Deborah Woehr

My research site is now live. However, I’ll be playing around with the features until I learn how to use a wiki. If you’d like to find out exactly what this site is going to be about, click on the link below and read the Introduction.

Murder and Mayhem: A Research Site for Writers and True Crime Buffs

This new book looks like a fascinating read. It covers all kinds of topics that are ghost-related. See my full description on Supernatural. I just ordered it from Amazon, so it should come next week. Once I finish it, I’ll post a review.

Update: I’m not finished reading the book yet, but what I’ve read is very good. The George Lutz (Amityville) interview creeped me out in that the ghosts (or whatever they were) implanted thoughts into their minds that were far removed from their normal personalities. That wasn’t all that happened, but I won’t spoil it. This book is giving me lots of useful fodder for my ghost stories.

Melly had a great discussion going on with her post Do You Believe in Evil? OR The Importance of Evil to Plot. During this discussion, she asked me to post the research I’d conducted ten years ago about serial killers. I told her I would.

However, when I moved last summer, I threw out a lot of papers that I didn’t think I would need anymore. Apparently, I threw out my notes on serial killers. Who knew?

So, I’ll be starting from scratch, which may be just as well because my research was conducted in 1997 and is probably outdated. I’m thinking about how I’d like to set this up: blog, wiki, CMS. I’d like this site to be a very user-friendly research spot for writers (or people who are interested in the topic). Feel free to respond with your opinion about this.

In the meantime, I’ll post some links to some of the books I’ve read (and plan to read) on the subject of serial killers.

Have Read

Whoever Fights Monsters: This is a great starting point for the layperson who wants to know how serial killers are profiled by law enforcement. You’ll also get a glimpse of the mentality of these killers and how they perceive the world.

Zodiac: This book is a fast-paced, well-researched account of the Zodiac killer, who terrorized San Francisco in the mid to late sixtees.

Thomas Harris’s “Silence of the Lambs” and Dean Koontz’s “Intensity” were brilliant. There are other books that I’ve read, but I need to jog my memory.

Want to Read

The New Predator: Women Who Kill: This book sounds just like Whoever Fights Monsters, but comes at us from a woman’s perspective. I think I’ll stick this in my Amazon cart to buy later.

The Psychology of Serial Killer Investigations: This textbook covers too many topics to post here, but it looks fascinating. There are no Amazon reviews, but you can get it for half the original price. I just may look into this.

Nightmares & Dreamscapes is the second of Stephen King’s mini-series this year, due to come on in less than 5 hours (my time) tonight on TNT. This is a partial reminder to myself, since I missed Desperation, which came out around the time my husband had his accident. Most of the time, I’ve enjoyed the movie-adaptations from King’s novels.

My favorites are the classic version of The Shining and The Stand. The worst was the new version of The Shining and Maximum Overdrive.

What are your favorites and not-so-favorites?

I need to rant for a minute. I’ve spent the last couple of hours tweaking the new theme for WBA so the Almighty Internet Exploder will be happy with it. The only thing I needed to do was change the font and the font size in the sidebar and the posts.

I’ll spare you the details except to say that it went from bad to worse. Now, I’m looking at WBA on my Mac’s version of IE. The graphic of my original theme is not displaying in the header. It did when I first modified it a couple of months ago. Now, it’s not and I have to figure out why.

God, I hate these stupid browsers!

Update: It seems that Internet Explorer Mac doesn’t like any of my blogs. They’re all screwed up. I couldn’t tell you what’s wrong. However, I was able to get them working on the PC. The link headers are too big on the WBA site, and I haven’t yet figured out how to fix that. I’m going to leave things alone for a few days so I can gain a fresher perspective.

I finally found a WordPress theme that works in Firefox and Internet Exploder for the Mac and PC. Even better, it’s writing-related. Woo-hoo!

The headlines are a bit funky looking on IE–not surprising since that browser sucks. But I’ll get to that tomorrow. Gotta write.

Oh, before I close, check out the latest contest on WBA. This one offers a cash prize!

Last weekend, I wrote almost 4,000 words for GLT. Then I hit a scene where my characters have a great potential of having sex. The words came to a screeching halt.

The scene needs to happen early because this is the basis for my character’s obsession over a married man. I keep seeing the initial scenes from Fatal Attraction (Michael Douglas and Glenn Close). The first scene involves them discussing a casual affair in a restaurant.

The second scene shows him screwing her on the kitchen counter. They eventually make it to the bedroom, where he pisses her off. I forget the reason, except that I got a clear indication of her craziness. If you’ve seen the movie, you know it gets really nasty from here.

As I’m writing this post, I’ve figured out what the problem is with this scene. So far, I’ve had her lusting after him and failed to portray the one-sided, misguided love that will plague her to the point where she does go crazy. It’s almost midnight right now, which means that my corrections will have to wait until tomorrow.

We’ve been cooking for most of the morning. The kid making the peace sign is the son of a family friend, who has been staying with us since Sunday. This morning I taught he and my boys how to make chile verde.

The family we’re having over are big Mexican food fiends like us. It’s a nice change from the typical burger celebration. It’s been years since we’ve done anything spectacular for the Fourth.

Before they banned fireworks in my county, my parents would go all out and throw a huge barbecue with several of our neighbors. After dinner, we’d set off the fireworks in the street in front of our house. One year, a neighbor got his kicks by setting of an M-80 in the cul-de-sac directly across the street.

If we were lucky enough to be in Texas during the holiday, my grandmother would take us down to the Corpus Christi harbor (forget its name), where we’d stand on the beach and watch the fireworks.

After my husband and I got married, we would look for a spot that wasn’t too crowded and watch the fireworks show that was going on at our local amusement park. Unfortunately, all of the good spots (aka, hills and neighborhoods) have been discovered. So we stopped going.

The closest I’ve ever been to a fireworks display was the time I took my boys (both very little then) to my sister’s ex-boyfriend’s house. He lived right behind the amusement park I told you about earlier. I took my oldest out to the backyard to watch them.

The booming was so loud, and then the sparks started raining down. I took my son inside and watched from the kitchen. He ooh-ed and ahh-ed at all of the colors and designs. I doubt he remembers that night.

Hope you all have a safe and wonderful Fourth of July!

I had a blast, participating in Jason’s Midnight Road contest. While I didn’t win, this contest gave me some great ideas for WBA’s next carnival. I’m going to bat some ideas around this long weekend. Check in with WBA on Wednesday.

Speaking of carnivals, you still have time to submit your entry for this week’s carnival if you haven’t already. Submissions will go up tomorrow morning.

My posting and commenting have been lagging a bit on here, due to my writing projects. Unless something pops up that I can’t resist writing about, my postings will become a bit more sporadic. I’m going to try posting once or twice per week so I can get one book written (and hopefully published) this year.