Character on the Couch: Jillian Neal's Brock and Hope

Today I'm delighted to have Jillian Neal and her characters from her newly released novel Gypsy Hope to the couch. We authors typically try to use our powers for good, but Jillian is taking it a step further. For every copy of Gypsy Hope sold, Jillian is donating $1 to the ProLiteracy organization to help combat adult illiteracy. ProLiteracy works globally to educate, provide resource materials, and to help people that are illiterate. So pull up a beach chair, and let's meet these characters!

This is the kind of cover that makes me go "awww!"

First, let me thank Cecilia for having my characters, Brock Camden and Hope Hendrix, on the couch today. Strong characters, passionate love scenes, and deep emotion are the hallmarks of my work. Brock and Hope’s story is no different but does offer another element that I think makes it all the more compelling. Brock is illiterate. Overcoming that, learning to accept both of their pasts, and ultimately a future neither of them imagined makes Gypsy Hope an engaging and heartbreaking novel, to be sure. But I write romance so there will always be a happily ever after. I wouldn’t even know how to write anything else.


1. If your character were to go to a psychologist – willingly or unwillingly – what would bring them in? Yes, a court order is a valid answer.

Ha! Honestly, a court order wouldn’t be necessary though Brock Camden would probably not go willingly. He would go for Hope. He would do most anything for her. They’ve been best friends since high school. They would both tell you that counseling would be helpful due to their traumatic childhoods. (Brock’s father was an abusive alcoholic. That situation led to his dyslexia and illiteracy never being diagnosed. Hope’s parents were killed in a car accident when she was a little girl.) Brock is a cowboy through and through, however. He would be more inclined to work and try to bury his pain and his past out in the pastures. That is how he’d been dealing with all of his issues right up until the moment Hope proposes they become a couple long enough for him to “show her the sexual ropes” she feels she’s missed out on.

2. Is the presenting problem one of the main internal or external conflicts in your book? If so, how does it present itself?

Largely the conflicts are internal. Hope has fear/anxiety issues due to her parents’ deaths. Brock is terrified that someone will figure out that he’s illiterate. When Hope discovers his painful secret, he pushes her away, too. She has to convince him that she loves him whether he can read or not and show him that illiterate does not mean unintelligent, unlovable, or even unattractive.

3. It's always interesting to see how people act when they first enter my office. Do they immediately go for my chair, hesitate before sitting anywhere, flop on the couch, etc.? What would your character do?

Brock would follow Hope’s lead. She would cautiously seat herself on the couch. He would sit beside her, wrap his arm around her, and immediately be ready to tell you to “back off” if he thought you were being too intrusive. If he sensed or suspected that Hope was afraid or that the session was too painful, he’d suggest/demand that they leave. He’s extremely protective and would like to think that their problems could be solved without external help.

4. Does your character talk to the therapist? How open/revealing will your character be? What will he or she say first?

Brock would only talk if Hope asked him to share. I envision short clipped sentences. He can be quite gruff. His cowboy drawl softens the blow. His opinion would be - what happened in his past happened. There’s no changing it. Why drudge it up now?

Hope would talk more openly in an effort to seek healing for the issues she knows she has. If she loosened up, Brock might follow suit.

5. Your character walks into the bar down the street after his/her first therapy session. What does he/she order? What happens next?

If Brock were alone and not driving, he’d have whiskey straight up, probably something from the Jack Daniel’s distillery. He’s wary of alcohol after seeing what happened to his father when he drank too much, so he would not over do it. If he were with Hope and driving her home, he’d just have a cheap beer. Hope wouldn’t be likely to venture into a bar alone but does like a glass of wine. She’s a light-weight, so she would be cautious.

6. When you're building characters, do you have any tricks you use to really get into their psyches, like a character interview or personality system (e.g., Myers-Briggs types)? And for this book, how did you research illiteracy?

