How Psychology Accidentally Turned Into a Novel
I didn’t set out to become a fiction writer by any means.
I set out to become someone who overanalyzes human behavior for a living. The writing part just… happened.
My interest in psychology probably started the same way a lot of bad habits do: movies and shows that were ambitious choices for a developing brain (e.g., Dead Ringers, Jacob’s Ladder, Primal Fear, The Silence of the Lambs). While other people focused on how disturbing they were, I got stuck on the why.
Why did they do that? Why did it make sense to them? Why is this considered right, but that isn’t?
I was never satisfied with responses like “Just have faith” or “You just have to believe.” Not because I wanted to be difficult, but because those answers felt like a full stop when I still had questions. Psychology gave me permission to stay curious—to accept that human behavior is subjective, messy, and often deeply self-justified.
By the time I studied psychology full-time in college, it felt less like choosing a career and more like finally putting structure around something I’d already been doing—finding better ways to approach behavior, new perspectives, and actual support for the claims psychologists make.
That fascination followed me into real life, where I spent years working as an ER scribe and in public mental health in East Texas. If you really want to understand people, watch them on the worst day of their lives. You see fear, denial, anger, and grief—sometimes all at once, sometimes in the same sentence. You also learn pretty quickly that “normal” is flexible, and that everyone is telling themselves a story just to get through the day.
After gaining real-life experience, I realized I wanted to do more than just observe. I wanted the ability to contribute—whether that meant practice, research, or simply understanding people better. I’ve always had a soft spot for the misunderstood and the marginalized. The ones who are easy to judge and harder to actually understand.
So I went back for my master’s degree.
At the time, I was a single mom, which made that… ambitious, to put it mildly. (More ambitious than my usual perfectionist, people-pleasing self. Please be kind. I’m still in therapy.) It was exhausting, fun, and powered mostly by caffeine and my cohort. But education felt like a long-term investment, even when it was brutal in the short-term.
My research focused on social psychology—specifically, how student-parents are perceived in academic settings. The assumptions people make. The quiet judgments about who’s “us” and who’s “them.” That work eventually became a very large thesis, which now lives in the Stephen F. Austin State University archives in Nacogdoches, Texas.
It’s the only other piece of writing I’m just as proud of as my book, if not slightly more.
Not because it was perfect—but because it asked questions I genuinely cared about and didn’t try to sugarcoat the answers.
Somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, I also met my wife, Rebekah (If my characters didn’t already make this obvious, consider this a formal clarification of my place in the LGBTQIA+ community).
Yes, we were in the same graduate program.
Yes, we had the same thesis advisor (shoutout to Dr. Lauren Brewer).
Yes, this means we bonded over shared stress and mutual academic suffering.
Very romantic. I know.
But in all seriousness, she’s been my biggest supporter from the beginning—and the one who finally told me I should try publishing my “little side project.”
She’s obviously biased. But she also knows me well enough make me confident in putting my creative writing out there.
So, that’s how my first creative writing project came to be—not as a departure from academic psychology, but as an extension of it.
Fiction gave me something academia never quite could: the ability to live inside the question. To follow characters without diagnosing them (completely). To let desire, power, fear, and rationalization unfold without needing a conclusion or a treatment plan.
I didn’t stop being a psychology fanatic when I started writing for fun. I just traded case studies for characters. And, honestly, they’re much worse patients.
I keep telling myself I’ll make these posts shorter. But if you made it this far into my rambling, you’re a real one.
Much love,
AMV
