I have a lot of initials after my name…18 years of study on top of what I did at school. And not one of the degrees is in English or Literature. So what the hell am I doing writing novels?

There is a myth that anyone can write a novel…but the truth is that not anyone can write a good novel/ one that people want to read. And if you want a mainstream publisher you have to be able to put a plot and a sentence together, hold people’s interest and (these days) have a point of difference. One of my selling points was the authenticity thirty years of work in psychiatry gave me. I’ll get to that in a moment.

First though, psychiatry (and being a Professor) taught me a bout hard work…10,000 hours to be good at anything (or 18 years to get to the top! This included some writing practice—over 100 journal articles and 100,000 word thesis). I did several writing courses, and then rolled up my sleeves—I have three full length unpublished manuscripts, three novels and seven novellas and a half a dozen short stories published under a pseudonym—my 10,000 hours before I got my first mainstream thriller published. The people that put that sort of effort in, tend to find a publisher. Doesn’t of course mean they will live off their earnings of course!

In addition, my work gave me something I was passionate writing about. One of my reviewers said “she makes unlikeable characters sympathetic” which I was thrilled to read. I care about my patients—and I work hard to understand why they are where they are and how they got there. Much of the sensationalist headlines about infanticide (broadly the basis for Medea’s Curse) are about vilifying the perpetrator. While psychopaths exist, these aren’t the women I see and manage. I leave these to the more superficial crime books about serial killers—there are more in books than in reality! As Helen Garner wrote about her (nonfiction) book House of Grief—if he (the father who killed his three sons) was a monster, I wouldn’t be interested in writing about it.

Being a psychiatrist means I have a number of frameworks for understanding people—and thirty years of hearing stories in ways that you never do as a friend. Being a psychiatrist gives me an enormously privileged position—I am trusted with deep fears and secrets that no one else will ever be told. Of course, I can’t tell them either—but it gives me inspiration for characters and events, and there are common themes from my work which can be pulled out; narcissistic love, fears of rejection and abandonment, the scars of child abuse that are carried throughout some people’s lives.

There is a fascination with psychiatry and the unconscious—this is what I can help open up for the reader. This comes through the depth of characters (including not just the villains but with my heroine, Natalie King who has bipolar disorder), their dilemmas, but also through showing some of our secrets. In Dangerous to Know I use some of the questions that help get through the layers of our memories, false beliefs and protective facades to understanding the true nature of the impact our childhood had on us. One of my girlfriends found she had to stop reading while she asked herself the same questions…and it opened a Pandora’s box, so be warned! She did get back to the book and enjoyed it…

Understanding fear also helps in thriller writing…because as we are tucked up by the fire reading…thriller readers want to be scared, knowing though that the hero will prevail…some writers of course try to get you into identifying with a character they later kill…but those seasoned readers will pick that and move with the survivor. Readers also like to have something to work out—and nothing is as intricate and complex than the human mind. What better driver for a thriller than a stalker (Medea’s Curse), where the protagonist knows about motives, and what it means when the stalking escalates? Or the extent a fragile narcissist might go to is crossed (Dangerous to Know); or the depth of parental love…and need to own their child/ retaliate if their own childhoods scarred them (This I Would Kill For)? All of these put into question mad versus bad…and these are forensic assessments I do every week.

My books are meant to be page turners… but if you want to look beneath the surface, deeper, there are themes here that are part of our everyday life, things we all might struggle with in certain circumstances. And that is the dilemma I throw you into…

Anne Buist is the author of Medea’s Curse and Dangerous to Know (Text publishing Australia, Legend Press UK). This I Would Kill For due out later this year.