Deborah Woehr

Every story begins with an idea, big or small. Mine has always begun with a mental image. I can actually see my character inside my mind, either having a great time or going through something excruciating. Since I’m a horror writer, I prefer the latter.

So far in my “career”, I’ve written two novels, both unpublished and a short story involving a little girl who was dealing with an abusive step father. The short story was published by a mag called Welcome to Nod, which is now defunct.

I’m not exactly sure how I came up with the idea for the first novel. I just remember lying in bed, spinning stories inside my head. I’ve always spun stories inside my head, involving real or imaginary people. At any rate, one day, I decided to write down what was going on inside my head.

The first paragraph was so awful that I still remember it to this day. It involved the daughter of a police chief getting abducted from her apartment by a serial killer, who left a black rose on her stripped mattress. The trademark was original, but the storyline was in great danger of becoming a cookie cutter copy of the dozens of books I’ve read. So, I changed the killer’s target to a successful mother of two.

It took me about nine months to pound out Black Roses, researching serial killers plus the locale of my story. Once I finished the manuscript, I gave it to my grandmother and sister to read. They raved about the story and urged me to publish it.

But once I started reading what I’d written, I hated the story. The characters were too “perfect”, and thus predictable. I made the first-time writer’s mistake of using too many adverbs. Actually, I made many first-time writer mistakes.

I shelved the manuscript for several reasons, the main one being that I was tired of serial killers. The market is oversaturated with the serial killer genre. So, I decided that this would be my practice novel.

Something amusing happened to me about five years after I shelved that manuscript. I was looking through the paperback bestsellers and discovered a book with a very similar plot idea. Instead of a successful-married with children-businesswoman, the target was housewives. I should have bought the book and taken it home to compare, but I just smiled and moved on.

Just recently, a family friend asked be about Black Roses. When I told her that I had shelved it, she said, “No! Get it out and publish it!”

So, now I’m thinking about that story and have even set up a blog in WordPress. I won’t start on it until I finish my other stories. But the ideas are beginning to stir.