Broke through a (smallish) wall

I finished chapter 9 today, partly on the bus this morning and then the last bit this evening. That's not actually a great deal more text, as a chunk of it was there anyway. On the other hand, I basically planned the next couple of chapters as well.

I dithered for a while about whether to throw the characters a hugely complicating curveball, or whether it was too early in the story. In the end I decided to hold off on it, as a lot of things aren't properly established yet, so it seems premature to start smashing them to bits. In particular, I'm trying to achieve a sense of slow creeping dread, which you can't do if you keep delivering on the things that people are scared of. These things have to take on a significance, one that might actually be disproportionate to their severity, which you can only do if you keep subtly threatening to do them. Learned helplessness and all that.

I also started thinking about zombie films (no particular reason, other than that they rule) and the ways the central situation could be linked to them. Given that I'm already playing with vodou as a possible explanation for what's happening, I thought it'd be cool (and suitably sinister) to push that a bit further and hint at zombification. Before the Living Dead style of zombie film, they were originally people under the control of vodou witch doctors called bokors (the whole reanimated corpse feeding on the flesh of the living is a 60s thing). So that's going to be one of the ideas the characters come up with to explain what's happening to them.

Other than my morbid fascination with these things, there's another plus here: throwing out two ideas for what could be happening should focus people on trying to decide which one's right, hopefully blinding them to some of the other things happening in the background.

Hopefully I'll find time to write the next couple of chapters in the next few weeks...