A Goodreads user
A Goodreads user asked Susan Mallery:

I love your characters personalities, well, most of them lol. Do you think of them somewhat fully formed or do you have to flesh them out? Or do you maybe do a little fantasy matchmaking using friends & family?

Susan Mallery Hi, Debbie. Sometimes characters come to me fully formed but not often. Usually I need to do some character work to truly bring them to life. What happens most often is that one aspect of the character will come to me, and it's almost always emotion-based. For example, Larissa of UNTIL WE TOUCH got her start because a scene came to me - her mom telling her boss to fire Larissa because Larissa was in love with him, and mom wants her to fall in love with someone who will marry her and give her babies. That scene ended up being the first scene in the book. Even though Larissa isn't in it, that scene told me a lot about her - that she had a crush on her boss, that she was raised in a loving family... And then I needed to sit down and figure out the rest.
Susan Mallery
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