Suddenly A Succubus Ch. 40 - Reflection

With Book Three now fully wrapped up, it's time to dig into the aftermath. This was an interesting chapter to write, as I wanted to strike a balance between showing Amara dealing with her grief, but also struggling with everything else that needs to happen. Brandon finally being defeated doesn't solve all their problems; there's still a campus full of students that now know about magic.

My fear was that focusing too much on either issue would detract from the other. If I spend too much time showing how Amara is coping (or failing to cope) with Chloés death, does it feel like the world is somehow paused to let her wrestle with her emotions? Conversely, if I spend too much time dealing with all the other students, and putting together a plan for how to move forward, does it feel like I'm short changing how hurt Amara is?

In the end, I'm pretty happy with the balance I struck. It was definitely a harder chapter to plot out, but I think I hit my goals.

We start with a pretty simple scene, but it's one I've been pretty excited to write. I've known for a while that this would be the opening of Book Four, and I think it sets the stage perfectly. Even though our primary cast has grown, and we now have a bunch of backup characters, this is still primarily Amara's story. To me, the most important thing was to start the book with a clear indicator of how she's attempting to deal with Chloé's death.

One thing I've mentioned a few times is that Chloé's arc in Book Three ended up paralleling Vee's arc in Book One. This parallel continues here, at least a little bit. We start Book Two with an entire chapter devoted to exploring how Amara is dealing with the aftermath of her fight with Vee. Now, thankfully, no one died in that fight, but it still had a pretty big effect on Amara's mentality. She blamed herself, she stopped feeding, and she was completely wrapped up in her own head.

This time, however, things are a little different. Amara seems a touch more aggressive, wouldn't you say? I think there's an argument to be made that a different reaction makes sense; after all, someone actually died this time. For me, however, the most telling thing is that she's externalizing her grief far more than she did last time.

I'm sure that won't be a problem.

This scene also gave me a small chance to play around with when I deliver certain pieces of information. When the scene starts, I tried to imply that Amara was actually fighting Vee. I back away from that pretty quickly, and reveal that Vee is just holding a punching bag, but it was important to play with that ambiguity for a little bit.

However, even though we're faced with a pretty visceral example of how Amara is feeling, I do think it's important that Vee is right there with her.

Once we're finished with the opening scene, it's time to finally dig into some mundanity. The next scene, in my opinion, is just as important for setting the stage. Whereas the opening scene can show us the true extent of Amara's anger and frustration, this scene serves a different, if eerily similar purpose.

Whenever possible, I like to put my readers in the same headspace as my characters. I think it helps portray the events of the story, but I'll admit it's pretty hard to do sometimes. One of my favorite examples is the fight at the end of Book One. We see a large chunk of it from Vee's POV, and she spends the entire time referring to Amara as "The Demon". Not only is this fantastic insight into Vee's thought process, but it also creates more distance between the reader and Amara, who is acting incredibly uncharacteristically. After all, for almost all of Book One, she's been pretty tame. In that fight, however, she's suddenly burning down a building and beating a friend half to death? I wanted people to be unsure how things would end, and I think I did a good job with that.

So how is that relevant here, in such a slow scene? Well, if possible, I want the readers to be frustrated in much the same way Amara is. There's so much exciting plot stuff that could happen, and what's Amara doing? Getting dressed? Making coffee? I wanted to make it obvious how her frustration is seeping into every part of her life, from the way she gets ready in the morning to the way she thinks about her fellow students.

From a separate angle, I also thought it was important to show that life moves on. Regardless of how everyone is feeling, despite the fact that there was a horrible tragedy less than a week ago, someone still needs to step up and try to take control of the situation. It's pretty messy, and hopefully this chapter feels appropriately frustrating.

Despite Amara's frustration, however, I do think it's important to show how everyone is attempting to deal with Brandon's attack. How are the other students feeling? Is there a plan to try and explain what happened? These are all pretty important questions, and ones that I've seen readers asking themselves. After all, if a bunch of students saw everything with their own eyes, how do you try to cover things up?

Just like I did last book, I wanted to show that there's some tension among the other students. Sure, it's mostly Naomi complaining about journalistic integrity, but I made sure to show other people voicing concerns as well.

Of course, it doesn't help that the other student gets Chloé's name wrong. Amara blows up, somewhat literally, and then storms out the cafeteria with Vee following behind her.

I'm pretty proud of their conversation here, I think it does a good job of accentuating everything I'm trying to achieve with this chapter. One thing that's been pretty refreshing in Book Four is how Vee is acting. We've seen Amara get angry and frustrated before, but Vee seems to be approaching everything from a pretty healthy standpoint. It's been really nice to write her as a more sensible character, especially after she spent so much time wrestling with her religious baggage and snapping at everyone else.

We then get a name for one of our new background students, and a pile of Chloé's things. Needless to say, Amara isn't quite in the state of mind to deal with that, and opts to instead go home.

Cards on the table, I'm really happy Amara and Vee are friends again. It's so refreshing to write scenes like this, where they're just hanging out and enjoying each others' company. Sure, there's stress as they try to deal with a horrible tragedy, but they at least they have each other.

Unfortunately, Vee can't stay forever. She leaves Amara to her own devices, and she decides to cope by cleaning up the kitchen. After making a mess, and failing to think of a good way to kill time, it's finally time to have... the talk.

This is a talk I've been hyping up ever since Chapter Three. Back then, Nick asked Amara what she thought might happen if she should her mother about being a demon, and she didn't really have a good guess. The most important thing about that conversation was that it established a reason why Amara was keeping her true nature a secret. However, as we saw at the end of Book Three, Evelyn is clearly starting to suspect something is up.

As someone who's always known the truth about Evelyn, I have no real idea how this conversation read to everyone else. To me, the most important thing to stress was that Evelyn was concerned, but ultimately still loves Amara, and is simply happy she's safe.

Completely unrelated, but I love writing parents. I was cackling hysterically when Evelyn asked if Amara was doing "one of those TikTok things".

Of course, the actual reveal doesn't go well. Evelyn immediately hangs up, with only serves to further confuse and upset Amara. Before she has time to process those thoughts, however, she feels a planar disturbance. This is a pretty minor ability of hers, but I've teased it before, and this scene was one reason I wanted her to be able to sense those kinds of effects.

It's also another interesting piece of character development, as her first reaction is excitement; she's thrilled to maybe have a chance to beat something up. Totally normal reaction, I've heard.

However, there is to be no fight. After a small burst of hellfire, we get our big reveal—Evelyn is a demon, and presumably the reason why Amara has been transforming.

Why didn't she say anything earlier? Why did she seemed so shocked about learning that Amara is also a demon? There are a lot of interesting questions that will be answered next Chapter, and I can't wait to share everything with you all. In the meantime, I was pretty happy at the different reactions I saw to this reveal. I've seen a decent mix of opinions, from people who thought it was incredibly obvious to people who thought it was a total surprise.

Thankfully, I don't think it matters either way. I think plot twists are overrated, and a good story stands on its own even if you know everything that happens. The most important thing to me, that I thought quite a bit about as I wrote the previous three books, was that I wanted it to be obvious why Amara didn't think her mother was a demon.

Anyways, that brings us to the end of the chapter! I hope you're all ready for some exciting lore dumps next time!

Nyx <3