Jacqueline Simon Gunn's Blog

From award-winning author Jacqueline Simon Gunn comes the long-awaited third book in her Where You’ll Land series, a story about trauma, healing, love and discovering who we are by the choices we make.

I am excited to announce that Let Love Rule is now available for preorder, release day is May 19th. I know many of you have been waiting for this one. You can read the full synopsis on the book's page and please be sure to add it to your reading list. I appreciate your patience and support. I hope you enjoy it.

...a must-read for fans of emotive and realistic fiction which deals with overcoming personal demons in order to find happiness.
- Readers' Favorite

I’m excited to announce that the long-awaited spin-off for Forever and One Day will be available March 31st. You can grab it for $0.99 on pre-order now.

This book was difficult to write. Readers had asked for more of the characters from Forever and One Day and I wanted to continue their story. But I didn’t want to fabricate drama just to be able to create a compelling narrative. So, I decided to write a spin-off rather than a sequel. I don’t want to give anything away. But I can say that readers of Forever and One Day will be thrilled to see the continuation of the beloved characters’ story in the last third of Before the Footprints Fade. It also does read as a stand-alone.

If you follow my writing, you know that I spend a lot of time on the psychology and inner world of my characters. As a psychologist, I have seen and heard so many stories. In real life, we often make assumptions, judge actions without understanding. Our view of things is, in some ways, limited by what we already think.

We must dismantle the frame in order to see the full picture.

For psychotherapy to be effective, we learn to suspend our own assumptions, to be completely open, so the patient’s narrative can be heard without prejudice. I spend a lot of time on my characters’ motivations, because I want to show how they became who they are and why they do what they do.

Like Forever and One Day, Before the Footprints Fade, is first a love story, but it also has deeper themes, delving into how we love, how our memories change with life experience, nostalgia, and how the path not taken creates a ripple effect on the lives of those close to us.

I began the character development, as I usually do, with questions. For Amanda, I wanted to explore what it was like to be afraid of the very thing you most desired.

Did you ever want something as much as you didn’t want it?

I wanted to reveal the inner conflict and turmoil of pushing people away when we need them, when we want them. I wanted to show how our personal narratives cloud our perception, and often result in being unable to see someone else’s intentions, clearly.

For Harry, I wanted to explore the way expectations and unlived potentials of our loved ones can become part of our own struggles and journeys. It’s something that’s often not obvious, but has a profound impact. We see it all time when working with people in psychotherapy.

How are we influenced by the roads not taken?

In each of us and all of the people we know there are an infinite number of unlived lives, each choice opens some doors and closes others. I wanted to show how this translates intergenerationally. Because sometimes when people come for help, the layers of which their distress and emotions emerge begins with the unprocessed feelings of the generation before.

I try my best to embed philosophical and psychological explorations into a story that still reads like genre fiction, because I do not believe psychology or philosophy needs to be written in esoteric, jargon-ridden language. If we are studying human nature then we should all be privy to information that helps us understand ourselves, understand others, and understand life in a way that’s helpful. I hope that I have achieved the goal of writing a compelling story while also offering a window to think more deeply about life for those who want the opportunity.

I don’t want to give any of the story away. I promise, it’s filled with drama and emotion. At the end of the book, in a note to my readers, I do go into the inspiration behind the characters a little bit more. If you have questions, please always feel free to write to me. I love hearing from my readers. And thank you for your interest in my work.

Love’s Remains, book 2 in the Where You‘ll Land series, is now available. If you follow my writing, you know that all of my books have underlying psychological themes. When I switched from non-fiction to fiction, part of my intent was to expand and deepen the exploration of psychology through my characters as well as offer readers the opportunity to see how psychological theory looks in action, the way we see it as psychotherapists, the way that we come to understand people through observation. I wanted to put words to motivations that people have often asked me about. The ‘whys’ behind human behavior.