The research on illiteracy actually came many years before Gypsy Hope was born. When my eldest son was eight, he was diagnosed with dyslexia. We were inundated with the horrifying statistics about illiteracy. 757 million people around the world cannot read or write a simple sentence. Nineteen percent of graduating high school seniors cannot read above a third grade level. I wanted to give illiteracy a voice, and in that desire, Brock Camden came on the scene.

As for my characters, they tend to come to me fully-formed. As I write, I get to know them. This is why I will re-write a manuscript at least three times before it goes to my critique partners or my editors. I want to really dig deep and get to know my characters. I’m constantly asking myself, “What if? and How would they react?” when I write. I always want to dig deeper. I never want to “phone in” a scene.

Speaking of Myers-Briggs I am an INFJ empath. Given that I derive other people’s emotions with ease, my novels tend to have a great deal of emotional depth. INFJ’s think using images. So, I often use Pinterest for character and plot development. I can pull the emotion out of an image and transfer it into words. I knew Brock had been Gypsy Beach’s football star in high school but I was missing a part of his past. I opened Pinterest one day and three pictures of sexy cowboys were at the top of my screen. I had it. It hit me like lightening. He was ultimately a misplaced cowboy never meant to be on a beach in North Carolina. So, how had he gotten there? How did that make him feel? and Would he ever go back to the ranch that raised him?

Jillian Neal is a Romance author that manages to blend her imagination, Southern sass, and loving heart in every novel she pens. She showed her talent for weaving intricate plot lines and showcasing dynamic characters in her seven-book, urban fantasy, series, The Gifted Realm. Her skillset continues to shine in her contemporary series, Gypsy Beach, which will leave you with a longing to pack your bags and move to a tiny beach town full of bohemian charm.

She lives outside of Atlanta with her husband and their children.

Cecilia says: I'm an INFJ, too! And yes, I also think in images, although I'm still not good at Pinterest. Thanks so much for coming by and bringing your characters! I do want my readers to know that Jillian's books have the perfect balance of sweet and spicy. They're perfect beach reads whether you have a beach to read on or not.

If you have a character you'd like help with or would like to feature on this blog, please fill out & submit the comment form on the top right. Thanks, and happy reading!

Characters on the Couch: Lia and Lucas from Linda Joyce's Her Heart's Desire - Updated 8/18

Today I'm excited to welcome fellow author and Georgia Romance Writers member Linda Joyce. She writes great fiction with Southern flair no matter where it's set. I've already preordered my copy of this one.

Update - happy book birthday to Linda and Her Heart's Desire! You can get it here.

Artist Amelia Britton battles her older brother for the right to remain on the family farm—their inheritance after their parents’ tragic deaths—she faces a looming mortgage, weather threatens to destroy her crops, and the man she secretly loves only sees her as Craig’s little sister. 

After serving his country in Afghanistan, Lucas Dwyer expected to return home to his family’s farm, but the bank foreclosed. Undeterred, he begins combining-for-hire to support his younger sister in college. His best friend convinces him to discourage local guys from dating Amelia. Craig wants her back in the city, farming is too hard for a woman alone. Only one problem—Lucas has fallen in love with Amelia. 

With family, the bank, and the weather conspiring against them, can Amelia and Lucas ever hope to grow the love blooming between them? 

1. If your character were to go to a psychologist – willingly or unwillingly – what would bring them in? Yes, a court order is a valid answer.

Lucas: Hello, Doc. I’ll take this question. On the serious side, I’ve seen what combat does to a man in Afghanistan, so if I thought I needed to go, I would, but that’s not why I’m here now. *grins* Besides, I’m sure if Lia thought I needed a shrink, she’d lasso me and drag me. She can rope—stationary objects. She’ll never make it in a calf-roping event at the American Royal in Kansas City. Just to clarify, I’m here at Linda’s invitation.

2. Is the presenting problem one of the main internal or external conflicts in your book? If so, how does it present itself?

Lia: The “presenting problem” is Craig—my brother. Everything can be linked back to him--over achieving, over cautious, over bearing, and stepping way over the line when he recruited Lucas to “talk” to guys who wanted to date me. Talk in this case is a synonym for dissuading. I’m not sure I can forgive him for interfering with my life in such an intrusive way. Brothers! Can’t live with them. Can’t shoot them, or at least there’s no official hunting season on them in Kansas. So Doctor, by talking with you today, there’s a remote chance you’ve saved his life…maybe.

