Centuries of Sin : Book III

Extended Author's Note

I am sharing this as a chapter because it is way too long for an author's note.

It's not a chapter, it's just me talking about the way I am feeling about where to take this story, and how I feel about it etc, so if you want to skip it then feel free. I just didn't have another way of sharing this. Chapter 10 will still be out today.

I sat and cried for an hour today. It isn’t the first time I have cried over my writing, but today it was different.

I started writing this nearly a year ago. I kept getting those silly adverts for really embarrassing Omegaverse type things with awful spelling and grammar, and I thought it would be fun to try and write my own version.

I had no idea where to start, I had no idea what to write about, and I have never read this type of thing outside of those adverts.

When I finally started writing it was for the stupidest reason. My friend made a post on i********: about stripping the wallpaper in the old house she was renovating. In the post, she described it as “ridding the house of a century of sin”.

I thought that would be an awesome title for a book. It sounds kind of cool, it’s mysterious, it makes it (sort of) clear it’s going to have adult content, and it’s different to the other titles books like this tend to go for. If I renamed it now as something like ‘Alpha outcast’s forbidden bond’ it might get more reads, but if you wanted to recommend it to someone they would end up having to search through a thousand books with almost exactly the same title.

I didn’t know what the plot was going to be about. I just had this vague idea of what some of the tropes in this genre are: forbidden love, rich/powerful guy who doesn’t want/can’t be with the main character, a main character who has some special undiscovered power, a happy ending. That was what this was supposed to be. I wanted to take that formula and do something different with it, but that was the basic formula I planned to use.

I started playing with ideas of the things I really hated in the ads that inspired me to do this, and turning them into something different. Things like what if she’s the one with the jealous ex? What if they don’t want to settle down and have a family? What if he’s not actually this amazing perfect person?

As I kept writing the characters kind of came to life, and things I had planned or expected to happen ended up taking a different direction.

In the outline I gave when book 2 was signed, my original idea was that an Alpha from another pack offers to live with them if he can mate Francesca, and she agrees to do that if he will take Selene as well because she is in love with her, and wants her to be happy, and sees it as the only way they can be together. Then I got to that point in the story, and I thought ‘what the f**k was I thinking? She would never do that, even if she loved Selene.’

Book 2 was supposed to end with her telling Sawyer she knows he’s using drugs but that she doesn’t care. But I sat to write the chapter, and it just didn’t pan out that way. That isn’t how those two characters interacted when I actually put them in that situation.

The reason I was crying today is that for the first time, I actually have an idea of how the main plot is going to end. 

I can’t tell you how long it will be, and I know that things will probably change as I actually write it, but I have finally reached the point in the actual story where things need to happen and there needs to be a conclusion.

But it has ended up being a lot more than just ‘there is a threat, and they are the ones who are destined to resolve it’.

The kind of books I enjoy are ones like the Earth’s Children series. That is this epically long 6 book series (and every one of them is longer than my books )which took the author 30 years to write. It has a main plot that weaves through the entire thing, but the books themselves deal with what it means to be human, and the things that shape us as people. The main character goes through all these traumatic things in the very first book when she is still a child, and they are what shape her as a person for the rest of the series. In a way, the main ‘plot’ of the books doesn’t really matter. It’s about the characters and how they evolve and react to what they are going through.

When I started to care about my characters, I realized that that is the kind of book I want to write. I want to do them justice, and to reach an ending that is satisfying on an emotional/character development level rather than ‘the Mutants are dead. The End.’

Ultimately, the main plot is that these Mutants were a result of someone else’s actions a long time ago, and the characters in my books are the ones who have to right the wrongs that have been covered up for all that time.

But for me at least, it isn’t really about that at all.

It’s about how this couple who is fated and destined to be together are sometimes really toxic and need to quit making excuses for each other. It’s about the fact Sawyer would have chosen to have a normal life with Elizabeth, and he’s massively screwed up by something reminding him that can never happen, and by the fact she isn’t really upset by it on the same level. It’s about how Selene is more than an Omega, she’s a person who has her own hopes and dreams and at this point, she feels like she has been let down by the man she idolized.

I finally see how the main plot is going to end. I always knew that they will eventually face these things, and they will defeat them somehow - now I can finally see how that is going to happen.

But what do I do after that? Because I’m not really sure of where to go when the main plot is done.

‘They defeat the evil supernatural thing which is their destiny to fight’ is supposed to be the ending, right? That’s the logical place for it to end.

But I don’t feel like it is the right place for it to end, and I don’t feel like I am ready to leave this world I created behind.

It doesn’t matter so much to me if that part of the plot is done if the characters have not finished their own journeys.

Sawyer can’t have any sort of happy ending before he knows what he actually wants from life. He’s never actually thought about that - he was raised to think he could only ever be Alpha. People treated him that way. Then he spent years thinking he would be happy as long as he could be with Elizabeth, only for the reality to be different.

For a while, I thought he was supposed to end up as Alpha with Francesca as co-Alpha. The two last members of their family leading together, and balancing each other out. But the moment I took him out of the pack, I realized that isn’t the right ending. Elizabeth won’t ever be happy there, and neither will he.

At the moment he is finally getting over things, and he is really happy with Selene. He’s spoken about how he loves her in a platonic way before, and I think that it is definitely as more than a friend. Which is really confusing to write about without it bordering on emotionally cheating on Elizabeth.

I have this scene that keeps playing out in my head where they are in bed together (not s****l) and he finally realizes how badly he has f****d up. He’s crying, and he sort of clings to her desperately and she hugs him and lets him cry and get all this emotion out the way he couldn’t with Elizabeth because he was keeping everything buried. She’s a healer, and I think that she sees he needs help healing emotionally right now and that he really needs to get out of the situation he is in. Elizabeth isn’t that kind of person, and she never will be.  But I don’t want to feel like he is using Selene, even though he needs someone like that in his life. Something has to change in that dynamic for all three of those people to be happy and to not end up with anyone using anyone else, but I am not sure what that change should be yet. I may not have figured that out by the time the main plot with the Mutants is done, and I wouldn’t feel right just saying ‘they all moved away and lived as a group and she never moved on from Robin so she never looked for another relationship and focused on raising her son’ if that isn’t what the characters are telling me is right when I am sat writing it.

So what I am trying to figure out right now is whether I just end it where the plot was supposed to end (bad guys defeated, everyone can be happy now, yay!) or whether I keep writing about this group of people I sometimes love and sometimes hate, but always care about, until their stories as individuals are over.

I know that if I did another book in the same world to do that it would under a different title, but I am not sure how to approach it. Do I just follow them in their day-to-day lives until it feels right to leave them? Do I come up with some other threat and pit them against that rather than letting them just have a happy ending and leaving it at that? Do I do more of the flashback/back story things like the chapter with Selene and Robin so you can see why their relationships might take turns that I feel are right but can’t explain without offering that kind of information?

It’s a weirdly complex set of things to be thinking about, and I hope that you don’t mind me sharing. I just wanted to get this all out because I am conscious that some people probably just want the plot to end, and others will be hurt if I leave this world with an ending that does it no justice.