Suddenly A Succubus Ch. 51 - Reflection

When I'm plotting out books, and especially when I'm cementing details about the world, it's funny how easy it is to skip over certain things. Take, for example, the first book. I don't mention the name of the college anywhere until chapter 13, simply because I hadn't named it yet.

Often, when I'm trying to make naturalistic sounding dialogue and exposition, it simply doesn't make sense to dig into random details that, presumably, everyone knows. However, there are occasions where I decide it's appropriate to dish out that kind of information. In Book One, I figured the start of the climactic last chapter would be a good place to drop a little bit of lore about the college.

Now, obviously this is because I didn't think of a good name until then, but honestly I think this works as a narrative tool.

Question: when you discover a new story, what hooks you? In my experience, and I expect this is true for many people, it's the characters. We want to read about people we like, people who are interesting, who are facing down strange and unusual challenges. Once we care about those character, we start to care about what they care about, and thus we start to feel immersed and invested in the surrounding world.

A lot of epic fantasy books tend to place more emphasis on the world building than usual, and I understand that itch. If you're writing in a completely original world, it makes sense to take extra time to lay things out for the audience so they don't get confused. That being said, I often find that lore dumps bounce right off me.

The trick, obviously, is to cheat and write Urban Fantasy instead. I can just assume most people know how colleges work, and bam, world created. Then, I can choose to introduce magical elements at a much more consistent and easily-digestible pace.

Chapter 51 is, in many ways, serving the exact same role as Chapter 13 did.

In Chapter 13, Amara takes her first journey off campus, though just barely, as she travels to The Jade Palace. I take this opportunity to share some basic information about the school, including its name, before describing the scene of the final battle.

Chapter 51 sees Amara take even further steps off campus, as she travels to the Demali Forest Preserve. I take this opportunity to share some basic information about the town, including its name, before describing the scene of the final battle.

The name of the town has been bugging me for a while. I've always known that AU was set in a fictional college town, one that primarily exists to serve the economy centered around the University, but I never knew what to name it. Do I pick a name that sounds similar to other towns in Illinois? What about looking for themes with other college towns? Well, fun fact, but one large town in Illinois, that holds a University, is literally just called Normal.

Real life often has stranger names than fiction, which can make naming things hard.

In fiction, I often try to root my explanations in other pieces of world building. As a great example of this, let's look at Amara's last name: Lamour.

Just like the name of the school, and the town, I didn't drop Amara's name for a really long time. (I think I first revealed it when I published Book One?) When the time came to pick a last name, I traced Amara's history back to her mother, Evelyn. I was already planning on writing Daughter of Damnation, and I already knew that half of it would be set in 1938. That gave me the perfect opportunity: a chance to narrow down the space of possibilities. Instead of digging through every name ever, I had a simple thought: Evelyn picks her name by looking at a nearby movie poster, on which she sees the name of the actress Dorothy Lamour.

That's fun! Now I have a neat surname for my main character, and it has an interesting story behind it.

I did something similar with the name of the town, Ekstàpoli. I started with a base idea, then started iterating on different names until I found something I like. The runner-up name was Metàpoli, by the way. Hopefully y'all don't like that name more, as I'm much happier with Ekstàpoli. It comes from the Greek word ekstasis, which can roughly translate to "The state of being beside oneself or rapt out of oneself." You most likely have heard the English version of a similar idea, ecstasy. Poli, on the other hand, is essentially just the Greek word for city. You've most likely heard this in the term "metropolis"

So, yes, I may have ended up calling my town Ecstasy City. Is it a bit on the nose? Absolutely. That being said, there's a deeper meaning to my choice to use a greek word here. Sadly, I can't share why yet, as it might spoil future plot points.

(I don't speak Greek and I have limited time for research. If I've messed up any of my linguistics, sorry!)

Wow, that's a lot of words just to end up saying "Hey I named the town." How about I actually talk about the chapter, huh?

I'm really happy with my decision to add a massive forest preserve nearby. This wasn't always the plan, but I really enjoy adding unique elements to my world, and I think it's very in-character for a magical campus to inexplicably have a huge forest preserve just hanging out in the middle the city. It also gives me a lot of room to play with future plot points, if I want.

Like, if I want a monster to escape campus and run away, but I also want to pretend like no one has seen it, it would be really easy to just say it's hiding somewhere in the forest preserve.