Lucas: Woman, you need to be fair. He’s got his faults, but his heart was in the right place—until he pulled a gun on me. Even if Craig were to back off—Mother Nature is unpredictable—some time friend, sometimes foe. Way worse than Craig could hope to be. 

3. It's always interesting to see how people act when they first enter my office. Do they immediately go for my chair, hesitate before sitting anywhere, flop on the couch, etc.? What would your character do?

Linda: Excuse me, Lia and Lucas, I’ll take this question, after all, who’s in charge here? So…Lia would scan the room looking for something interesting about it to paint. Maybe the way light slants across your desk and makes water in your glass sparkle. Lucas, on the other hand, would sit down in the chair, pull it closer to your desk and want to get down to business—do and be done—as quickly as possible. He’s got work on his brain. Did I get that right? *Lia and Lucas nod.* 

4. Does your character talk to the therapist? How open/revealing will your character be? What will he or she say first?

Lia: I’m here because Linda said it might be good for me…to deal with the guilt I have about my mother. When Craig and I found the secret room in the barn, packed floor to ceiling with unopened boxes, it threw me. My mother turned to hording before she died, and I’m not sure why…but I fear it’s my fault. However, if she hadn’t squirreled away all those boxes with all that stuff, I would’ve had to leave the farm, which would’ve been disastrous because the separation would have ruined any chance for a relationship with Lucas.

5. Your character walks into the bar down the street after his/her first therapy session. What does he/she order? What happens next?

Linda: *chuckles* There’s actually a scene in Her Heart’s Desire where Lia goes into a bar alone in the middle of the day, alone—a no-no in the Britton moral family code. Today, if she were to leave your office and head to Rockets—the bar in Harvest, Kansas, I believe she’d order a  shot of tequila—something she’s never done before, then wait for Zoe to get off work—together they’d polish off a pitcher of margaritas. Beats shooting Craig. 

6. When you're building characters, do you have any tricks you use to really get into their psyches, like a character interview or personality system (e.g., Myers-Briggs types)?

Linda: When I first started writing, I used character interviews, a fill-in-the-blank method, sort of like putting lemon juice on invisible ink to make it appear—to make a character visible. If you’re familiar with yoga, it’s best to move into a pose instead of forcing a pose. For me, the interview method was like forcing, and now I prefer to move into learning about a character by listening. They’ll tell me what I need to know. I’ve not used Myers-Briggs, however, I can usually type a character after we’ve been well introduced. One tool I do use—an astrological chart. I studied astrology for two years, a class a week, and I barely know a thimble full.  There’s one other way I learn about characters—they invite me in. One book I’m working on about three women, they came to me fully formed. It was as though I took an empty seat at a four-top, and they just talked as if I was there to take dictation. It was a bit eerie because when I pulled the chair up, it was the same as downloading the backstory. I knew them. And, no, they’re not people from my other life—the one where I feed dogs, pay bills, and take a care of family.

Linda Joyce is an award-winning contemporary romance author. She writes about assertive females pursuing goals and the men who can’t resist them. She’s a self-professed foodie with Beauregard, Jack, and Renoir as her kitchen canine companions. Linda’s a big fan of jazz and blues and attributes her love of those musical genres to her southern roots. She penned her first manuscript while living in Japan, the country where her mother was born and raised. She spent twelve wonderful years in Kansas. Now she lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and four-legged boys and writes novels.

You can find her at:

Website: Linda-Joyce

Facebook Author Page: LindaJoyceAuthor

Twitter: @LJWriter 

You can preorder Her Heart's Desire on Amazon.

A Perfect Man: First Chapter and Purchase Links

I'm so excited that A Perfect Man is out! For those who are curious as to what it's about, here's the blurb:

How far will she go to find her perfect man? How far will he go to be one?

