Novel Excerpt

We pulled up outside the hangar and got out of the car. And I could hear the loud murmuring of conversation competing with conversation. This was a gathering. Gabriel popped the boot. Blindfolded. Gagged. Bound arms and legs. This was Penny. But I'll get into the details later. He lifted her over his shoulder, her short brown hair falling and masking her face.
“Can you get the boot there?” Gabriel called out to me, walking towards the hangar.
I pushed it shut and I looked over at the girl slung over his shoulder, her hair bobbing with each step. I thought of the police, combing the car for evidence. I imagined a group of them pouring across every square millimetre of surface. Finding nothing, finding nothing, finding nothing. Then reaching the boot. A strand of hair. Hers. A set of fingerprints. Mine. A maze of little lines mirroring my own sitting clear as day on the boot. I rubbed the boot where I pushed it down with my sleeve. I didn't want this guy as my enemy. I jogged after him towards the hangar.

I've been reading through my novel sort of as I write it. Like, I'll print out each page as I write it and take it into work and read through what I've written at work. I think this is my favourite paragraph of the novel thus far. Could be a potential opening paragraph (yes, although it is currently in chapter 6, I'm more than comfortable with the fact that nothing is concrete at the moment). I also think it represents the sort of stylised horror that I'm aiming for. Quirky. Bizzare. Because it's not straight up horror, and I think I really need to sort out in the redrafting and editing processes how I want that balance to sit. Because I want it to be as much about character as about plot. That's probably why there's a lot of dialogue in my novel so far. Like, A LOT. I should probably cut down on that a lot and flesh the scenes out more. I guess that's why I like this paragraph. But, you know, it's a work in progress and it's got a long way to go. I'd like to think that people will read my writing and go "that kid's not normal." I'd like that. Because everything else about me is pretty much normal. Or even more normal than normal. Paler-shade-of-grey normal. But, you know, the plan with writing this book is to raise a few eyebrows and maybe suggest a few things. Still figuring out the details though.