HELEN UNLEASHED: LET THE REWRITES BEGIN!
by Kristina Makansi
Re-envisioning Book 2 of the Pantheon League—from the beginning.
I can finally announce the title of my current WIP! Helen Unleashed is Book 2 of the Pantheon League Series and follows on the heels of Nemesis in Love. To say I’m excited about it is an understatement. A cover reveal is forthcoming! Soonish. And right now, the target publication date is December 2. YIKES!
Back in June I sent the manuscript out to my trusted Beta Readers and I’ve now received their feedback. It was good news! (Mostly.) First, it’s immensely gratifying to get feedback like this:
I think the most important thing to share is that after I read this, I was sad that I didn't have the next book already!
I'm kinda hooked and can't wait for the next.
Better than my beta read of Nemesis!
Loved it. When can I read the next one?
That’s all fine and good, but praise like that doesn’t help make the next version of a story better. Luckily, my Beta Readers understand that constructive feedback is critical. And one thing they all agreed on was that I started out with too much back story and not enough punch. After pondering (considering, digesting) their comments, I agreed.
I did love my original Chapter 1, and I spent a lot of time crafting it. (When I say original, I mean v.8.2.7 that I sent to beta readers, but why quibble?) Ultimately, however, I agreed that it failed an essential test: It didn’t immediately grab readers and pull them into the story.
A great first chapter has several jobs. It must:
Set the tone, mood, and reader expectations From the first lines, a reader should be able to tell what type of novel they have in their hands. Is it wry and sarcastic or earnest and straightforward? Is it a hard-boiled police procedural or an aromatic cozy set in a bakery? A spicy romantasy with dragons or a closed-door contemporary romance? Of course, the cover should reflect the genre too, but the first chapter must set the tone for what’s coming next.
Put the reader in the novel’s world (i.e., time and place) Using the senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and internal body awareness—an author can create a fully imagined world relaying information about the time and the setting with intriguing details as experienced by the main characters.
Introduce the main character(s) Introduce the main character(s) by revealing things about who they are, not by telling the reader who they are. The first chapter should reveal enough to intrigue the reader and keep them turning the pages. Readers should be able to see the world through the main characters’ eyes and begin to understand why they should care about them.
Set up the problem to be confronted Every novel involves a problem/question that must be resolved by the end. Who is the murderer? How will the pandemic be resolved? Will the monster be defeated? When will the enemies become lovers? If the author does a good job of setting the problem/question up, readers will be eager to find the solution to the problem and the answer to the question. And they’ll keep devouring the words.
Inciting incident Not every book needs a dead body on page one. Or a car chase. Or a gun on the mantle. But the best opening chapters will have some "inciting incident" with an element of intrigue, that hints at the heart of problem/question to be confronted. Maybe the kid spending time in their room grounded looks out the window to see that the new family moving in next door has a kid their age. Maybe an article in the newspaper catches the protagonist’s eye because it mentions an old friend. Maybe the doorbell rings and a strange package is left on the front porch. The inciting incident doesn’t need to arrive on the page, guns blaring, but it does need to be there.
My first effort failed the test, so it’s time for rewrites.
It’s dangerous for a writer to get too attached to a particular word, sentence, or passage, and I think that’s what I’d done. Writers often say we must be willing to kill our darlings. In this case, my darling was already dead. Or at least, the first sentence was about someone being dead.
“Nomad is dead.”
That was it. The first sentence. I thought it was impactful. That it was intriguing. That it would make the reader ask, Who the hell is Nomad and how did he die?
I was wedded to it. Clinging to it with all ten fingers and ten toes. But I decided it had to go. Not because it was bad (IT’S NOT. IT’S ACTUALLY GREAT!), but because it didn’t work. It didn’t focus on the central relationship in the book—namely, the budding, slow-burn romance between the two main characters, Mateo Cárdenas and Helen Cross.
I kept thinking of the first sentence in terms of one of my all-time favorite books and all-time favorite series: namely The Game of Kings, Book One of the Lymond Chronicles, a six-book series that opens with the classic line: “Lymond is back.”
I loved that line and definitely had it front and center in my mind when I was writing Helen Unleashed. I remember reading a blog about the Game of Kings which sums up how many feel about the book. I searched for it and am quoting a passage here:
RANDOM SCOTTISH PEOPLE: Lymond is back.