When Karen Hardeman sets foot on the Foothills University campus, it’s her first step toward proving her abusive ex wrong. Just her luck, her first writing assignment in Intro to Romance sends her in search of the perfect hero—a quest she’s never managed to conquer.

Worse, her professor forces her to collaborate with the most overconfident, annoying guy in the class.

Seth Sayers is also at Foothills to find new direction—preferably one that takes him far away from the family drama that’s followed him since his father’s death. He didn’t mean to humiliate Karen by rewriting her manuscript from the hero’s point of view. He blames the painkillers the ER doctor gave him after stitching up a wine-induced cut on his hand.

As their collaboration progresses, Karen begins to trust Seth with her manuscript, then maybe a little piece of her heart. But Seth’s half-brother resurrects Seth’s suspicions about his father’s death. Until he finds the truth, he can’t be the hero in anyone’s life. Even his own.

Warning: Some alcohol consumption. Okay, writer amounts of alcohol consumption. There are also some adult situations, but nothing too explicit. It is a romance-writing class, after all.

A Perfect Man was released from Samhain Publishing on May 12.

Other order links include:

Amazon 

Barnes & Noble

And anywhere else books are sold.

Here's a sneak peek at the first couple of scenes:

Chapter One:

Karen Hardeman walked onto the campus of Foothills University, into her new life, and straight into her ex-boyfriend.

She was mentally counting the total number of steps from the Graduate Parking Lot entrance to the Student Center Annex, site of her first class, which had been intimidatingly dubbed a “seminar”, when she saw him. This was supposed to be a new beginning, a fresh start, a personal renaissance. But there he was, unmistakable with his hipster goatee, round tortoiseshell glasses, and hair just a little too long.

The thought, he probably needs to get new jacket photos done, spiked her brain simultaneously with a shot of triple-espresso-strength adrenaline straight from her gut to her heart. Both sent her scrambling behind a magnolia tree as he approached on the sidewalk. Luckily he was looking at his phone, so maybe he hadn’t seen her. Although his average-at-best appearance hadn’t changed much, he exuded his customary attitude of I’m a bestselling author, and I will do what I want.

Karen wondered if he’d forgiven her for telling him she had a surprise for him for his thirty-fifth birthday and moving out while he was away for the afternoon at a writing retreat. Probably not. He’d certainly been surprised, though.

“Hello, Karen.”

She looked up from her phone, which she’d been studying with all the logic of a cat who doesn’t think you can see it if it can’t see you. “Oh hi, Marius.” She tried to pull her lips into the ice-queen smile she’d practiced for just such an occasion, but all she could manage was convenience-store-slushie duchess.

“Lovely day here in the mountains, isn’t it?” He grinned like he’d just caught her sneaking buttercream icing out of the fridge—that had only happened a few times, and she’d justified it as a better coping mechanism than alcohol—and she leaned against the tree to preempt her spirit’s fetal-position reaction to his inevitable insult.

“Well,” he continued with that huge gotcha grin, “I was just visiting my good friend and former editor Sue Ellen Forrester-Schmidt. Maybe you’ve heard of her? She started the new MFA program in genre literature here. I just wanted to wish her luck on her first day.”

Karen reacquainted her upper molars with her lower ones so her mouth wouldn’t fall open. Of all the rotten, stinking luck!

“Yes,” he continued with a smug smirk, “my agent, Artie—you remember Artie, right?—introduced me to her at a party last year, and we hit it off. I heard she came here when Southern Lyon Books got bought and laid her off, so I was just checking in to see how she’s settling in.”

“How nice of you.” Karen sagged against the tree, its smooth bark solid under her arm and its steadiness supporting her, because life had become unfair once again.

“So what are you doing here? I wondered where you went.”

He wondered where she went, like she’d just left for a walk one day and hadn’t come back, not moved out of their little apartment and their life of almost a decade together.

“I decided to go back to school.” She tried to access her inner ninja and feinted left, then tried to pass him on the right, but he blocked her. He always blocked her.

“What program?”

“It’s a master’s program.”

