An idea for a book

I came up with an idea for a book. It's been a while since I've written a big book. I think the last book I published was the K-Pop Scandal. I haven't uploaded it to KDP, but I did publish it on Draft2Digital. I had a lot of stuff happen to me this year and it's taken me away from writing. I used to write here every day but to be honest, I'm lucky to write a paragraph or two nowadays. However, even if my word count is small, it is still a win.

I've been to the cinema a lot lately and watched lots of horror films. Some new ones along with some old classics like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Shining. I think out of all the films I have seen in the cinema lately, my favourite was the anime film, Your Name, which isn't a horror film. Watching a bunch of horror films has inspired me to make plans to write a horror novel that takes place on a cruise.

I wrote a poem called Ship of Fools set on a cruise. I wrote (but never finished) a fan fic set on a haunted cruise. I've seen a fair few horror films and played many indie horror games (not all completed) and I've yet to come across any set on a cruise. There'd be opportunities to put some jump scares and plot twists here and there.

The premise I had in mind was that the ship would be a cruise filled with rich people and a small family on limited income that win a cabin. Straight away they are looked down on by some snobby passengers but the crew treat them like royalty.

Plans I had for the book would be that the couple in the family have an argument and the mother and the youngest children end up being stranded at a port in Ireland as the ship carries on without them. As the spookiness continues, the father and the eldest child are glad that their other family are safe. The signal is gone. Wi-fi dead. The cabin crew turn into zombies at night and mysterious deaths occur on the cruise. Swimming pools turn red.

The father hooks up with a socialite who killed her eldest son, unable to save her second son from being possessed, but saves her youngest son. Now I think about it, the book can focus on both these two families, the poor one and the rich one and how the father and the socialite end up having to work together to break the curse of the ship.

An idea I had in mind is that the father and the socialite had met before in a drunken one-night stand that neither of them remembered which resulted in the conception of one of her sons.

I haven't come up with any names or nationalities with the characters but the socialite will have some sort of European flare with bleach blond hair, big hats and Gucci handbags. As for the father, I've got images of a cowboy with a black moustache and baggy jeans.

The chance of failure is likely. I am not sure if all of them will die or just a handful of them will survive but on a cruise in the middle of nowhere, the chances of getting out alive are quite slim. Death and torture are inevitble in horror. Even if they do get out of the ship alive, they would have to live with the trauma and the suspisions. The only way to break the curse is to kill the captain.

A few endings I've got floating in my head.

• The father, Socialite and their remaining children survive the cruise. But the youngest son, angered by his mother's deeds does nothing as the father and socialite are jailed for the bloodiest massacre the ocean had ever seen.
• The father and socialite die but the children with them survive and start a new life on the island they washed up on.
• The socialite leaves everyone to die on the ship, saving the only working lifeboat for herself and her son, but a storm separates them both. Thinking that all three of her sons are dead, she surrenders herself to the ghostly captain, knowing it's her that he wants.
• Or following on from that last ending. The socialite escapes to a new life in the Carribean and she is a wanted criminal.