I have submitted the final two chapters of "Unexpected Consequences." Thanks to all who sent comments. The majority were positive but I welcome all comments because I can learn from criticism as well as from praise.
One of the most interesting aspects to me is the way that readers react to the characters in a story (not only my own stories judging from comments I have read on other sites). The characters are what they are, the results of the writer's imagination.
I find my characters often develop in directions that I did not anticipate. Certainly plots often develop in unexpected directions, especially for longer stories. My characters are based on my perceptions of the people I have met and interacted with over the past 60+ years as well as the fiction I have read. Nevertheless, the characters are all fictional. One may decide whether they are good, bad or indifferent as portrayed, but they are not real. I often marvel at people who react to characters in print or film stories as if they were real people.
I am more concerned with whether I have portrayed believable characters than with my readers' moral judgements of them.