Notes on Revising Second Horror Novel

Spoiler Alert: This post is all about revising my second horror novel, Monstrous. For those who may not want to know the juicy details, you might want to skip those. But for those who an inside peek at the writer's craft, including struggles and revelations, it might be interesting and useful.

Haven't returned to revising my second horror novel quite yet, but I have been gifted several epiphanies about the antagonist's burden, inhering a multimillion-dollar estate from his grandfather who has a deadly design on my protagonist (let's call him John Newman for now). What I have finally realized is that William McMammon 5 has inherited not only the unwanted responsibility of an empire, but also a diorama of the inn that ol' granddad was retrofitting for five years, leaving William to decide how to get back at Newman for wronging him when they were teens. 

So, William gets a diorama and unlimited financial resources to get back at John. But there's more than that, of course. William was in line for some sort of weird transformative experience in the woods that ol' granddad set up near one of his Pfizer factories, but William failed to make the grade because John and his other pals interrupted young Billy (William) messing around with another boy. So, John and his buddies accidentally stumbled upon this tunnel in the woods that more or less changed them, using autumnal magic. John became a werewolf. His good friend became a genius guitarist. Another encountered a phantom train. Still another friend learned they could see ghosts, and physically manipulate them as if ghosts were corporeal. 

In the book, William (and John et al.) will learn this at the opening of the codicil, or a change to a last will and testament, in a videotaped testimony from Robert McMammon 3. Robert feels that William failed to pass his test as a kid and sort of prove himself to his grandfather, but he also blames John Newman and the others for taking what was supposed to be rightfully William's. William has turned out to be a single, queer, partying, trust-fund kid, while John et al. have either gifts or curses, depending on how you look at it. Robert aims to rectify this perceived unfairness, and leaves it to William to do whatever he sees fit to John and the others.