Excerpt From Polly Iyer's Mind Games

Here’s an excerpt from Mind Games. Hopefully, it points out the personality of one of my secondary characters.

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       Before Lucier could ask any more questions, the unmistakable bellow of Galen Racine thundered from an examining room down the hall.

“I’m fine, doc. I hear the police out there, and I need to talk to them.” He charged past the doctor and headed toward Lucier. “My head’s like a rock,” he said, knocking on his skull. “Nothing can hurt it. Tend to my wife, by God. She was unconscious. Bastard put her to sleep and took my little girl. Now let me the hell out of here. I got things to do.”

“I’m all right, Galen,” Blanche said, in her soft southern drawl. “A little groggy, but I’m fine.”

“Sorry, Doctor,” Lucier said, flashing his badge, “but these people are witnesses to a crime. I need to talk to them.”

“Be my guest. They’re all yours.” The doctor looked as relieved to rid himself of the two Racines as they were to be free of him. “I’ll make sure someone brings the release papers for them to sign before leaving.” He patted Lucier’s arm and said, “Good luck.” As he hurried off, he mumbled something that sounded like you’re gonna need it.

“Don’t you worry, young man,” Galen called after the doctor. “Ain’t nothing gonna happen to me, and she’s a tougher old bird than she looks.”

“Thank you, dear,” Blanche Racine said. “I sure appreciate the comparison.”

“He got her, Lieutenant,” Galen said, grabbing Lucier’s coat sleeve and shaking his head. “Took her right from under our noses. B. D. didn’t have a chance. We never seen him coming. You think he’s gonna kill her? Oh, Lord, if anything happens to her, it’s all my fault. I shouldn’t’ve been so casual ’bout the whole thing.”

Lucier removed Galen’s death grip on his jacket. “Calm down, Mr. Racine. We’ll find her. Let’s sit down in the waiting room so we can talk.”

“Is he gonna be all right?” Blanche asked. “B. D., I mean. He isn’t gonna die or anything, is he?”

“Looks like he’ll pull through, Mrs. Racine. Thank you for your concern.” Lucier asked Beecher to go to Harris’s home and bring his wife to the hospital. “She should be here.”

“I’m on my way,” Beecher said.

Once in the examining room, the cacophony started, both Racines jabbering like magpies, neither ceding the floor to the other.

“Wait! One at a time, please. Every minute counts.

Polly Iyer was born on the coast of Massachusetts. After studying at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, she traveled to Italy, lived in Atlanta, and now resides in the beautiful Piedmont region of South Carolina in an empty nest house with her husband, a drooling mutt named Max, and Joey, the sweetest cat in the world. 

Writing novels turned into her passion after careers in fashion, art, and business. Now she spends her time being quite the hermit in comfortable clothes she wouldn't be caught dead wearing on the outside, while she devises ways for life to be complicated for her characters. Better them than her.

And here's a link to all her books.  Enjoy.  
http://www.amazon.com/Polly-Iyer/e/B006IUWXWO/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1358741317&sr=1-2-ent

Last Friday Recipe - Shrimp and Grits

From the Lowcountry of South Carolina, Ellis Vidler brings you her Shrimp and Grits recipe.

Lowcountry Shrimp and Grits

About 4 servings

There are as many recipes for shrimp and grits as there are cooks in the South Carolina Lowcountry. This is mine, tweaked until I think it’s right. I don’t make this often, and I don’t skimp on calories when I do. Skip lunch if you have to, but enjoy it. This dish is a treat to savor.

The secret is in the grits. Plain grits cooked for a few minutes in water don’t do it. They must be cooked for roughly 30 minutes for quick grits (never use instant) or an hour for stone ground grits. Don’t let the grits set. Use low heat and stir frequently.

I’m a “some of this and a little of that” cook, but I tried to measure for this.

Grits
1/2 cup ground grits (not instant)

2 to 3 tablespoons butter
About 2 cups chicken stock
1 cup heavy cream, more if needed
Salt and pepper to taste

5 slices of bacon, cooked separately

1. Cook bacon and save drippings in a separate dish. Don’t wash the skillet—save it for the shrimp. Crumble the cooked bacon and divide into 2 piles, one larger than the other. Set aside for now.

