In the beginning, there was monopoly

Chapter 1 then. 

I hate flashbacks - especially in those TV shows where they've gone into the fifth season and they're struggling to keep it fresh.  They'll show someone covered in flour head to foot with a meat cleaver in one hand and a tube of superglue in the other - then they cut the scene with a banner saying 'yesterday morning' and proceed to tell you how the character ended up in that situation.
If you're going to do a flashback - make it linear, that's what I say.  So, instead of having all the characters facing mild peril and then flashing back to 1985 to find out how they got there - I'm starting with 1985 whilst leaving a key fact out.  Not that you'd notice until it's revealed later. 

Six characters - six monopoly peices, but what's interesting about that?  Not a lot - until Troy brings Simon (a new lad) to the game.  Nobody really takes to the new lad, which makes Troy even more protective of him.  They get the monopoly board out and Troy allows Simon to be the hat - in stomps Gavin, late yet full of fun - which changes when he finds he is not allowed to have the peice he always has at these monopoly nights. And so begins his journey from jolly fat kid with no self awareness and a penchant for bizarre behavour to bitter morbidly obese megalomaniac misanthrope.  Hilarity ensues or something does. 

Once the game is over, Nina finds a Ouija board in the games cupboard but no planchette to use with it.  'Why not use the monopoly peices?'  And so, the demons of silver sands are invited into the closed circuit of the holiday park, bringing with them an array of strange phenomena.  Being summoned by small pewter board game counters only adds to the oddity and in turn, each who used a counter in summoning the dead shall forever be tied to its destiny.

As you can tell, the plot is still being developed.  All or none of the above will appear in the final book. Or will it...

How Bizarre!

I wanted a character name to be juxtaposition, something bold and almost biblical to represent someone with such a mundane life.  Troy! That's an impressive solid reassuring name.  Now imagine if Troy was unemployed.  Or he worked in a shoe shop.  Not that there's anything wrong with either of those things but being called 'Troy' you'd expect him to be an astronaut or have a degree in body building.  In the end, I decided that his monopoly peice of choice would be the car.  One of the devices in the book is that each of the kids who played monopoly together back in the 80's has had their lives mapped out by the peice they chose.  Troy, being the car went on to drive formula 1, and then, because he missed the high speeds and danger, became a taxi driver.  So - Troy, the taxi driver.  Perfect... however, once this entire backstory had fallen into place I was wandering around Sunderland (come on, we've all done it) and a yellow taxi drives past... and on the top... 'Troy's taxis'. 

What are the chances? Nobody is called Troy these days.  Nobody I tells ya.

Bizarre.

BLURB

Like all good novels (and a lot of terrible ones) there must be a blurb to get the reader excited.  Here's one I knocked up in about 2 minutes and it'll change drastically as the book develops no doubt :

Have you ever wondered whether your life has already been mapped out and the big decisions have already been made for you?  Have you ever felt that who and where you are right now is a direct result of one small choice you made when you were young? Could your destiny be influenced by a choice as small as what counter you chose in a game of Monopoly when you were fifteen years old? That certainly seems to be the case for six teenagers who met whilst on holiday at the Silver Sands caravan park in the mid-eighties.   

It is twenty five years later and Troy (the car) drives taxis, Billy (the boat) is an entertainer on a cruise liner, Louise (the dog) runs a dog hotel, Douglas (the boot) has been fired from every job he's ever had, Nina (the iron) works for the local press as a journalist, and Gavin (the top hat) is a local businessman and councillor who, by refusing to renew Silver Sands' entertainments licence, hopes to close the park in order to buy the land for development.   

Something at the creepy old caravan park is stirring however, and it's not just the restaraunt manager making today's soup.  With rumours that Silver Sands was built on an old Viking burial ground it seems that a strange ethereal force more powerful than fate is bringing the six friends together once more, but why?  Will they save the park from closure? Will they just have one more holiday then move on and get over it or have they been brought together for one last game of monopoly with terrifying consequences?

Characters

It all starts with a character - sometimes an ordinary character who finds themselves in extraordinary circumstances, sometimes an extraodinary character in mundane circumstances.  This time is was two characters - Troy Thompson and Simon Johnson.  While the idea for the novel was brewing, they had an obsession for board games - one which led them to charity shops to buy ones they'd never heard of - then they had an obsession for the dobbers in the games (it's the only word I know for dobber, the counter you move around that tells everyone else that it's you - not them).  Then I thought they could have their dobber collection stolen and act as two PI's tracking down the dobbers as they're left in mysterious places, a treasure hunt with a hidden message...

Then I went and had a hot cup of Mocha (or is that just 'a hot mocha?' not sure) and all that stopped being interesting apart from the two guys obsessed with board games.  Their past, their present and their future.  Past - holidaying together at some sad old caravan park just up the road.  Present - rooming together in their late twenties.  It all still sounded very unspectacular until I focussed on that caravan park bit. 

When you were at school, did you ever stand in the cloakroom alone?  Remember the silence, the smell, the odd feeling of being surrounded by parkas?  Then looking out of the window into an empty playground - hearing a sort of ethereal childrens' shouting and laughter in your head?  The caravan park felt like that - a place that had seen so much happiness, laughter, good times, memories, ghosts, still winds, an empty present, shadows, things that were, broken glass, boarded up windows... the seeds were there!

Simon never left when he holidayed there as a teenager - but why?  How does he know Troy? Why has the park turned from a laughter filled holiday hot spot into a ghost-town-like rusted tin village?  Is it haunted? Why is it haunted?

I think I know!  Must get scribbling.