Thank you Sierra for your recent review on Amazon:

Great chills and wonderful characters! May 16, 2012 By Sierra Donovan Format:Paperback Roberta Smith offers a wonderful paranormal thriller filled with realistic characters -- most of them likable, and a few you'll love to hate. Mickey McCoy is a savvy, sixty-something psychic who's on the trail of an evil portrait that has the power to kill. Along the way, he encounters the host of a ghost-hunting reality TV show with a sweet wife who, by her own admission, doesn't have "a psychic bone in my body." At least one of the portrait's victims may actually deserve what he gets ... but it's Mickey's beloved wife who may be in the most danger. Smith's light, deft prose makes this a real page-turner, with terrific atmosphere, snappy dialog and just the right amount of humor. A pleasure to read! | 

I love the show Mad Men.  The daughter Sally is representative of my generation.  I would have been her same age in the year the story takes place.

In the episode last night, I didn't quite buy one of the storylines.  Betty tells Sally that Don was married before and to ask Megan about it.  Sally comes unglued over the fact that  "she was lied to"; Megan didn't tell her about her dad's first marriage. 
 
When I was a teen in the 60s, I found out that my dad had been married and divorced. His marriage to my mom was his second marriage.  The way I found out? I discovered a picture of his first wife in a box of old photos.  I asked my mom who the lady was and she told me.  I was shocked, but I wasn't mad that I'd never been told.  I wanted to know why I'd never been told and was given a perfectly reasonable explanation.  I thought it was kind of neat for some reason. It made my dad more interesting.

Okay, I'm not Sally. But I just didn't fully buy her reaction.  I'm just saying . . . 

A friend of mine writes Historical Fiction books.  A knowledgeable mentor of hers taught that villians need to have something "good" about them.  In other words, don't make villians one dimensional.  An example given was, show the bad guy liking animals.  This would be his or her redeeming quality.  Consequently, the villian in her latest book keeps having "soft" thoughts about the bad that he is doing.

I understand the concept. But in thinking about it, I don't agree that the villian has to have something good in his character.  Sometimes the bad guy can be all bad, but have fascinating traits that intrigue us.  I can't really think of a redeeming quality for Hannibal in Silence of the Lambs except for the fact that he doesn't want to kill Clarice.  He's a good villian because he's complex and strange. Not because he has goodness down deep.
 

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