When I began my studies in psychology many years ago, it was psychoanalytic theory that first interested me. The rich complexity of the dynamics within us and between us. What makes people act and do what they do, nothing was (and still is) more fascinating to me. Soon after that I discovered existentialism, which I love just as much. What a rich exploration and examination of the things in life that both break us and make us, all of the universal experiences that define the essence of human nature.

Switching to fiction allowed me to create characters and set a scene, hopefully making it real enough and interesting enough that it would grip readers who wanted a good story, while also affording those who wanted the opportunity for deeper contemplation to have a window. That is, I wanted to offer readers almost what you’d get in early psychotherapy sessions: questions that lead to thinking about yourself, your circumstances, and others in a way that might provide insight and growth. I also wanted to offer those outside of the field a deeper understanding of why we do what we do while also giving a story that was compelling, emotional and real.

True growth and understanding has to come from within the individual. As you will read in Love’s Remains personal history, personality and social context all influence our emotions, our actions, our decisions. Therefore, answers about life and relationships are different for everyone. That’s why instead of answering in therapy, we learn to ask in a very precise manner. This way, we offer the person the opportunity to find what I believe we all can. Our own way. Our own potential for better decisions, more authentic living. Our personal resilience.

The path to growth comes not from answers but from asking questions, helping people look at their lives a little differently. As the character of Dr. Wright tells his students in the book: “Create curiosity.” Well, in my experience this is the essence of psychotherapy and/or for any type of change for anyone: asking the right questions.

It is for this reason that I created this series with characters in a psychology program. I mean, write what you know, they say and so I did; but I also wanted introspective characters, each of whom would offer the opportunity – to those readers who wanted it – to learn something about themselves through their story arcs, through their questions. I wanted to give readers the opportunity to think deeper about love, if they wanted to. And for those who didn’t, I wanted to give lots of drama and entanglements. I hope I’ve succeeded.

Love’s Remains is book 2 in the Where You’ll Land series. These characters’ journeys will continue; all the books will explore various aspects of love and relationships. I already have ideas for the next book in the series. If you have a question, please write to me. I just may place it into one of the character story arcs.

I’m working on two others books right now. One is the spin-off from Forever and One Day, Before the Footprints Fade. The story is complex and is taking a much longer time than I had expected, but my hope is to have it out early next year. The other book is a story written from my cat’s point of view. Trying something different. Life through his eyes. It’s turning out to be really interesting writing. It’s witty, but also lightly philosophical as he observes humans in action and how complicated we make our lives. I think it’s going to be a bit of tearjerker, heartwarming and fun.

I post about my books as I’m writing them, teasers and excerpts as well as a little about the journey of writing on my Instagram and Facebook pages. If you’re interested in following the progress of the books, you’ll find daily posts there. I love connecting with my readers!

Thank you again for your interest in my work.

"She kept making the same mistake over and over, until she realized that if she wanted a different ending she needed to have a different beginning."

If you follow my writing, you know that I am always looking to understand more about the human experience through my characters’ journeys.

I usually write from multiple points of view, because I’m very interested in the way each character’s decisions and motivations influence the others.

In Where You’ll Land, I explored the interrelationships between people; how our choices affect not only us, but those around us, and then how those choices affect their lives and so on. I also wanted to show how we come together and break apart, then come together and break apart again, revealing how even painful relationships may be part of a larger growth process.

As you’ll read in the story, the tendency for us to repeat what we are most afraid of is something that seems uncanny, but is a dynamic that we all encounter. We all have narratives that shape our sense of self, our purpose, our understanding of who we are in the world with others. We interact within our world anticipating confirmation of these narratives and sometimes they are painful and false; for example, “I am not loveable,” may be one. Although incorrect (because we all deserve love), confirming this narrative becomes an unconscious quest that we often recreate over and over, until we realize what we’re doing and can change the emotions and concomitant false narrative. Someone with that mindset will push people away to confirm that they aren’t loveable. I tried to show how insidiously this happens; meaning, it happens without us even realizing it and even when the beginning seems different, we often find ourselves at the same end.