2. Bring chicken stock to a boil in a saucepan and stir in the grits, a bit of bacon drippings, and butter.

3. Return to a boil, and reduce the heat to almost low, allowing the grits to simmer for about 10 minutes, until the grits are thick and have absorbed most of the liquid, stirring occasionally to prevent the grits from sticking.

4. Add about ½ cup of the milk or cream to the pot and turn down the heat, allowing the grits to simmer for another 10 minutes or so. Add salt and pepper to taste.

5. As the liquid evaporates or is absorbed, add more cream or milk, cooking the grits until they are the desired consistency, a total cooking time of 30 minutes to an hour. NOTE: Start the shrimp sauce about 15 minutes before the grits will be done. If you use quick grits, they will thicken a lot faster.

6. Near the end, stir in the smaller pile of bacon bits.

Serve grits hot with the shrimp.

Shrimp
Shrimp, peeled and de-veined

Bacon drippings from cooked bacon
1 tablespoon light olive or other light oil
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon or so of garlic, chopped
3 chopped spring onions (some people add chopped tomato for color)
1 tablespoon basil, chopped fine
A teaspoon or so of flour to thicken (optional)
1/2- to 3/4 cup heavy cream
Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

About 15 minutes before grits will be done

1. In the bacon skillet, pour off excess fat. Heat the oil and butter to medium-hot and then add the shrimp. Sprinkle lightly with salt. Cook for about one minute on each side or until just barely pink. Remove from skillet and set aside. Lower heat. NOTE: If the shrimp are already cooked, sear them in a hot skillet for several seconds—just enough to enhance the taste.

2. Add a little of the bacon drippings, garlic, and onions to the skillet, and cook until onions are transparent. Pour off some of the fat if there’s much. If you want thicker gravy, take skillet off the burner and stir in a little flour.

3. Add cream into the fat and pan scrapings. Use enough to make a good gravy for the shrimp. Reduce to a sauce consistency.

4. A couple of minutes before serving, return the shrimp and half the remaining bacon crumbles to the sauce. Add the basil. Cook for just a minute or two. Salt and pepper to taste and serve over hot grits. Sprinkle with the remaining bacon crumbles.

We serve it with a salad and vinaigrette dressing.

Hope you like it.

Ellis

LA: Ellis, I can't wait to make this. In Colorado, it's not easy to find good grits, but the search is on. I'll order them if I can't find them. My husband and I love grits! And shrimp! And bacon! So what's not to love about this recipe? Nothing, bon appetite.

 

Ellis Vidler is the author of mystery suspense books with a touch of romance.

She maintains a blog, mostly about writing and writers, at http://theunpredictablemuse.blogspot.com

Her website is http://www.ellisvidler.com.

Polly Iyer Talks About Secondary Characters

It is my great pleasure to bring you Polly Iyer.  She's a most interesting character in real life and she has Indie Published all five of her books.

I asked her about her background in illustration, and she told me that she started out as a free-lance illustrator for Women's Wear Daily and all the Fairchild Publications, covering New England. "Then when I moved to Atlanta, I still did some fashion illustration but moved into television story boards for product commercials. I can draw a hand holding a bottle of Spray 'n Wash from memory. :-)"

I'd love to do that, but my drawings are worse than stick figures. Seriously. Ask anyone who knows me.

Polly has done all her own covers with a
BFA from art school and 25 years as an illustrator
I'd say she was her own best choice!

Welcome Polly!

SECONDARY CHARACTERS

       After the first, oh, twenty or thirty pages of our manuscript (which we go over so many times, we can quote the words from memory), we, as writers, tend to concentrate on our main characters—the hero and/or/ heroine in whatever genre we’re writing.

       But what about secondary characters? In many books and movies the secondary characters are pivotal to the plot and to the main character, their yin to the other’s yang―Watson to Holmes, Robin to Batman, Ginger to Fred, to name a few. Many secondary characters build a following and are rewarded with their own mystery series. John Sandford’s Virgil Flowers and Robert Crais’s Joe Pike come to mind. Television has been famous for spinoffs, some successful, some not. That spinoff character has to be so strong that viewers crave more.

