Goodreads asked Ira Bloom:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Ira Bloom HEARTS & OTHER BODY PARTS came entirely out of nothing. I was frustrated and disappointed when the entire publishing industry roundly rejected my book THE WRONG PRINCE, which, though flawed, I still regard as a terrific book. I was working on the sequel when it finally dawned on me that I might never actually get the first one published, so I decided to write a different book.

I started a few projects, but couldn’t recapture the enthusiasm I had for PRINCE, the first draft of which I’d written in only six months, despite the fact that I have a grueling work schedule. I can only write at night and in such scraps of time as I’m able to scrounge.

HEARTS started with Norm. I have a friend who is quite gigantic, well over seven feet tall, and he’s one of the smartest, sweetest people I know on this earth. And though Norm bears no other resemblances to my friend, who is a perfectly decent looking person, I started with the pacifist giant. I came up with an idea for a treatment of a Frankenstein’s monster-type character, as there is an abundance of vampires and werewolves and witches and zombies in YA, but I’d never heard of a Frankenstein’s monster. There must be one out there, but I don’t only read YA.

I have a tendency, with characters I really love, to want to observe them through other people’s eyes. Also, I find male POV a tad less interesting than female POV, so I came up with the idea of the female protagonist witch. I happen to have a teenage daughter whom I think the world of, and I’ve been fortunate to have had the opportunity to observe her and her friends, so I had teenage girl stuff fresh in my mind. My daughter is smart, talented, and beautiful. I eventually decided to break her into three characters, sisters, and do a trilogy, each featuring a sister as the main character. There’s Esme, the protagonist of HEARTS, who is very intelligent, and who resolves her conflict with her brains. (I know, people expect witches to resolve their conflict with witchcraft, but what fun is that? “Abracadabra, you’re dead. Who wants ice-cream?” Not in my book. That’s been done a million times). Katy is a bit of a kook and very talented in every way, including with witchcraft, so she resolves her conflicts with creativity and craft. Veronica is billed as the beautiful sister, but that isn’t what makes her special. Her tenacity is what makes her the hero type. If you think of heroes, they basically are people who need to do the right thing and never give up. Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen, Indiana Jones… these are characters that people really love. Ronnie is that type. If there is a second book, the reader can trust that with Katy as protagonist, it will be very entertaining, because she’s a sketch. But if they really want to see an unlikely character succeed against whatever is thrown up against them, they will love Ronnie’s book. She kicks ass.

For conflict, I had the vampires be the bad guys, which set up the classic Frankenstein vs. Dracula. But the real conflict is the age-old question which has bugged me since my own high school days, namely, “Why do the coolest girls always end up going for the good-looking jerks?” But again, there are machinations within machinations, and twists at every turn.

Finally, there’s Kasha, the corpse-eating Japanese demon cat. I don’t know where the hell he came from. I certainly didn’t invite him. I think he crept in while I was contemplating some issues I was having with my cat. Anyway, I’m glad he’s there: he’s a hoot!

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