So...yeah...I didn't intend for that to be two posts, but the sucker's long...something like 13,000 words.  That is the longest single chapter I've ever written; it's longer than a lot of the little stories I've written.

That is one of the hardest things I've written.  Sex is hard to write in general; you really have to put yourself there emotionally and physically to make it come out well and it can be quite frustrating at times, especially when you don't have a SO to help you work that out ;-).
Add to that the fact that I wrote every little kiss and caress down; I generally don't do that.  Usually I just write kind overview descriptions for a lot of it:  "Their clothes melted away as their passion heightened."  That kind of thing.  But it was important in this case; this is literally the climax of the story and what they're doing effects what's going on with the rest of the characters.  My initial concept was to have what was happening with Raven and the creature match beat for beat with what was going on with Robin and Starfire, but it wound up being a lot of the creature growling and Raven gasping, so I tightened it up and just hit the high points.  

I wanted the sex to be realistic; wonderful but still nerve-wracking and even a little silly, but at the same time it needed to be touched with magic; somewhat fairy-tale like.  I think (I hope!) I found a good balance between the two.

It took me the better part of a month to write just this chapter.  And I don't mean a month of thinking about it and telling myself I should work on it (I do that way too much), I mean a month of evenings and weekends at the computer outlining and typing and editing.  I got a lot of it done at Media*West this past May. (aquarius_1977 can tell you; that's all I babbled about that weekend.  Hey, weren't you going to do a beta on this for me?)  I wrote the sex first; I wanted that as a structure to build the rest of the scene around.  I did it pretty much straight through; I remember thinking at times when I took breaks or had to stop, "Well, I've gotten Starfire out of her top!"  or "I've gotten all of their clothes off!"  Looking back on it, I could have become very clinical about it, but I never did.  It was kind of magical for me in a way, too.

And I'm actually pretty proud of how the last bit with Raven turned out; I think I got across how she was being taken along for the ride, and this was just blowing her mind because she generally supresses her emotions and now to suddenly feel everything...to have her almost literally explode I thought was a good symbol.

In re-reading this just now, I see lots of little tweaks I'd like to do to it, but overall, I'm pretty proud of it.  I think I achieved pretty much what I wanted to.  What did you think of it?

There's two more chapters left...and one more big secret to reveal...

Soon: Chapter 30: Afterglow