Also, it's MY fantasy world, and I'm going to give it lush, walkable parks that are freely available to the public.

With the stage now set, it's finally time to check in on our characters again! We open with Amara and Nick leaving Palesa's makeshift hut, and they've just finished refilling Amara's Hellfire Tank. I honestly had a lot of fun teasing at what they did, mostly because I think it's more fun this way. Sure, it could have been a sex scene, but I think that would take away from the flow of the narrative. We're building up to the big fight, now isn't the time to dig into the specifics of how great Amara is at sucking people off.

They meet up with the rest of the group, and then we check in with Imani. She's been hovering around in the background for a while, though we've never really gotten a firm understanding of what her deal is.

In all honesty, I'm a huge fan of writing characters like this. She's very similar to Naomi: a character that serves a specific plot point, but clearly has their own agenda. Not only does this flesh out the world by adding new characters, but it also creates more possible futures for anyone trying to predict where the book is going. I've seen a few people guess that Imani would end up being the big bad, that she was manipulating the coven from the inside, waiting for a chance to strike.

That's not the case, obviously, but I think it's fun when I can throw accidental red herrings into the mix.

Here, we get to see a little bit more of what her deal is. It turns our her mentor, Elijah, has been dropping subtle hints about Davenport, and Imani has been trying to piece things together. In my head, she's been distrustful of the Headmistress for a while, but that was a plot detail that I wasn't able to fit on the page.

On a meta level, Imani filled a very important role. See, when the coven first appeared, I wanted there to be some tension about Amara and Vee's identities. They need to hide who they are from the Coven, and that means they're spending even more time together.

However, the coven is pretty smart, and it would be easy to expect that they have detection magic. How on Earth am I going to explain how no one finds out about Amara?

Well, the girl the coven put in charge of all the students, Imani, has an agenda of her own. She figured out Amara's identity almost immediately, but had her own reasons for hiding it from the Coven Heads. Since she didn't know who to trust, and Elijah was hinting that something fucky was going on, she decided to keep it under wraps. After all, in the world of magic, exploiting magical creatures and stealing their magic is probably something that a lot of people attempt, so in my head, it makes sense for Imani to err on the side of magical creatures in a scenario where she knows the coven is up to no good.

Plus, I really like the idea that witches try to be arbiters of balance, which sometimes means siding with humanity, and sometimes means siding with magical creatures.

Anyways, Imani then gives Tessa a sweet new knife. This was something I wrestled with, as part of me thought it was strange to create such a strong item and then have a random background character create it, but ultimately I decided I didn't mind it. The big reason was that Imani studied Tessa's knife earlier in the book, and this new knife is based on that design. Tessa was still the reason this new knife got made, and it also makes sense that the Coven's young Scribe, who's job is literally studying runes, would be the person to make it.

It also gives me a chance to write the following:

“Don’t you mean… a Witch Blade?” Chloé asked, briefly reappearing next to Tessa while making finger guns.

Chloé is best girl and I will not apologize for this.

However, other than making a terrible joke, this also gives me chance to do the most fun thing all Urban Fantasy stories get to do: reveal magic nonsense to stunned bystanders. Imani knew about Amara, yes, but not Chloé or Vee. I had SO much fun writing her reaction to both of those reveals.

We then end the chapter with another round of witch blade puns. Not only is this perfect writing, and objectively hilarious humor, but it also does one really important thing. It gives all the girls a moment to establish their dynamic as a group again. There's no more distrust, no more manipulation, no more anger tearing people apart. For the first time since early Book One, they're finally all on the same page and friends again.

Which means it's time for a big awesome fight.

Choreographing this fight was HARD. Veteran readers, especially those who keep up with my Reflections, will know that I always feel nervous when I write fight scenes. They got a lot better after I wrote Blood & Chlorophyll, which ended with a series of dungeon crawling adventures, but even with that extra experience, I never feel 100% confident in my fight writing.

However, going into this scene, I had very lofty ambitions. I wanted this to feel like an exciting climax to the last four books of build up. I wanted all four girls to have big, triumphant moments that highlight their strengths, and I wanted to write four unique scenes from each of their POVs that felt interestingly different. I also needed the fight itself to feel like it was evolving and changing over time; if a bunch of blows get traded back and forth, but nothing changes overall, that's boring.

