After Mili Das reviewed Cobra Orchard, she invited me to the Author Corner on her blog. Mili is a book editor, and she loves reading books closely. She asked me about the outlines I never wrote, characters I refused to label, and why the men in my book are so quiet. Here are four of my answers, and what they say about writing a psychological thriller.
No Outline, No Character Sketches
Mili wanted to know how I balanced so many heavy themes. The honest answer is that I don’t plan. I write without the usual outlines, beats and character sketches. I start with an opening, follow my instincts, and find the ending on the way there. Some wandering is the price of working without an exact story map. As I told her, it’s a mystery that shapes the real mystery.
She also asked how I kept four women moving at the same pace. Like most women, I learned to multitask early, watching my mother and her mother do the same. The women I write take their parts just as seriously.
It’s like they pull me along instead of me driving them forward.
Why the Men Barely Speak
Mili asked why the men in my story are so mute, and whether this was planned. It was. Cobra Orchard is a story centered around women, and the men exist like shadows. They appear, assist, and then disappear.
In my own words: They carry the story but know when to let the women take the lead.
The Mind Leads, the Body Follows
Why a psychological thriller at all? Because each of us plays mind games every day, and most of us don’t notice until things turn serious. Manipulation of the mind can do more damage than physical violence. The wounds don’t show, so they never heal. That’s the heart of writing a psychological thriller for me.
It’s also why predictions carry so much weight in the book. Fear of the unknown drives people. A good prediction is taken as a blessing, a bad one disrupts life in the harshest ways.
The mind is powerful. It leads and the body follows.
What Comes Next
My second novel, Karmic Devi, is almost through the editing phase. The third is written, and I’m working on the fourth. Before anyone asks whether they’re dark too:
Yes, they are eerie and dark. My mind can’t help it.
The full interview is on Mili’s blog, including my answers about the setting, my first reader, and my three favorite books. Thank you, Mili, for the questions.
If these answers made you curious about writing a psychological thriller without a map, explore Cobra Orchard and see where the women led me.
The ten years it took are a story of their own, and I told it when the book launched.
If you could ask a thriller writer one question, what would it be? Please tell me in the comments.
Three women. Two timelines. One curse that refuses to die. Set in the shadow-drenched villages of Uttar Pradesh, India — across the 1970s and the early 2000s.
Cobra Orchard is a psychological thriller about secrets buried so deep, even the earth forgot them. Read Cobra Orchard on Amazon Kindle and Amazon Prime Paperback.
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Terveen Gill is a writer who has always been drawn to the uncomfortable truth hiding beneath ordinary lives. A Times of India and Chandigarh Literary Society award-winning short story writer, she is also a graphic novel script writer, indie filmmaker, and a former engineer.
Her debut psychological thriller Cobra Orchard is the culmination of that instinct: a dark, immersive novel about three women, a sinister guru, and secrets buried so deep they have begun to rot.
Cobra Orchard sounds like a very captivating and fascinating psychological thriller. It was an interesting post.
Thanks for reading Thomas! It’s available on Amazon Kindle, and on Kindle Unlimited for free. Please check it out. 🙂