I don’t think psychology should be exclusive to those of us who study it and are familiar with the theories and jargon. My hope is that this book will not only be entertaining, but also provide some deeper understanding of relationships and the various dimensions and complexities that arise as we come together, for better or worse.

Where You’ll Land is a standalone psychological romance. It is the first in a series of standalones. Subsequent books will continue with these characters’ stories and added new ones, all with the intention of exploring various dynamics of love and relationships.

Thank you for reading.

Somewhere buried deep in my heart is a longing for you, for us, for all that has remained unfinished. I only wish that my heart understood the way my mind does, that some questions can never be answered, that some words need to remain unsaid, that some of our most significant relationships need to be severed. You are an echo in everything I touch, in all that I feel, in everything I do. The place where our path’s crossed is woven through my heart and I don’t know if it’s holding me together or ripping me apart.
And then there’s the whisper I hear at night when everything is dark and the world is silent: Will we meet again?

Are there words you never said, because you didn't realize what they were until it was too late?
Will We Meet Again is one of two nostalgia columns in the book I'm working on. The other is, I Just Thought You Should Know.
I'm asking followers/readers to contribute. If you have something to share with someone from your past, I'd love to read it for consideration in one of my protagonist's columns. It's a love story with psychological themes. A spin-off from, Forever and One Day. I will run all contributions through my blog. Please comment below or message me through my Facebook page, Jacqueline Simon Gunn, if you're interested. Thank you!

Here's a teaser from, Forever and One Day, available February 6th.

“Have you thought of me at all? Was there ever a time when you wondered ‘what if’? I have been driving myself nuts thinking what if.”

“There was never a ‘what if’ for me. You slept with my best friend. I’m not upset about it anymore, but it’s the reality. I did think about you. I missed you, but I wouldn’t let myself feel it, not deeply, at least. The pain. When it came on, I pushed it aside. Then ten years passed. And I find out you married her. Married. If there was ever a ‘what if,’ it was taken away when I found out that you were married.” She put her hand over her mouth. That last sentence spilled out. She didn’t even know that she thought it until it slipped past her lips. Would there have been a second chance if he hadn’t married Petal?

And for the first time, she admitted to herself, perhaps, yes.

Now she looked at him and felt the what if washing over her. The desire to touch him, to remember how his lips felt kissing her mouth, her skin, her hair, felt irresistible. She gulped.

He stared into her eyes and she felt a kiss coming. Their faces hovered in an awkward dance as their mouths drew closer. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her lips. My gosh, she shivered, leaned in, then quickly pulled back. She broke the eye contact. Trying to shake the sensation, she gulped down some wine. “Justin. We can’t.”

“I know.” He responded. But she could see the longing in his eyes. And the love, she could feel it, enveloping, like she was immersed in a deep sea surrounded by Justin’s feelings, by their feelings. She ached for him to touch her. As much as her words said we can’t, and as much as she was saying no in her head, her heart was saying please kiss me.

Please just grab me and kiss me before I can say no.

My forthcoming book, Forever and One Day, will be available in print on February 6th! The Kindle version will be $0.99 on pre-order for a week following the print release. Here is the synopsis. A long teaser will follow shortly.
Thank you!

Everyone has wondered “what if?” But how many get a chance to live it?

Seventeen years ago, Olivia Watson’s world was turned upside down when she discovered Justin, her high-school sweetheart turned fiancé, having sex with her best friend, Petal. Unable to muster up any forgiveness, she turns her back on him and every friend connected to that part of her life, leaving many questions about the details of the betrayal unanswered.

When Olivia receives an invitation for her twenty-year high school reunion, she decides that she’s been avoiding the past for too long. It’s time to go back and revisit that part of her life, her old friends, and the betrayal that created the wedge between them.

As soon as she and Justin lay eyes on each other at the reunion, they immediately sense the vibrant remains of their unbreakable connection. The spark between them never faded. However, Justin is now married to Petal and Olivia is involved with Adam, her handsome, best-selling-author boyfriend. But is healing old wounds enough for Olivia and Justin to move forward together, or will it help them make peace with the new lives they have chosen?