So, what do I do?

Well, we start with a somewhat tense scene in which Vee, disguised as Elizabeth, talks with Davenport to set up a trap. This gives us a chance to see Davenport's side of things, and explain her motivations a little bit. Then, after Tessa fails to ambush Gautier, we set our first stakes: Davenport and Gautier have already finished some of their siphons. They have extreme to far more magic than usual, and I wanted to make it clear that there's no beating them in this state.

So, I start in Vee's POV. She's the perfect character to set the stakes for the battle, as she's smart enough to know when to attack and when to defend. She has amazing defensive abilities, with all her barriers, and her inner monologue can explain the goal of the fight: survive long enough for the other Coven Heads to dismantle the siphons.

However, in order to make the fight feel chaotic, I also made sure to sneak in moments where we see Amara in the background, or Chloé shows up to give Vee brief moments of intangibility.

After Vee's POV, we jump to Chloé. She's also really well suited to defense, as she can basically make her friends invincible for short periods of time. Her status as a ghost also means her scene is more analytical. She's never being actively threatened, she's simply trying to keep an eye on her friends and step in whenever they're being overwhelmed. She gives Amara and Vee chances to attack on occasion, and she confirms that Tessa is hiding at the edge of the clearing while Gautier and Davenport are at their most dangerous.

Gautier then throws a fucking car at Tessa as soon as she finds her, but Chloé can't get there in time. Thankfully, Amara jumps in and fucking catches a car with her bare hands.

Which I teased was going to happen!

“NICK! This is incredible, thank you so much!” When she finally put him down, he gasped for air. “Oh, uh, sorry. I don't think I know my own strength…”

“Well, in your defense, it's been growing exponentially for the last few weeks.” He coughed again while rolling out his shoulders. “Maybe we should start tracking it? Who knows, you might be throwing cars around by Christmas.”

(Suddenly A Succubus, Book One, Chapter Eight)

Want to guess what the in-universe date is during this final fight?

December 24th.

Cards on the table, the final chapters happening literally on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day was a complete accident, but I'm SO excited about it. It literally couldn't have worked better if I'd planned it.

Anyways, now that Amara's caught her first car, Chloé comes up with a plan. She's going to create a distraction and give Tessa a chance to leap in with her magic-sealing knife. I'm really happy with this moment for a bunch of reasons. One, Chloé gets to use her ability to see magic to good use. Two, it shows off the way she thinks, which is much more tactical than how our usual POV character, Amara, thinks. We get to see just how valuable it is having a strategist on the team. Three, it gives Chloé a chance to flex her amazing abilities.

Then we jump to Tessa's POV!

Tessa was the hardest person to fit into the fight. She's the weakest of the bunch, as she's just a normal human with a bit of telekinesis. Sure, I've established that she's not terrible at hand-to-hand combat, but Gautier only needed a few seconds to beat her under the Science Building, and that was without siphons.

Unfortunately, no matter which way I looked at it, I had to make Tessa sit out for the first portion of the fight.

Honestly, I'm not upset about this. It made the earlier fight easier to mange on my end, and it stressed that there's value in recognizing when a character's skill set doesn't match the challenge. If I'd gone out of my way to give Tessa something to do, there's a chance it could backfire and feel forced, like I'm shoving her away to sit at the kiddie table during Thanksgiving.

So, I made the decision to have her wait on standby until the siphons were offline. Then, after Chloé swoops in with her idea, she finally gets to go for a ride on Amara's back, which is yet another thing I teased in Book One. However, last chapter, she also made a joke about bringing a saddle, and I just couldn't resist having Amara conjure one up for her here.

In my opinion, Tessa and Amara have a really interesting dynamic, and I'm really excited to show how it evolves in the coming books. Early on, their friendship was defined by Tessa being the horny one and always trying to get with Amara. This was true even after the transformation started for a while, but in recent books, things have changed. Amara is much more impulsive, and much more sexual, which used to be defining traits of Tessa's. As the story continues, they're going to end up having a lot in common, and I'm excited to discover their new dynamic once things calm down.

Still, I was able to hint at what that dynamic might be here. I love the entire exchange they have while flying through the air, it truly feels like a conversation no other two people would be having.

After leaping off Amara and finally managing to stab Gautier, we finally get our dramatic showdown in the shallows under the waterfall.

