Suddenly A Succubus Ch. 35 - Reflection

Whew, this was a big one.

Book Three has, if you'll pardon my pun, existed in a bit of a strange limbo. I threw Amara and Vee into a very strange situation almost immediately, but paradoxically, the entire book has basically been them just kinda hanging out.

Now, I threw in the threat of the reapers, as well as the threat of entropy, to make the place feel oppressive, but it's hard to know how well that landed from my side of story. I wanted it to feel like two people finding a way to reconcile their differences while also fighting against a hostile, otherworldly place, so hopefully some of that came across.

However, the entire book is not just us watching Vee and Amara slowly forgive each other. We've also got Tessa and Nick trying to free them, and we've been following Chloé around as she starts piecing together that things aren't adding up. But, in the end, there is a reason our two leading ladies got pulled into Purgatory, and it's time to finally move that particular threat off the back burner and turn up the heat.

However, I should probably take things in chronological order, shouldn't I? I mean, I can do whatever I want, but I want to keep things nice and orderly.

This whole beginning section is, in a way, a big of a mini-climax to everything that Vee and Amara have been talking about the last few days. From a meta standpoint, with the knowledge that things are about to get much more intense, I wanted this moment to happen now. It took a lot of effort to really nail this conversation, and my Beta Readers really put in some wonderful work to help polish it up (Thanks everyone!).

Then, finally, once we're done tearfully apologizing, I get to do my big dramatic reveal.

With Book Two, I sometimes worried that my villains weren't all that interesting. I didn't dwell too much on the inner workings of the cult, they were kinda just "being bad" off in the corner somewhere. I'm happy with how that book turned out, don't get me wrong, but I'll admit the cult was a little one note.

Book Three, however, doesn't have that problem. The entire time I was writing Brandon's re-introduction I was seething with malice. He was a creep before the cult, then got worse from their influence, and now something has very clearly pushed him even further off the deep end. I hate how much power he's ended up with, and I hated how easy it was to conjure up terrible things for him to say.

But, I don't need to rant about how much I hate Brandon. I have a feeling y'all get where I'm coming from.

With the main threat revealed, and the scope of his plan now obvious, it's time to dig into a pretty harrowing scene.

I love Chloé to death. Ever since I first started the book I knew she was a precious little bean, and I'll admit, I'm surprised at how many people have completely fallen in love with her. Early on she didn't seem to garner much attention, but now that Book Three is more than halfway over, I'm starting to see a bunch of comments from people that simply adore her.

Sadly, she's been having a rough book. We've watched her slowly descend into confusion as hurt as she unravels that her friends are hiding information from her, and this is certainly the lowest point of the book for her.

Writing her inner monologue was tough, especially following such an intensely negative scene with Brandon. For better or for worse, however, her thoughts are interrupted by a crashing reaper, and our poor girl finds herself staring death in the face.

This is another one of those moments that is hard to judge from my side of things. As someone who's trying to write gripping, tense struggles with powerful creatures, it's kinda my job to make people scared for my characters. This is really helpful when I can tastefully hide information, mostly by hiding exactly what happened after Amara and Vee left the quad in the previous scene.

Tension is actually something I struggle with pretty consistently. I have no real way of knowing if the threats my characters are facing are believable, unless my Beta Readers tell me so, of course.

Anyways, all this to say that I'm pretty proud of how this chapter came together. I really feel like I nailed a good, hateable villain and terrifying monsters. Even if Amara is crazy strong, the people around her aren't, right?

Thankfully, Chloé is saved at the last moment by Amara, who must also reveal her demonic secret at a pretty inconvenient time.

As much as I wish we could dwell on them talking, which is obviously my strong suit, it's time for a big long action scene! This is another thing I've struggled with in the past, and I feel like I'm slowly getting better. This was actually a scene I pictured quite a while ago. I love the idea of Amara immersed in a knockdown, dragout fight that carries her across campus, while doing everything in her power to get students to safety.

Once she'd finally dispatched the reaper, it's then time for a scene that I wrote and immediately thought sounded really fucking metal. I'm absolutely in love with the mental picture of a bruised and bloodied Amara limping into view and chucking a skull on the crowd.

Ideally it's like, the cover art for a screamo band or something.

Anyways, I hope the dramatic shift in tone wasn't too dramatic. It needs to be a little bit for the story to work, but I'm also very aware that many of you probably find my slow character stuff a bit more enjoyable XD

Nyx <3