Love, Lies, and Betrayal Define This Murder Mystery Novel is Set in a Yoga Studio

It’s not uncommon for yoga teachers to juggle side hustles or full-time careers that have seemingly nothing to do with yoga. Office manager. Physician. Kindergarten teacher. Murder mystery novelist.

Murder mystery novelist? That’s the latest side gig for longtime yoga teacher and debut author Kandi Neal, who self-published Behind the Studio Doors last year. The novel explores a cast of characters with large personalities and complicated relationship dynamics set against the backdrop of a yoga studio.

“It’s about love, lies, and betrayal,” says Neal. Also “forbidden romance” and “spiritual scammers.” And, of course, murder.

The book follows Trina, the lead character that Neal based on herself and a friend who owns a yoga studio, as she navigates “quirky studio drama” and “the unspoken realities of wellness culture.” In so doing, the book reveals “the messy, relatable human stories hidden beneath the serene façade,” explains Neal.

“I just thought it was fun and different because it’s the yoga space,” says Neal. “It’s behind the scenes.”

Early in the book, Neal sets the stage for the book’s premise through Trina’s musings: “At thirty years old, I have been teaching yoga for a third of my life. In my corner of the world, it’s almost like a clique. Everyone knows who’s who, and what’s more menacing is that everybody seems to know each other’s business. Of course, there are pluses and minuses, but for the most part, it feels more like a popularity contest than a viable career.”

Neal had childhood aspirations of becoming a writer and started a freelance writing career in her 20s. A couple years later, she started practicing yoga before enrolling in yoga teacher training in 2012. Given her enthusiasm for thrillers and her decade of experience teaching yoga, Neal’s decision to make a studio and its cast of characters the inspo for her story seems the least mysterious part of her process.

Behind the Studio Doors is definitely not your typical yoga book—and that’s a large part of its draw. Writing about deceit and death might be surprising from someone who teaches strength and self-awareness. Yet the underlying message of the book, explains Neal, aligns with the practice’s larger message of “finding calm amidst life’s chaos.”

Q & A With Yoga Teacher and Murder Mystery Novel Writer Kandi Neal

Neal took a break from leading classes to talk about what her debut book conveys about the yoga community and how she brings the same quiet confidence to both her teaching and her writing.

The Overlap Between Writing Fiction and Teaching Yoga

Yoga Journal: Writing a book is a considerable commitment even when you’re not juggling other jobs. How did you find time to write during your already highly scheduled days?

Kandi Neal: I started writing 500 words here and there. But on Memorial Day weekend, I decided I wanted to finish it by Labor Day. So I would do writing sprints. I would put my phone on Do Not Disturb and set an alarm—sometimes for an hour and other times two—and I would just write. Whether or not I had outlined anything for that day or plotted anything out, it didn’t matter. I didn’t care if there were typos or edits that I needed to make. I would just write. I feel like that process, above all else, helped me get words on the page. That is the best advice I can offer anyone. Set a timer and just write. Worry about edits later.

YJ: Okay, I have a seemingly random question. How do you come up with sequences for the yoga classes you teach?

KN: To an extent, I just wing it. But I always try to have at least one thing that I know I want to center it around. Earlier today I was thinking, “What do I want to teach tonight?” I thought about Figure Four and I focused on all the things I could do with that pose. I decided to do some Figure-four Bridge and Figure Fours in Down Dog.

YJ: That sounds similar to how you wrote your book. You had an idea of where you were going yet you didn’t exert too much control over the process. A close friend who’s also a yoga teacher likes to say, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” It’s interesting that the same creative process that you use for teaching kind of plays out in your writing.

KN: That’s a really good point! I’m working on book number two right now, and I stalled out before I’d even started because I was like, “I need to outline it. I need to do it differently this time.” And then I wasn’t making time to do that. So instead I just sat down and started to write, like I did with the first book, and then the story started to come out.

The Lesser-Known Side of Yoga Studios

YJ: Let’s talk about how your characters came into existence. Are any based on personalities you know IRL?

KN: The main character, Trina, is loosely based on a combination of me and the owner of one of the studios where I teach. Lillian is based on somebody who I will never say. Mark and Malia are based on people I know as well, however, they’re such stereotypes that they could really be anyone who aligns with that exaggerated spiritual guru type of thing.

A lot of the stereotypes in the book are exaggerated to show the danger when you don’t question things. Like, is this integrity? Is this spirituality? Is this yoga? Is this a cult? What is this? So the exaggeration is kind of to point out how easy it can be to fall into deception and caution readers that you still need to be discerning, even if people seem amazing.

Most of the other characters are just fragments of my imagination. And that was really fun. It reminded me of being a kid and just making up short stories.

The Reality of Being Human

YJ: Did the process of putting into words what you’ve observed in yoga studios for more than a decade cause you to start perceiving the yoga space or the people in it differently? What was behind the way you chose to depict your characters?

KN: What I thought about most when I was writing the book was when people read it, would they worry that I was talking about them? For example, the book includes things that actually happened with guys I’ve dated, and I was like, “Oh, if they ever read this…”

I thought a lot about character development when I was creating the first book and the characters. I was really inspired by the season of The Handmaid’s Tale that took viewers through all the characters’ stories and you learned how they became who they were. So Aunt Lydia, for example, is awful. Although after you find out how she became that way, you almost feel bad for her. And June, even though she’s so unlikeable, you root for her anyway. I appreciate the dynamic writing and opposition in that series. So that’s why I kept so much of the backstory in the book. Because I want people to really root for these characters, even when they’re awful.

Self-Publishing as Detachment

YJ: You decided to self-publish your murder mystery novel. Can you share more about that process?

KN: I was really dead set on getting a book deal, and when I realized that wasn’t going to happen, I was like, “Okay, I’ll self publish.”

I learned so much throughout the process of pitching the book to publishers and hearing their feedback, including what I could have done differently or better, so I feel like I’m super armed to write a really good second book.

YJ: Anything else we should know about your first book?

KN: Not to let the mystery out of the bag, but it’s not really a murder. It’s like an accidental manslaughter.

YJ: And you’re currently working on the sequel?

Yes. One thing that I’ve been told by a few people that have read the book is that they really like how strongly I developed these characters. So I feel like it might not take me as long to write because the characters are already established, so I can focus more on the story and not the character development.

What’s Next for the Author

Although Neal isn’t disclosing what happens in her sequel, we might find a clue on the cover of Behind the Studio Doors. It appears she had the sequel in mind when she refers on the cover to “A Yoga Murders Novel.” As in, plural. We can only hope.