Chapters 2-4

I finally made my way through the opening chapters (2-4). It’s one continuous scene the morning after the showdown at the end of Bitter Secrets. The story picks up right where we left off. It's this insane, epic throw down (as you guys have been seeing from snippets) where they thrash out their history—the good, bad, and the ugly. These 3 chapters that cover one day, a handful of hours, is (word count in upper right-hand corner of image) 24,271 words.

Long silence. 

For context in Bitter Secrets, I have several long scenes. One is when they go to London, chapters 3-5. That was 26,236 words. But that carried them all the way from New York, on the plane, sex in penthouse, dinner with Guy, back to penthouse, major drama. And the other long scene is the last two chapters. That is more similar to these opening chapters because there's no break and it all happens in the same place. Those last two chapters are 14,938 words. 

On the left side of the split screen, you see 105,790. That's my word count for the whole manuscript. And I haven't even officially started. I'm literally finishing chapter 4 and the dang manuscript is over 100k words. Bitter Secrets is 136k words, and that's larger than the average romance book. I was estimating this book would be around 180k words (which would be epic fantasy length) and now I'm scared it'll be even longer.  

I haven't read what I wrote in 2021 yet, I was just making my way through the opening chapters and got bogged down there. I'm a little scared. Those opening chapters nearly did me in, yet we're just getting started. Deep breaths. But the good news is, all of that messy stuff has been cleared away (for the most part) and we're starting off fresh. 

There were so many sides to Roth in these opening scenes. Psycho Roth, Tender Roth, Playful Roth… I couldn't keep up. IDK if this will show up in the final because this dialogue seemed so out of character for him, but I left it in for now because it’s a raw draft and I thought it was cute:

“You have so much power over me, over my family.”

“I’m protecting them from their own stupidity,” he growled. 

“And me?”

“The princess attracted a dragon.”

She searched his eyes. “She’s become part of his hoard?”

His eyelids lowered to conceal his eyes as he pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “She is his hoard.”

She allowed him to tip her head up so he could trail kisses along her jaw. “And if a prince shows up?”

He nipped her skin, making her jolt. “He’ll be incinerated.”

“And if she begs to leave?”

One hand covered her breast and squeezed. “The dragon will drown her in riches and find inventive ways to persuade her to stay locked in his lair.”

Anyway, I am stoked to be moving forward on a more level playing field with new negotiations in place. That wasn’t my intention when I started these chapters, but it makes sense that their relationship evolves at this point or this book would be a repeat of the previous, and we’re not going to do that, sooooo…. Here we go! I’ll be back in New York tomorrow thank God! Wish me luck!