Vaught - WIP - Chapters 18-20(Ending) (Patreon)

Lydia's fate revealed. Elizabeth, Abby, and Greg embrace the consequences of all they've done.  And loose ends are tied up.

Hi all.  The first draft is in the bank at ~110,000 words.  It is admittedly rough in more than a few spots, but the meat of it is there.  And, worst case scenario, there's a lot of fucking, so it delivers on that at least.  From here, I'll be making some initial quick revisions in the next few days so that I can give it to an alpha reader for some notes from fresh eyes.  I also love to hear any feedback you all want to give, and you can always DM me if you want to keep it non-public.  I'll then do the heavier editing to produce the second draft which will likely become the advance reader copy (ARC) which will be posted here some time in the next week or two.

Two other things to mention before I go into my thoughts behind the content of the last few chapters.   First, patreon's notifications aren't the most reliable in the world, so I may not immediately see a message or notification.  But, I do usually check the site at least once a day, so I'll see any activity, notification or not, eventually and I try to respond right away.  Second, I've added another file to the Series Compiles folder in the dropbox.  Shifter City Stories #1-7, includes two (numbers #6 and #7) which had evaded getting posted on this feed mainly due to my erratic record keeping.

Now then, if you'd like to read the ending of Vaught with virgin eyes, now would be the time to do so before I taint it with my thoughts on what I've written.

I mentioned before how I've tried to inject some breaths into these last few chapters.  Five chapters of sex, hopping from one pairing to another can get desensitizing.  In 18, things come to an abrupt and intentionally harsh stop to achieve one of these "breaths".  I think it works out and lets the focus center in on Lydia/Greg without distracting too much with how the others are reacting.  Lydia also gets the most fringe changes.  Initially I had a more in depth explanation of how and why she gets those, but I trimmed it down to a few casual sentences to keep things from bogging down.  

19 is the final payoff for Elizabeth and Greg.  I tried to walk a line between having Elizabeth retain some of her core identity while also letting her submit fully to Greg.  It may need some bolstering in the spice to warrant it as a payoff to the primary antagonistic relationship in the story. It's tricky though because ultimately these two have always been attracted to one another, and Elizabeth's derision and judgemental attitude has been thoroughly disassembled by this point in the story.  If, by comparison, Elizabeth had been the first sex scene "after midnight" then it could have been much more brutal and gratuitous, but that would have deflated the rest of the scene by taking out one of the main POVs.

20 is an odd duck.  I needed to return to Maddock/Alice if only to find out where they disappeared off to.  Leaving them as the heirs to Greg/Abby makes sense to me, but I may need to establish Alice's cunning a bit more explicitly in the her sleuthy chapters.  I think Maddock plays out well.  I had also considered an epilogue that gave a glimpse at a Christmas ball at the Vaught Family Dairy (a subsidiary of Milktec Industries).  People from Farrs Post coming by to meet and mingle with the scantily dressed hucows, most of whom are four months pregnant.  

I'll have more to say when the full draft is put together, but in the meantime, happy reading!