Sophlyn

Sophlyn, from my novel-in-progress, The Sum of Our Deeds.

Sophlyn embodies the challenges of becoming a young woman, trying to find her place in the world among endless possibilities. Pulled in one direction by the burdens of expectation, and the other by fickle desire.

She's tricky to write, because her outward behaviour can easily come across as self-possessed, even cruel. While that is sometimes arguably the case, it's important to me that her complexities and inner-conflicts shine through.

It's one of my strongest beliefs that most people are inherently good, and even when we do bad things, it's usually the result of doing the best we could at the time (after all--how often in your life have *you* ever deliberately made the *wrong* choice?). It's an important theme in my novel, and even when characters do undeniably bad things, I want the aching humanity behind their actions to be heard.