Deborah Woehr

I was sitting at my kitchen table when I found myself invisioning a woman standing on an island in the middle of Hell, searching for the soul of her dead husband. Black Roses was still a chapter or two away from being finished, but I had to jot this idea down in my notebook. I finished Black Roses, and then set to work on my new novel.

I had the heroine for my second novel, which I titled Hell’s Corner. I named her Amanda Thorne and her husband, Joel. The husband had been amped on crank and booze when he decided to drive, which resulted in him killing someone. An argument between Joel and her father over a new Camaro was the turning point where he decided to kill himself. The story begins with her trying to have a good time on a date two years later.

I drew up my antagonist, Malcolm Spechter, who was supposed to brainwash the citizens of Hell’s Corner into his church of black magic. Even though I’d bought books on the dark arts, I have no experience with practicing them. Therefore, I didn’t feel like I could write convincingly about the subject.

Then there were the problems with the characters. This time, there were too many of them. By the time Amanda arrived, I think I already had four different points of view. My plot was fragmenting.

Worse, my story bored the hell out of the people I let read it, one of them a literary agent I’d had an appointment with at a writer’s conference. He said that it “lacked grit.” I took my manuscript home, read it, and started from scratch.

I’ll give you the shorthand version. The character of Malcolm Spechter was removed, and the other characters put in the background where they belonged. I nixed the black magic theme as well as the title. My focused turned to Amanda.