Each of the four main characters remain bound to their past by unresolved issues, demonstrating that sometimes we can’t find our future until we settle our past. But, most importantly, Olivia learns that forever isn’t time eternal; rather, forever is a place we share with the people we love the most — even when they’re gone.

When I think back to my experiences working in the criminal justice system as a psychotherapist and forensic evaluator, I am reminded of this quote by Carl Jung: “The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.”

As you may know, a basic tenet of psychotherapy is to listen empathically, which means that we suspend our own beliefs and feelings in order to hear and feel someone else’s experience. What I quickly realized when I sat in the room with murderers, rapists, armed robbers was that I had what I am going to call “an empathic conflict.”

Hearing atrocities committed toward other people – stories oft told with cold, detached gazes, flat voices and an absence of emotion, my first inclination was to feel empathy for their victims. But I was there to hear their stories. I was there to listen to them, to try to reach the few inmate-patients that I could.

Soon I learned that many of the inmate-patients I worked with were victims too. I heard awful stories, stories I wish I could erase from my mind. Histories of abuse and neglect: people being burned by their parents, people being raped by one parent while the other one watched, people being offered for sex in exchange for drugs.

Some didn’t have any history that would explain their criminality, but in situations where they were a victim turned perpetrator, I wondered: Who were they to me? Were they victims or were they perpetrators? My empathy swung back-and-forth between their victims and them. Sometimes I would be so angry at them – my own patients, while listening to the crimes they committed. I stopped doing clinical work in forensics because of this, but continued with my research.

I used my experience, both as a clinician and as a researcher, to write my Close Enough to Kill series. Each of the characters taught me something, and the stories weren’t always easy to write. Before writing the series, I had only written non-fiction. I had no idea how much fiction writing was like being actor. When I’m deeply engaged in my characters’ minds, I feel their feelings, all of them, like a roller-coaster – up and down, good and bad.

My newest release, Noah's Story, is a book told from the perspective of Noah Donovan, whose betrayal (in Circle of Betrayal – book 1) inspires the entire series. Writing Noah’s Story was painful, exhausting, disturbing, eye-opening. A few times I stared at the computer, my jaw hanging, wondering what the hell just went from my fingertips onto the screen. What really happened to Noah Donovan? Perhaps he wasn’t simply the cold, manipulative man I had thought. Perhaps Noah was also a victim.

Noah exploits women. As a woman, I felt furious with him. And yet, as the story went on, it became clear that he was the greatest victim. A few times I felt sick as the story of how he became who he was unfolded.

Being inside the head of someone while writing fiction is more intimate than psychotherapy; I am not listening empathically, I am (through the characters) telling the story. I become them. They tell their story through me. The experience of writing through Noah created an empathic conflict. One that was more intense than what I had experienced in a clinical setting. Fascinating and disturbing.

Another thought I had after finishing Noah’s Story was that I had met and even dated a few men like Noah Donovan. Maybe if I had written the book while I was still single, I would have recognized the inner conflict and saved myself some heartache.

Live (Write) and Learn.

“In each of us there is another whom we do not know.”
– Carl Jung

I am excited to announce that Circle of Truth, Close Enough to Kill series, book 3 is now available in both paperback and digital versions.

I searched the book for a satisfying teaser to share, not an easy endeavor. There are many twists in the plot and I didn’t want to spoil any of the suspense. Prerelease readers have called it “suspenseful and hard to put down.”

Here is an excerpt, giving a peek inside the mind of a murderer, a killer whose love turns to rage, causing an explosion of fierce and deadly passion. Who will be the next person, close enough to kill? You will soon find out.

She fondled the knife handle, her thumb moved up and
down. Oh, it felt good. It really did. She released a long abdominal
breath, closed her eyes and rubbed the knife from bottom to
top. Her eyes were hollow. She thought about the hours leading
up to Noah’s murder.