“In what?”

Karen straightened to her full five and a half feet, almost as tall as him—which had always driven him crazy—and said, “It’s none of your business, Marius.”

He stepped aside and held a hand out for her to pass him, which she did. He waited until she was almost ten feet away before calling after her, “Tell Sue Ellen I said hello. Oh, and Karen? Surprise!”

She clenched her fists. Of course he knew. He always did. So instead of walking into her first class full of confidence and hope, she just knew the professor would hate her.

It was hard to move forward when the past kept biting her in the ass and dragging her back.

The cool of the Student Center Annex welcomed Karen like a polite hug—come on in, honey, but let’s not get too close. She checked the schedule and found the room. Thankfully, the professor hadn’t arrived yet, so she had time to compose herself.

Eyes down, she slunk to the only empty desk in the circle of six and slid in. The seat snagged the back of her thigh, and she was sure she’d just gotten a huge splinter. The encounter with Marius had left her confidence shriveled at the bottom of her gut, like a tequila worm burned by the immersion in his intoxicating but deadly ego. The burn stayed with her, reddening her cheeks, and she barely noticed as her classmates’ glances brushed over her. Each felt weighted with judgment—too fat, too frizzy, too cowardly, imposter.

She almost ran a hand through her dark curls but remembered she should leave them alone or else they’d turn her into a frizz monster, which would make her look even lovelier on top of the sunburn she’d acquired when she moved in the previous weekend. She could almost feel the freckles blooming on her skin. Sophisticated writer, that’s me.

This morning just got better and better, and now she was going to have to sit through an hour lecture on the romance genre. Hell, she needed Romance 101—the life course, not the writing course. What did she know about romance? Would she have to bare her soul and write sex scenes for strangers? What if they laughed at her like Marius had?

“Face it, babe.” His words from earlier that year echoed in her mind. “You can try this writing thing, but you just don’t have what it takes.”

The skin at the back of Karen’s neck tightened, and she knew Doctor Forrester-Schmidt had walked in and probably checked for her first, after talking with Marius. Oh God, what did he tell her? How screwed am I?

Karen had liked Doctor Forrester-Schmidt well enough at the program interview. Now, when the professor came in, she looked at each of the students intently, but her face didn’t reveal whether Marius had mentioned Karen. Not even a blink when their eyes met. Even now, at the end of August, the former editor in chief for Southern Lyon Books wore her signature long black skirt and suit jacket but seemed unfazed by the heat.

Is the woman even human?

“Welcome, class,” she said and surveyed them with a catlike half smile. “I’m glad to see the inaugural class for the genre literature program has such a range of backgrounds and ages. Let’s go around and introduce ourselves, shall we?”

Karen’s heart gave a little squeeze when Forrester-Schmidt’s cold, gray eyes passed over her, but the professor’s javelin gaze speared the guy next to Karen. She hadn’t paid much attention to him, aside from noting he doodled spaceships in the margins of his yellow pad. His shaggy, light-brown hair hung in his hazel eyes and made hers itch by looking at them, but he had sweet dimples and nice-looking lips. The vintage men’s shirt he wore showed off his biceps and the breadth of his chest nicely, and Karen wished she’d at least said hi when she sat.

“Why don’t you get us started, Seth?” the professor asked.

The young man next to Karen cleared his throat. “I’m a programmer who wants to put his computer knowledge to good use by writing and editing science fiction.”

“And does he always speak in the third person?”

“Um, no,” he mumbled, “I was just trying to be grammatically correct.”

“And although you succeeded grammatically, you failed stylistically. Karen, tell us about you, but please don’t use the royal I.”

Karen felt for the poor guy. Marius had liked catching her out like that, especially when she tried hard to impress someone. With an apologetic glance his way, she said, “Hi, I’m Karen. I most recently lived in Atlanta, but I grew up in Birmingham and went to school in Arkansas. I was a front-office manager for a medical practice, but I couldn’t take the politics and left to pursue my first love of writing. I was actually just there to support my writing habit.”

