Suddenly A Succubus Ch. 38 - Reflection

It was incredibly refreshing to be back in Amara's head this chapter. Her POV has been absent from the last two chapters, and for a large chunk of those chapters she was completely unconscious. As much fun as it's been to explore all the characters in her absence, I'm happy to be back.

Specifically, I found it very interesting to see how things have subtly changed. For pretty much this entire book, Amara has been stuck with Vee in Purgatory and/or fighting for her life. She's been slowly starving and divorced from her everyday life, and this is the very first time she's back in something kinda related to the status quo.

Do you notice any similarities in Amara between this chapter and the first chapter of the book? She's once again a little arrogant, she's showing off her body, she's clearly reveling in his chance to be open about herself. Yes, things are a lot better between her and Vee, but the rest of her character development is still hanging around, even if we haven't had a chance to see it. I personally think this Amara is an absolute blast to write, especially after all the time I spent rewriting Book One for publication. Book One Amara is still pretty timid, even though she has a few moments of being a bit larger than life.

Of course, there's more going on then just Amara's triumphant return to the land of the well-fed. Chloé has been having a pretty tough go of it, and it's time to finally check in on her.

This is a scene that's been living in my head for a long time. Chloé has been fighting through self-confidence issues her whole life, even though we've only been privy to it recently. One thing I tried really hard to show was that these issues are ever-present, and despite the progress she's made since leaving home, it's still easy for her to fall back into those patterns. I don't think I explicitly state this anywhere, but I hint pretty extensively that she's dealt with depression in the past.

One thing I was particularly interesting to write was the moment she expresses exactly why she's upset. The obvious answer, and the one I think most readers would expect, is that she's mad her friends lied to her. Now, I would never try to subvert expectations just for the sake of being surprising, but I was a little excited to sidestep that assumption in this case.

Chloé just isn't the type to get mad about that kind of thing, in my opinion. I've also spent so much of this book showing exactly how she views herself, and I think it's far more interesting that she agrees with everything they did. I also think it's a more complicated wrinkle for the rest of the cast, or in this case, Amara. If she were upset about being lied to, you just apologize, maybe explain why you thought lying was necessary. There's a conversation you can have there.

What do you do when the other person completely agrees with you? Takes your behavior as proof that she doesn't matter? Helping people through depression is incredibly tough, and I'm not going to pretend I have the answers. That being said, I did my best to show that Amara truly understands and cares for Chloé, and manages to find ways to cheer her up, at least a little.

I also took great care in this scene not to make the story too self-aware. I have nothing against breaking the fourth wall, but I purposely put a lot of effort into upholding its sanctity. I could easily go on a rant about how modern media seems terrified about showing sincerity, and how breaking the fourth wall can be a crutch that props up stories too scared to matter, but I'll spare you that tangent. Long story short, there's a version of Suddenly A Succubus where Chloé is the silly, nerdy, slight-aware-of-the-fourth wall character. She would make references to Supernatural, call out how silly it is that no one uses guns, things like that.

However, I want her story to be engaging for who she is, not because she knows she's in a book. Yes, she's very nerdy, and lets me reference Starcraft, but that's different.

Once the two of them rejoin the rest of the students, we get a very quick scene where Amara meets Ruby and heats up some soup. I mostly just love taking opportunities to show off my characters using their powers, but also I really like Ruby. There's a good chance we'll be seeing more of her in the future :P

We also see Amara learn that her stint in Purgatory forced her to accidentally ignore her mother! Oh no! Evelyn is a neat character, and I'm excited for whenever I'll get a chance to put her in these stories, but for now I just haven't had the opportunity. She's certainly come up a bit more frequently in this book than in others, so maybe she'll be making an appearance soon! If nothing else, it's probably good she's not on campus looking for Amara right now.

The last big stretch of this chapter presented me with an interesting dilemma. Some of you might have noticed that my last two books were each thirteen chapters. If you can promise to keep a secret, I'm actually aiming for this to be the case for all books I write in this series. I love consistency, for one thing, but it serves some other purposes.

I like the structure of having a predictable number of chapters, for one thing. However, by knowing the chapter count ahead of time, it's easier to fit in certain plot details. As a couple of examples, let's look at the midpoint of both previous books. Chapter Seven and Chapter Twenty (Chapter Seven of Book Two). In Book One, Chapter Seven is when the audience learns that Vee is the angel, and it's the moment she first sees Amara in person (disguised as her). This means that the structure of Book One has a simple, interesting arc: The first half is kind of a mystery, with the audience learning more about Amara's life and friends while not knowing who the angel is. The second half, after the reveal, then pivots to show how these two friends end up on a collision course. It also drives home the dramatic irony when Vee goes to Amara in tears after Derek reports her.

Book Two is mostly about the aftermath of their fight. Amara feels terrible, and has been texting Vee nonstop, but hasn't heard anything. Amara (and a BUNCH of my readers) kept wondering where Vee was, what she was doing, and what her thoughts were about the fight. The first half of that book lets us sit in the uncertainty, thus allowing the audience to see the story from Amara's POV. In the second half, Vee is back, but there's still some tension. Amara wants to reconcile, and tries to patch things up, but stuff keeps going wrong. It gives us plenty of time to sit in that "Rivals forced to fight on the same team" vibe for a while.

Now let's look at Book Three. It doesn't split down the middle as easily—Chapter Seven (33) doesn't really change the status quo. Chapter Eight (34) does so, however, as that's the chapter where Amara loses control and Vee allows her to feed while she masturbates.

Instead of dividing Book Three into the front half and the back half, I've instead mentally lumped it into thirds. The first third is Amara appearing in Purgatory and being kind of a bitch to Vee. The middle third is the two of them finally talking everything out and patching things up. The final third starts with the reveal that Brandon is alive, and mostly deals with them trying to protect everyone and stop his evil plans.

So, why go on this tangent? Well, when I was writing Chapter 38, I knew it was the penultimate chapter. It needs to exist to set up the climax of the book, but there was still theoretically a bunch of stuff I could dig into. SO much happens after everyone gathers in the cafeteria. These last few chapters all take place over a few hours, and I could have easily written more chapters in the same time span exploring other angles. However, because I like keeping a set chapter count, it makes it easier for me to stay focused. That meant that I wasn't tempted to spend too much time on, say, Amara fucking the cultists while Tessa examines their runes.

In the end I'm happy with that decision. I've always thought that creativity thrives under limitation, which is one reason I make myself publish a chapter every week. When I first started writing, I was really scared that I might lose track of my vision if I accidentally got wrapped up in unimportant details (worldbuilding, side characters, etc.) So, while I'm excited to see a bit more of the background students, I realize that they're not the main characters.

That's not to say I'm ignoring them! I've got some fun plans in store for my extended cast, but I'll keep those secrets to myself for now :P

Nyx <3