The pain. The pain.

Noah — love of her life, man of her dreams — the pain he caused her ate at her insides. She remembered. She had cried, hunched over, folded in half, broken, trampled, paralyzed. She lay on John’s couch, moved her thumb up and down the edge of the knife. She was almost in a trance as she thought back on
those devastating hours after she found out about his betrayal. Those hours that broke her forever.

She remembered feeling empty, like she didn’t exist anymore. His betrayal took her soul right out of her. Whoever she was before, the she that existed for him, that woman was no more. Instead she felt a void; a part of her had been ripped right out, and in its place was a rage like she had never felt before.

It had no words.

Everything became colorless.

She had played Evanescence’s song “My Immortality” over and over on her computer. Amy Lee’s voice bellowed the exquisite pain only someone whose heart had been crushed could ever comprehend. She sat, listened to the song, to the words. She tried to swallow her feelings. She tried to rationalize, to compartmentalize. Nothing would ease the pain and that wordless rage seethed.

He had always been the one. Always. She had given him all of her, everything she had. And he didn’t care. He took her for granted. He made her expendable.

She sang along with Amy Lee: "These wounds won’t seem to heal, this pain is just too real. There’s just too much that time cannot erase."

She tried to use Amy Lee’s words as her own, to help her integrate the betrayal and stop the simmering volcano that engulfed her. She sang at the top of her lungs. Tears flew out of her eyes. Her body sliced into itsy-bitsy pieces. Her open crevices filled with that inarticulate rage, a rage so deep it seeped through
every pour. It swallowed her. It became her.

She picked up a knife. Amy Lee’s voice still rang loudly in her apartment. She stopped hearing. She held that knife, rubbed the blade. She didn’t know why at first. She just fondled the edge with her thumb, over and over. It was then, while she massaged the blade that she knew what she had to do. She would Kill
Noah. (Capital K). There was no other way out. She had to do it. Nothing could stop her.

She thought back on that first moment when she plunged the knife into Noah’s chest, the way it felt when it penetrated his flesh and she saw inside of him. She looked at the tip of the knife she held presently and sat up on the couch. Noah had begged and
begged for his life. Even while she killed him, she still loved him.

Thank you all for your interest and support. I hope you enjoy reading the book, as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Two words which inevitably ruin any writer’s day: writer’s block.

Aye, yi, yi! I hate even writing them down.

Maybe you can’t get yourself to sit down and write, or you’ve made it to your computer only to stare at a blank screen, the white of the wordless page causes your eyes to ache. You close your eyes, rub them, hoping when you reopen them words will be on that blank screen. You hope for a miracle. Nothing.

The thoughts won’t come. You’re in a state of creative constipation. You pace, make a second pot of coffee, scream, throw something. Hopefully, something soft, like a pillow. You debate throwing your computer or notebook out the window. I knew someone once who actually did toss her laptop down two stories. Not recommended.

There are many things which can cause writer’s block:

- You’re not sure what you want to write about

- Your thoughts haven’t percolated long enough

- You’re distracted by other things (close down the Internet!)

- Perfectionism: thinking you don’t have a right to write unless it flows out smoothly and flawlessly

- Doubt and Fear

- Hearing your own voice, instead of your character’s

As a writer and a psychologist who works with a lot of artists, I have come to believe that doubt and fear underlie all the others. They are the fundamental culprits, robbing you of your creative space.

When we write ideas pour out of us, emotions surface and spill onto the pages. Feelings and thoughts we didn’t even know we had, stare back at us from those pages. We imagine what others will think about what we have written and suddenly, we become anxious. Our heart and mind are ripped open and if we want to publish, our deepest self will be on public display.

This is exposing; when we write we are vulnerable. Of course, this is terrifying. It’s hard enough to be exposed and vulnerable in an intimate relationship, never mind having your whole self out in the world, open to examination by others. Innumerable others. If your goal is to be a published author, or have a million blog followers, you are putting your heart and soul out there for countless strangers to read. This can paralyze people. It can cause an otherwise talented artist to be in a state of arrested creativity, which is both awful and painful.

