Jennifer in her own words...

Is There a Doctor in the House?

I knew my main character in Hate List, Valerie Leftman, had big problems before I even began writing her story. Poor girl – witnessing a shooting, losing her boyfriend, shouldering the blame and guilt for everything that had happened, even suffering a gunshot wound. She was frightened. She was grieving. Physically wounded. Confused. Angry and, at times, emotionally ugly. Clearly, this girl was going to need help.

But I’m a writer, not a therapist.

If I were to understand what Valerie was going through – really understand it – I was going to need to seek professional help for her. Someone who could get into Valerie’s head and help clear away the ugly and the bleak.

As luck would have it, professional help eats breakfast at my kitchen table every morning.

Before typing a single word of Valerie’s story, I sat down and wrote an exhaustive character description of her. I included all of her physical details (eye color, hair color, height, weight), a family outline (including her parents’ marriage troubles), a brief history, and a description of the problem for which she was seeking therapy (mainly that she may or may not have been responsible for the deaths of several students at her high school… and that she still loves the boy who killed them).

On a Saturday morning, as my husband, a clinical psychologist of 25 years, shuffled into the kitchen for a cup of tea, I handed him the character outline I’d written.

“This is your new client,” I told him. “She needs help. Do your magic.”

Over the course of the next few weeks and months we discussed Valerie at great length. He tried to prepare me for everything he would expect Valerie to be going through as she returned to school. He answered my endless questions: How would she act in his office?  How would she act in school and at home? What were her stages of grief going to look like? What would she think, say, believe? What would her posture and her eye contact be like? How would she relate to her therapist, her friends, her parents, her brother, herself and, especially, to the ghost of her boyfriend?

He gave me a transcript of what he might say in a session with a client such as Valerie. He told me what her progress might look like as she began to sort out and piece together the shattered shards of her life. He offered me advice about when she’d likely have a slip-up, when she’d want to run away from it all, when she’d lash out. He prepared me for how she’d react to her teachers, how she’d feel about her former nemesis whose life she saved, how she’d react to hatefulness and (even more difficult!) to kindness, and how she’d feel when she was alone with her memories and imagination. He helped me sort out the confusion and made it all seem… fixable.

By the time it came to writing Valerie’s story, in many ways she was already healed. Even more, she was a real person to me, and I knew her more intimately than I may know myself.

It seemed natural, then, to include Valerie’s therapy sessions in Hate List. I knew Dr. Hieler’s character inside and out without even working at it (yes, my husband really does have a wooden hot air balloon hanging from his office ceiling; really has been known to counter, “Fair is a place where you eat corn dogs and ride the merry-go-round”; and really plays a mean game of chess). I found Valerie’s sessions with Dr. Hieler an easy way to give Valerie hope, healing, and, at times, a place to giggle. And I found those sessions to be a place where the reader could relate to Valerie on an even deeper level, as her vulnerability increased and her redefined future began.

I’ve been told by several early readers that the therapy sessions in Hate List are their favorite chapters. The sessions seem real, they say, and the doctor is just so… lovable.

I couldn’t agree more.