READERS: And we’ll have to wait hundreds of pages to find out why.
LYMOND: is incomprehensible
PIG: is drunk
READERS WHO ARE NEW TO THE SERIES: wtf?
READERS WHO HAVE READ THE WHOLE SERIES: You’ll learn.
https://rebekahsreadingsandwatchings.com/2025/07/17/the-game-of-kings-1-of-the-lymond-chronicles/
So, I was going for a “Lymond is back” vibe, but it appears I am no Dorothy Dunnett (and I didn’t have any drunk pigs in chapter one, more’s the pity), so it was back to the drawing board for me.
Mateo and Helen are both people of action. Smart, tough, savvy, world-traveled and, of course, sexy as hell. Nomad—the dead guy—on the other hand, is an old friend of Mateo’s. That fact is a central thread of the story and finding out how Nomad came to be in such a state drives the action of the plot. But it’s not the central relationship. Nomad’s not the star of the show. Nomad is the central character driving the action, even though he's apparently dead. I guess it's a matter of what theme is most important—the romance or the intrigue of the death?
My very own Procreate character art: Helen Cross and Mateo Cárdenas. (PS. I’m still learning…)
So, I had to recalibrate.
One of the beta readers’ favorite scenes (they also all agreed on this) was the first car chase. It happens in chapter 8. Two readers suggested I start with that scene. But I didn’t think that scene worked as the beginning. I needed to build up to it, and I wanted the story to begin back home in Bigelow, Arizona, the fictional setting of the book. So, I thought, why not add another action scene? Right out of the gate?
Here’s the original first section of chapter 1 sent to the Beta Readers:
Nomad is dead.
It’d been over six years since Mat Cárdenas had seen his best friend from the Teams, and now he was dead. It didn’t seem real. Of course, you didn’t become a Navy SEAL without confronting your own mortality, but it didn’t matter. Nomad was dead and Mat couldn’t wrap his mind around it.
They’d gone through BUD/S together. Puked in the sand, slept under the stars, fast-roped out of helicopters, spent countless hours underwater and on the firing range, and fought side by side for over six years. And laughed. Oh, shit, how they’d laughed. Mat had his three best friends back home who were like brothers to him, but Nomad was something special.
When Mat first met him, the guy had nothing. No car. No money. No family, except the lowlife uncle he’d lived with after his parents disappeared, a man who's only redeeming qualities were that he lived on a ramshackle farm, that it had an old barn with half a dozen cats and a couple of stray dogs, and that he spent most of his time passed out on the couch giving Nomad the run of the place. The asshole had died of liver disease the week before SQT graduation but probably wouldn’t have shown up for the ceremony even if he’d still been breathing.
On the other hand, what Nomad did have was a do-or-die attitude, a joke about everything, a brain that just could quit working, and the steely nerves of a first-rate sniper. And he’d had Mat. And Mat had always had Nomad’s six.
Until Mat walked into their CO’s office and ripped up the loyalty oath he was expected to sign when he re-upped. Until Mat walked away from the Navy. Away from SEAL Team X. Away from Nomad.
Mat had tried to talk his buddy into quitting with him. Told him there’d be a place for him in Bigelow. Tried to convince him that Cy and Mason and Brooks were even better than all the guys in the Teams put together. But Nomad said no. Said he’d feel like he was taking advantage. Said he’d found a family with the rest of the guys on the Team. He was getting a steady paycheck. Wasn’t dependent on anyone but himself. And now, more than ever, the Navy needed good men to keep the government from doing anything spectacularly stupid.
And now he was dead.
Suicide.
At least that’s what Fender told him when he called out of the blue on New Year’s Eve to let Mat know about Nomad’s memorial service. Which was weird because Fender had made it crystal clear he thought Mat was a quitter and a pussy and a traitor and if he ever saw him alive and breathing again, he’d put him in the ground himself. Fender was a lousy guitarist despite the fact he was always practicing his riffs and writing lyrics—and singing them—during downtime, but he was even lousier at subtlety. And for all that he sounded torn up over Nomad’s death, it was clear that, for some reason, the main thing he wanted was Mat in D.C.
Here’s the re-written version…I still didn’t want to give up my first line. So, I didn’t. I continue to cling to it, tooth and nail. (For now.)
Nomad is dead.
Mateo Cárdenas couldn’t get Fender’s words out of his head. Suicide. No way Mat believed that. Nomad would never kill himself. Never.