She waited for the chuckle, which didn’t come. Now Seth sent her a sympathetic glance.

She shifted in her seat and straightened. She didn’t need another guy’s pity, not today. “And, um, I’m not sure where I want to specialize. I’m just open to learning new things right now.”

“Thank you.” The professor looked around the room. “If you’re already tied to a specific genre, then you will be miserable during parts of this program because we expose you to all of them. Whether you go on to be a published author or have other plans for joining the publishing industry, the best thing we can do for you is give you an idea of what genre fiction has to offer. Who knows?” She smiled at Karen. “You might find something you didn’t realize you love right under your nose. You never know until you try.”

The knot of tension loosened in her chest, but then the panic returned when she wondered if Forrester-Schmidt meant she, the professor, had feelings for Marius.

Oh God, oh God.

Karen’s mind bounced the possibilities around, and she missed the other four class members’ introductions, aside from snippets.

“Now,” Doctor Forrester-Schmidt said and handed out the syllabus, “this is the first part of the program: Romance. This genre sells thousands of new titles per year, making it the most popular fiction category. We’ll also cover related genres like chick lit and women’s fiction, which are fair game for your semester projects. And while these areas seem to be the stronghold of women, men’s voices are also needed.” She raised an eyebrow at one of the other students, a redheaded guy who had rolled his eyes. “Even those who were raised in semirural Georgia and like to wear all black on their first day in school.”

The guy blushed like a redhead.

“While we will be reading plenty of excerpts, as well as writing a novella, your first assignment is to go to the bookstore and pick out what you think is a ‘typical’ romance novel.”

Karen flipped through the syllabus as the professor discussed what the “typical” romance novel might be. She would only consider buying one author for this assignment—Delilah Phillips. She wrote lighthearted contemporary and had been Karen’s savior during her darkest times with Marius.

“Ms. Hardeman?”

She looked up.

“If you will please rejoin us on this plane of existence. You may make your travels during speculative fiction, but writing romance, like love itself, requires your full presence and attention.”

This time the heat in Karen’s face wasn’t sunburn. “Sorry.”

Doctor Forrester-Schmidt towered over Karen’s desk and looked at the page she’d been reading. “Ah yes, our semester project. As an added bonus, I’ve booked one of my former authors to come into the class to speak toward the end of the semester. The student who has written the best project will go to dinner with this author and myself.” She looked around. “It’s someone who writes in the genre, but who has a more, shall we say, modern slant on it. The student with the best project, which will be judged by me and this author, will be able to spend an entire evening with…” she paused, “…Delilah Phillips.”

If it were possible to be simultaneously rooted to the ground and buoyant with joy, that was how Karen felt. She almost blurted out Delilah was her favorite author, but she didn’t want to seem an eager beaver trying to tip the odds in her favor.

She did a better job of looking like she paid attention during the second half of class, but her mind wandered to Ms. Phillips’s characters. She couldn’t wait to ask questions—like how did she come up with her heroines? Were they based on her life? What about the heroes? How did she come up with such flawed but utterly loveable men?

And did she have any advice on how Karen could find one for herself?

Thanks for stopping by! If you'd like to get first peek at the cover, blurb, and excerpt from my upcoming steampunk novel, please sign up for my monthly(ish) newsletter. I'll also talk about the best devices for reading at night to minimize impact on sleep and my current favorite summer wine.

Character on the Couch: Cold fingers...warm heart?

Just in time for Halloween, a young man in the funeral industry named Declan came to see me and spend some time on my couch. Actually, his author, fabulous fellow GRW member Sally Kilpatrick sent me the following quandary:

Character name: Declan Anderson

Age: 31

Gender: male

Cultural or historical context :

Dec's family runs a funeral home. He's not overly enthused about the business, but he did make a promise to his now deceased father that he would keep it in the family. He lives in a small southern town where he's called "Cold Fingers" behind his back and definitely kept at a distance. His younger brother, who's more outgoing, doesn't seem to have the same trouble, but his brother is five years younger. The “Cold Fingers” stems from his first date on a winter's night and a really mean girl he should've never gone out with in the first place.

