Deborah Woehr

I put weeks of thought into the backstory of Prosperity because I wanted to know why it was haunted by thirty-some ghosts, two of which are very angry and vengeful. Originally, I had only one ghost, who was lynched 80 years ago for a crime he didn’t commit.

Then, as I was delving more and more into the character of Bud Nettleton (a creepy older guy who is the town outcast), I realized that he had the information that Amanda and Travis need very badly in order to free themselves from the hauntings. His mother, Myra, had an obsession with the minister of the town during that time. Bud will tell us about this and the lynching via her diary and scrapbooks, which he has kept after her death. I’m not sure yet whether or not he will willingly give this information to Amanda, as he had refused to help her in the beginning of the story when she was stranded.

In the attempt to understand him and the ghosts better, I wrote God’s Last Twilight. Another reason I started writing this story was for the NaNoWri (National Novel Writer’s Month) contest, where you have to write 50,000 words by midnight of November 30th. The contest began on Nov. 1st. I never made the deadline, but I finished the rough draft in March.

Now that I have a clearer vision of my backstory, I’m finding it easier to write Prosperity.