, which I visited with the purpose of getting that part right. I’ve written a couple of books set in different parts of South Carolina where I live, and a couple in Boston, my hometown. I make up some places like certain clubs but always try to keep the flavor of the cities in which the stories occur.
How do you construct your characters?
For me, it’s all about my characters. My series characters have become such a part of me that I know what they will do in any given circumstance. A writer has to step into the mindset of the characters she creates, give them habits and/or mannerisms that carry through the story. If the character is evil, he must also have some redeeming quality of he becomes a cardboard cutout. I do have one bad guy who’s bad through and through, but that’s unusual. I also have one where the reader gets into his head and his reasoning to justify what he does. The only advice I can give about characters is to forget who you and become them, think like them, feel like them.
How is your main character completely different than you?
I don’t believe you can write a character who doesn’t have some of your qualities. My women are strong women; my men are the kind of men women want. My series character is braver and more foolhardy than I am, but I’d like to be more like her, so I could develop her the way I wanted. I like characters who are flawed, some deeply so. I always wonder how I could write twisted and not be twisted, so maybe in some dark corner of my psyche, I am.
To you what makes a great romance hero or heroine?
Someone once wrote about my books that I make heroes out of damaged people. One of my favorite characters from my books is a man who spent fifteen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He had PTSD and couldn’t stand to be in confined spaces. The female character had been married to an abusive husband and stayed with him until her sons went off to college. These two people find each other and fall in love. They protected each other and connected on a deep level. I wrote it, but I found it very romantic.
How do you create internal and external conflict in your characters? I find conflict often the hardest to create when I start planning a book.
Answer: To make internal conflict believable, you MUST get into your character’s head. This is the same for the good guys as well as the bad guys. Psychological pain must be so great, loss so critical, love so deep, that your protagonist or antagonist lives it, and you live it through them. Notice I didn’t say they live it through you. You can’t write it without feeling it.
External conflict is controlled by someone else. The protagonist can only react or solve or confront. As soon as s/he thinks everything is okay, something happens to throw a monkey wrench into the situation. A lover is missing, a character is in mortal danger, someone dies. A simple answer is what I call the lull before the storm. You know when it happens in a movie because everything is too good; the characters are too happy. Then disaster. It’s up to the writer to make sure there’s some kind of aforementioned conflict before she solves all the problems and there’s a happy ending. Or not.
Give us a brief summary of Mind Games :
This is the first book in the Diana Racine Psychic Suspense series. Diana is stalked by a serial killer seeking revenge for something that happened twenty years before when she was a child. She’s a psychic entertainer known worldwide with a variety of fans and detractors who think she’s a phony. The twist is the man who targets her has the same psychic abilities as Diana.
Polly Iyer is the Amazon bestselling author of nine books of suspense and four sexy romances she writes under a pseudonym. She started out as a fashion illustrator and storyboard artist, importer, and store owner before embarking on her fourth, and last, career as an author. Writing opened new doors for her, allowed her to make wonderful friends in the community, and gave her carte blanche to put her fantasies into novels of excitement and romance.
Her novels include: Hooked, InSight, Murder Déjà Vu, Threads, Kindle Scout winner Indiscretion, and four books in the Diana Racine Psychic Suspense series: Mind Games, Goddess of the Moon, Backlash, and The Scent of Murder.
Thanks for hosting me, L.A. I appreciate the blog. Great questions.
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