“You okay?” Helen Cross stopped cleaning her sunglasses and looked over at him. She’d learned to take the Arizona sun as seriously as she’d always taken the Egyptian sun. Sunrise was still a few minutes away, but heading east out of town meant that when it crested the ridge in the distance, it would be blinding.
“Fine.” He was not, in fact, fine. He was miles from fine. Something was seriously wrong, and he intended to find out what the fuck it was.
“You look like you’re trying to strangle the steering wheel.”
He relaxed his grip and glanced up at the rearview mirror. “Mierda!”
“What?”
“Behind us.”
She checked the side mirror just as the worn pavement gave way to dirt. Or mud, rather. The white SUV they'd clocked pulling out behind them from the Bigelow Hotel parking garage was now right on their tail. Headed down the deserted road that dead ended at the private Bigelow Airfield. “Friend of yours?”
“He's not local.”
“You sure? Maybe he was having breakfast at the coffee shop, not staying at the hotel. Maybe he’s got a plane parked at the airfield. Or maybe he works there.”
He gave her a quick side-eye. “I know everyone who works at the airfield. And everyone who keeps a plane there. Besides, that’s the latest Rivian R1Xs, and there isn’t a soul in town that drives one of those.”
“You know the kind of vehicle everyone in Bigelow drives?”
“And I know no one drives an R1Xs because I’ve been itching for one since it hit the market. Besides, that SUV is so clean it looks like it just drove off the lot.”
“Maybe he’s a fastidious sort,” Helen said, keeping her eyes on the vehicle in the mirror. “Or he’s got one of those car wash memberships.”
“We don’t even have a snowplow, let alone a fancy car wash franchise. Besides, even if we did, who the hell is anal enough to go to the car wash before”—he checked his watch— “seven a.m.? Besides Mason, I mean.”
“Mason's that bad?”
“You can eat off his bathroom floor. Not that I would, but you could.”
“I’ll pass.”
Mat snorted. “Too high and mighty?”
“That’s me. Ms. High and Mighty herself.” Helen bent down to pull the SIG from her ankle holster.
As she moved, he caught a hint of her perfume or soap or whatever. Something light. Floral. Exotic, even. He liked it. He swallowed hard as his fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “I'm betting he came in before yesterday’s snow and didn’t leave the hotel.”
She glanced at her side mirror again. “So, why’s he on our bumper flashing his lights at us like he wants to pull over for a chat.”
Mat glanced at the rearview mirror again. “Yeah, not happening.”
“You think Fender sent him? That it’s something about Nomad?”
Mat shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense. He’s the one who called and asked me to go to D.C. for Nomad’s funeral. And a face-to-face afterward.”
They both cursed as the Rivian bumped into them, sending them lurching forward. “What the hell?” Helen unclasped her seatbelt. “If this connard wanted to have a conversation, why didn’t he corner you in the hotel?”
Mat avoided a rut in the road filled with muddy slush. “The hotel is my territory? Maybe he thinks the middle of nowhere is neutral. A safer place for a confrontation.”
“This feels like someone who wants to make damn sure you don't have a face-to-face with Fender. The gun he’s waving at us is a definite tell.”
“Seriously?” Mat checked his side mirror again. Sure enough, the driver was waving a pistol around like a fucking flag. Who the hell was this guy? The truck lurched forward again. He let out a sigh. “Well, that’s just rude.”
“And stupid,” Helen said as she powered down the passenger-side window and twisted in her seat.
“Hold on.” He gunned it, spraying dirty slush up behind them just as he yanked the wheel and spun the truck so he came up behind the now-not-so-pristine Rivian. Helen was already leaning out the window, her SIG sending neat little “Welcome to Bigelow, Asshole” messages into the visitor’s back tires.
Mat had seen her at the firing range plenty, and he'd seen her in action. She was good. Every movement smooth as silk. Every shot placed just so. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling as the Rivian swerved, hit the wide, slush-filled rut that doubled as the road’s shoulder, and bounced to a stop nose deep in the spiny branches of a jumping cholla. He glanced over at Helen, half expecting her to be blowing on the end of her SIG's barrel like some Old West gunfighter. Hand on the door handle, ready to jump out, she glanced at him and winked. There was no use ignoring it. Mat liked every damn thing about Helen Cross.
So, what do you think? Is this better or not? Would you keep reading?
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