       Many series writers, whether cozy mysteries or police procedurals, create a fictional town or workplace with a continuing cast of characters—think Stephanie Plum, Joe Morelli, Ranger, and Lula; or the cops in John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport series. Those characters are the supporting players. They’re family, a team, and readers know them. Speaking of supporting roles, I bet everyone can name at least two from Gone with the Wind other than Scarlett and Rhett. Great secondary characters stay with us.

       Since I write in multiple points of view, I almost always create multiple storylines. That leaves me free to wander into the heads of my secondary characters. For that reason, I work hard to develop them as fully as I develop the leads. They may take up less space in my books, but I consider them almost as important. If you remember them over my main characters, more important.

       I’ve published five books, with another on the way—sounds like I’m giving birth, and in a way, I am. These books are my babies. They’ve been nurtured and fed everything I’ve learned and am still learning, but though we want readers to love our main characters, especially if they’re in a series, I’m thrilled when someone mentions that I’ve fleshed out the supporting cast.

       One secondary character in my book Murder Déjà Vu is probably my favorite. I knew what was going to happen to him right from the beginning. So does the reader, so I’m not giving anything away. But every time I went over that scene, I sobbed like a baby. I fell in love with him and didn’t really want to do what I was going to do. I was helpless, of course. His fate was cast in stone from the beginning.

       In my Diana Racine Psychic Suspense series―just two books―Diana’s father is really unlikeable. He’s a cocky con artist and a racist who pushed his young daughter into doing things she didn’t want to do strictly for money and notoriety. When Diana falls in love with an African American, old Galen Racine has a conniption. As much as we don’t like him, and I think most people won’t, he loves his daughter and she loves him. It’s tricky to write a character like him and leave some thread of humanity so readers feel what Diana feels. If they don’t, I haven’t done my job. I started to put Diana’s parents in the second book, Goddess of the Moon, but I couldn’t put my readers through him again. Or me. In the same book, Mind Games, the killer is evil incarnate, but readers have told me they actually felt sorry for him in the end. Those two characters made me believe I got them right to create such strong emotions.


        In Hooked, my biggest challenge was creating a woman with a very questionable past—she’s an ex-call girl—so that people didn’t hold that against her. But she’s a main character. Those offended will close the book and never get to Benny Cooper, the ex-hedge fund manager who runs a high-class bordello. He’s―well, there’s no other way to describe him other than a schlemiel. He’s addicted to sex, and that’s what gets him in trouble. Hopefully, he’ll make you laugh. His ex-hooker wife is also a piece of work. What a pair.

        For those of you reading this post who are writers, when you create your characters, do you put as much effort into those secondary characters as you do for the H/h?

        Do you give them tics, habits, and mannerisms? Do some of them speak in an identifiable way? Dress? Walk?

       If you don’t develop these individuals, think seriously about changing your ways. Every book highlights the main characters. A well-rounded book takes all the characters into consideration.

       Happy reading and writing, everyone, and remember:

          Her words were interspersed with nervous coughs. The woman was a basket case.

          He was thinking. She could always tell because he rubbed the back of his

          neck and measured his words.

         If she says “you know” one more time, I’m going to explode.

         Not many women could get away with pink hair, but it suited her.
   

         Etc., etc., etc.

Polly Iyer was born on the coast of Massachusetts. After studying at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, she traveled to Italy, lived in Atlanta, and now resides in the beautiful Piedmont region of South Carolina in an empty nest house with her husband, a drooling mutt named Max, and Joey, the sweetest cat in the world.

 Writing novels turned into her passion after careers in fashion, art, and business. Now she spends her time being quite the hermit in comfortable clothes she wouldn't be caught dead wearing on the outside, while she devises ways for life to be complicated for her characters. Better them than her.

You can find all her books here:   http://www.amazon.com/Polly-Iyer/e/B006IUWXWO/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1358741317&sr=1-2-ent