I have to say more about this, and so I will shortly. Linda is right, the psychologist’s hat is as difficult to remove as the headgear of the internal editor. More so, possibly, as most of us start out as uninformed nosey parkers and graduate (literally and severally) to become professional ones. When fictional characters are properly filled out, we are satisfied by them because, flaws and all, they are authentic. The trick is to allow them to be idiosyncratic, unpredictable, and downright annoying within that consistent authenticity. That’s what Linda has done with her characters, and why it became possible to unpick their psychologies, and even start to speculate on their futures. I aspire to that in my own writing, but I’m going to have to work pretty hard to achieve something that will pass muster, especially among my colleagues, some of whom are my very scary beta readers.

I also have to acknowledge the very nice comments about my review – blush!

Clinical psychologist Suzanne Conboy-Hill and I have been virtual friends for a year and a half. Recently she read my novel The Brevity of Roses. I was a little apprehensive when she tweeted that she had started reading it because I figured she might analyze my characters and find them wanting. This is how she reviewed my novel on Amazon: “There are two things you should know; I’m not a fan of romantic fiction so I would never have read Brevity i … Read More

via Linda Cassidy Lewis