I had so much fun giving Tessa this chance to finally strike back at this woman who, presumably, has been torturing her for years. In my opinion, this is one of the more cinematic moments of the fight, and I love watching the two of them bicker while constantly scrapping for every inch of ground they can get.

Plus, I do the really tropey thing where the characters opt to not use magic to make the fight more interesting. It was important to me that this fight not only be a practical defeat, but an emotional one. I wanted Tessa to finally show Gautier that, without magic, she's nothing. Simone is just a bully who lucked into immense magical power, and hopefully it's satisfying seeing that get stripped away from her. She clearly thinks magic is everything, and accuses Tessa of only winning because she's using magic, but that's not the case, and that was so much fun to write.

In the end, it's time to jump back to Amara's POV.

Y'all ever see The Avengers? (I promise there's a point here) That's a fun movie, but it's got an interesting structure. At a certain point, once the big battle at the end begins, the movie is effectively over. There's no more character growth, there's no risk of the good guys losing. The point of the movie pivots completely, and the last 20-30 minutes of the film is just "Let's watch all our character be awesome."

That's what I was hoping to channel throughout this entire fight, but it comes through especially clear in this final POV.

We get cute banter between Vee and Amara. We see Gautier fall in the background, and then all four girls team up to take down Gautier. We get cool combo moves! Vee keeps Tessa safe with her barriers, Chloé keeps Amara safe by turning her intangible, and they pincer the Headmistress! We see Amara firing off hellfire artillery to cover Vee's route, and she proves she's fighting with more intent by snuffing out flames that Davenport tries to redirect!

Then, everything culminates in the moment Davenport tries to flee.

No one is fast enough to get there in time, and Amara knows there's only one option left.

She's considered teleporting a few times in this book, but this was most relevant in her last fight with Davenport. She identified that, if she could teleport, she would have been able to take down Davenport much easier, but her rage clouded her thoughts and she wasn't able to make it happen.

In my original draft, this plot point was going to be much bigger, but I'm happy with the way it turned out here.

No longer clouded with rage, Amara casts her thoughts back to the opening chapters, when Evelyn appeared and told her how teleporting works. We hear flashes of the explanation, we see Amara putting those tips into practice, and it all leads up to this:

“Above all else, you have to know who you are.”

Vee’s face flashed through her thoughts, her beautiful eyes illuminated by the dawning sun as they confessed their love for each other.

“Show them the beautiful soul I know you have. As long as we have each other, anything is possible.”

This was the most important part to me. I wanted to stress, above all else, that Amara draws strength and inspiration from her loved ones. This isn't a children's cartoon where friendship can literally create laser beams, though. I've shown in this very book that Amara could be strong enough to rip her enemies in half, but that's not what matters. My goal here, in this exact moment, was to show the effect that Vee has on Amara. She turns to Vee for strength, hope, and inspiration.

And then she fucking teleports! For the first time!!

We then get a quick little follow up scene where she feels hints of her prior emotions. This part was important for me because I didn't want her anger to feel like something that just gets solved. Much like in Book Two, when she was dealing with guilt and grief over nearly killing Vee, I wanted to show a long, protracted internal battle of Amara trying to overcome those emotions.

Here, I've been building up her anger issues for four whole books. It can't be done just because she kissed a girl about it.

To me, the choice to not give in to those instincts, to turn away from the immense power that is very much within your reach, is more impactful if it's a decision you are constantly making, day in and day out.

And, yet again, Vee's presence helps ground her. Amara locks eyes with Vee, sees all the hope in her eyes, and chooses not to cave to her more aggressive instincts. Instead, she displays intense, fine control over her hellfire, using it to hurt Davenport as little as possible while still taking away her ability to do magic.

Then, at long last, I get to be a cheesy bitch. I get to make all four of my girls turn to the camera, say something cool, strike a fun pose, and be badasses. I was laughing the entire time I wrote the end of this scene, because it's just SO corny. I love it.

It was the perfect way to end this fight scene, and I hope you all had as much fun reading this as i did writing it!

This wasn't the last chapter, however. Unlike all the prior books, we're not ending the book on the book climactic battle. So, what else needs to happen? Well, there's a lot of cleanup, obviously, but I've got some fun ideas in mind. I can't wait to share the end of the arc with you!

Nyx ♥