Hence, my aforementioned friend who threw her laptop out the window.

This is why writing like no one is watching, pushing thoughts and self-judgments out of your head, is imperative. Easier said than done, I know.

But it is possible. When I was in graduate school I learned to work through doubt and fear because I had to. Papers had to be written, presentations had to be made. There was no negotiation. Write or fail, basically. So I wrote, sometimes long papers and often times I worked on multiple writing assignments, simultaneously. Writing is a big part of psychology graduate school programs. So the pressures of graduate school taught me to push through the doubt, and that I could. Of course, with a paper, or even my dissertation, the exposure was nothing like writing for a larger audience. But on a small scale, your work is judged and critiqued; academics can be a challenging group to satisfy.

So, sit down and write, right? Write a few sentences, a paragraph, write in a notebook or journal, just write. Do it for yourself, at first. No one ever has to see your crappy drafts. And they will be crappy. Write for a little while every day. But write every day. If you hear the doubt, push it aside. Pretend that you have to do it. Eventually, you will feel like you do.

Doubts can be sneaky.

And so...

There is another more insidious way that doubt creeps in and slows or halts writing, and that’s character voice. This applies to fiction writing. It’s something I have been thinking about, as I observe my own writing process, as well as, from talking through these blocks with others.

I write my fiction in the third person, and I shift perspectives offering multiple points of view. When I do this, I hear different voices. My posture changes, my facial expression changes, and the way I feel changes, based on which character’s head I am in.

I would go as far as to say that it’s based on who’s writing, because as the thoughts and feelings pour out, it doesn’t feel like it’s me. I have felt things I have never felt before. Associations pop into my head and I’m like, “Wow, where did that come from?”

When I finished writing the third book in my Close Enough to Kill trilogy and it was being edited, I started a new novel. All new characters. All together (in the three books of the series combined), I had written close to eleven hundred pages. I had spent a year and a half with my series characters. I knew them intimately. Sometimes I would toss and turn at night because I couldn’t quiet their voices.

So when I started this new book, the voices of the characters from my series were interfering with hearing clear voices for my new characters. Talking about having your head spin. Thing was, it affected my writing process. I was able to write, but it felt harder, forced. The flow felt stifled. Ugh!

I didn’t toss my computer, not to worry.

When I returned to my series for rewrites, it was like coming home after a long journey in an unfamiliar land. Ah! The voices were there. I didn’t even have to try and the words poured out effortlessly. It was hard to write as fast as my thoughts, even.

Since finishing the rewrites, I completed the first draft of a novella about Jacob Temple, the murder victim in the second book of my series, Circle of Trust. (I will be returning to the other novel after I’m done with a series of novellas). Although also written in the third person, it is almost exclusively from his perspective. I had to do that or I never would have been able to keep it novella length. So, my protagonist is a man. About two pages into the book, I heard his voice. A man’s voice. And then the whole story gushed out. Jacob Temple wrote his story through me.

So I started thinking about character voice and how it relates to writer’s block. When we suffer with doubts and fears, we have a voice in our head, our Doubt Voice. It is our own voice going through a litany of reservations, uncertainty, self-deprecation: Can I do this? Is it any good? This is total crap. Will anyone even want to read this? What will people say when they do? These are a few examples; the list of doubts is endless. The things we do to ourselves.

Our characters are trying, even screaming to be heard, but we aren’t able to listen because our own voice (our Doubt Voice) is in our way.

With many things sometimes our biggest obstacle is ourselves. Sometimes we have to get out of our own way. In this case, getting out of our own way also means getting out of our characters’ way. Step aside, and let their voices be heard. Because once you do this, the narrative will flow out onto the pages. The blank document or empty notebook will be filled with words.

Your words, their words.

Your story, their story.

Recognize the doubt, recognize the fear, and write anyway. There is no way around this, only through.