Suddenly A Succubus Ch. 14 - Reflection

Well, I finished a whole book, I guess it's time to keep writing. Thankfully, this story is already planned out to take place over multiple books, so it doesn't really feel all that different jumping from Book 1 to Book 2. The plot threads have moved around a bit, but time keeps marching forward for both us and Amara.

Starting off was a little tricky. I've never written this kind of mood before, and I had to take a couple cracks at it before I really fell in love with it. I figured I had two important points to hit right at the start; shed some light on what happened after the fire broke out, and dig deep into how Amara feels about that night.

There's a lot of conflict, both with herself and with her friends around her. I put a lot of thought into how everyone would react to what happened, but also how that would color their interactions with Amara as they tried to comfort her. I resisted spelling out Amara's complete thought process, which is a bit of a double edged sword. I like engaging my audience, encouraging them to think about what's happening, but I'm aware there's always a chance that her actions feel disconnected from her thoughts. Hopefully, there are enough clues to piece together what's going on, but also a light splash of ambiguity

Once we see Nick and Tessa fail, the script flips with Chloé comes in. This is another moment that I feel might hit a little harder if we'd spent more time with Amara's friends in the first book, and it was a scene I wrestled with. Ideally, it's clear they're good friends, but there's also a strong sense of why Amara reacts the way she does to Chloé's words. This was also the perfect time to introduce some of Amara's hobbies, namely her photography. This was another fun fact that I knew early on, but I never found a good time to introduce it in the first book. Bringing it up here, though, felt great; it's a tie to her past life, and it was really neat to see her latch onto it following what happened on Halloween. It's going to be coming up more frequently as the plot continues, and I'm happy with it's introduction here.

Amara's first step back into the world is, of course, sex. But how does that work? Most people don't literally need sex the way Amara was, and there were a lot of ways I could've written this scene. At first I thought about committing hard to the aloof and disinterested vibes, partially because I know that's a kink a lot of people are into, but once the sex started it didn't feel right. She's still a succubus, she still loves sex, so it made sense for her to warm up to it as things started progressing. Plus, it's a fun character moment for Nick; she gives him permission to just get himself off, and he refuses. He's a swell guy.

I also get to bring in more of Amara's camera equipment! I really love those ring-light mount things, I wonder if that will come up again later...

Ultimately, it was fun writing a slower sex scene, especially since there was porn adding to the flavor of what was happening.

Once their finished, it's time to follow through on Amara's earlier curiosity regarding her shapeshifting. This was another tough act to nail. On one hand, she's trying to distance herself from some of her demonic tendencies, but she's still drawn to their exploration. I couldn't think of a better application for morbid curiosity, and it had the added benefit of letting her explore it outside of the chaos of combat.

I have a hunch that, years down the line, the special appeal of Book 1 will be Amara slowly discovering all her new abilities and demon bits. I always love when characters mess around with their powers, so Book 1 came easily. That being said, the transformation has to end eventually. As interesting as it would be to have a character that's constantly changing and growing, I don't feel it would fit the story. Book 2 is going to have less of that discovery, somewhat, but I'm confident I've got enough plot to make up for the lack of new limbs appearing.

And finally, we end with a strange little dream. This, together with Chloé talking about the charity, work in tandem to start setting the stage for Book 2. After spending the last few chapters seeing plot threads pay off, it's refreshing to be at the start of a story again, so to speak. It's always a blast teasing new mysteries, but I also really like how early chapters in stories set the vibes for the story to come. There's something so special about reading through a book and going "Oooh that's what we're doing?" and I hope I was able to nail that here, at least to some extent. I realize I don't plant that flag too strongly, but at the end of the day, I'm really happy with how I started this second book. Fingers crossed you agree with me!

Nyx <3