Brief description and relevant history: 

He's over 6 foot tall, dark and handsome (of course!) but he's gone a little soft around the middle. His mother committed suicide when he was just 7. His father passed away when he was 14. He and his stepmother are just now becoming close--something new in her life is making her a little softer around the edges, but he doesn’t know what it is. He has vowed not to marry as long as he's a part of the funeral industry because he doesn't want his mother's particular brand of history repeating itself. Of course, that was before leggy actress Presley showed up. He's a bit taken with her.

His mother suffered from postpartum depression. That coupled with one traumatic event in particular caused her to go off the deep end. I know she was kept at a polite distance and had to deal with being snubbed by other ladies in town. Once the ladies from her church wouldn't let her bring a dish to the potluck because it would've come from that kitchen.

Oh, and he's almost 10 years older than my heroine.

Where you're stuck, or why your character needs a psychologist: 

His conflict doesn't feel really actualized. Maybe there's something about his past that I'm missing, a different reason he thinks he's not cut out for long term relationships?

My thoughts:

Sally, you've given me a lot to work with. Declan is a very interesting character, and the poor guy has had a lot to deal with.

Declan seems to have a huge responsible streak in his temperament, so it's likely he felt partially to blame for his mother's suicide – the ultimate female rejection at a tender age. Due to the nature of her death, it's possible that he wasn't given the kind of information he needed to make sense of it, so he made up his own explanation. Maybe he'd asked for a baby brother, and then he saw what happened. It's not surprising he has trouble with intimate relationships because he'll always feel like he's at a disadvantage, and he probably also felt like his lack of social support and nicknames were his fault. Kids who lose both parents need a lot of support from other adults, and he just didn't get it, probably because of the community alienating him due to the family business, and later because of the cold stepmother.

He's blaming his desire not to marry on the history with his mother, but it's also fear on his part to admit he wants something different. I would guess there's some resentment that he doesn't feel like he can admit to himself or anyone else over being emotionally blackmailed into taking over the family's funeral home business. Again, there's that responsible streak, but also the inability to separate himself, either physically or in his mind, from the family business and all the baggage that comes with it. He's probably never allowed himself to think about what he truly wants because he's afraid it will be taken away suddenly and tragically like his mother was, or it's going to conflict with living up to his promise to his father.

For example, with regard to Presley, perhaps he feels drawn to her because of her liveliness and her courage to pursue her dreams. She is a splash of color in his world of grays and blacks, a blast of rock music that captures attention rather than plays soothingly in the background so it won't disturb anyone. She might be the chance for the teenage rebellion he never got to have but desperately needed to come to a full sense of selfhood that will allow him to finally grow up. He might feel like he can't bring her into his world because he can't figure out how to keep it from poisoning her and killing her like it did his mother, and he's not going to be responsible for that again. But he can't leave that world because of what he promised his father. That second part may be what you feel like you're missing, and finding out that she has her own problems and insecurities will be huge for him because maybe he can then start admitting his own.

You've set up a huge and fascinating conflict for your hero, and I hope I get to read the finished product.

Resources:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3569022/ (study by the Royal Society of Medicine)

http://www.pcavt.org/assets/files/Articles/'s%20Development.pdf (effects on children at different ages)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/18/when-a-parent-commits-suicide-a-psychiatrist-s-advice.html (article on effects of parental suicide on kids)

http://www.parentalsuicidesurvivors.org/PSS-Articles/2009-05-25-ParentalSuicideSurvivors-HealingFromShame.pdf

Do you have a character you'd like some psychological help with? Please email me at: 

I'll send you the questions to answer, and we can go from there!

Random discovery:  There's a Museum of Funeral Customs in Springfield, Illinois. That's where the above picture was taken. I kind of want to go, but I bet my husband would be freaked out.

Photo credit:  By Robert Lawton (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Reminder:  my first novel The Mountain's Shadow is now available in all ebook formats. For an excerpt or to order the book directly from the publisher, click here. The book is also available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other ebook retailers.