Book two of Helpless is currently being worked on by my editing and designing team at Palmetto! Once the cover is complete, I’ll be doing a cover reveal! Along with an estimate of when the book will be ready to buy! Thank you all for your support and if you haven’t read book one, head on over to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and get your copy!
Cheyenne R. Stoddard is a young author born in 1996. She is from a small town in Ohio. Her series Helpless has been in the works for almost nine years. Before publishing, she only shared her work with those closest to her. Cheyenne had her first child when she was eighteen. She didn’t have the money or the time for college. She wanted to be with her son full time. Cheyenne then chose to work on and develop her writing on her own at her own pace. She excels in fiction and supernatural. Her series contains a massive amount of inclusion and topics some find difficult to discuss. She has a character for anyone and everyone. Cheyenne loves to research and study mythology and demonology. Both of which are included in her adventurous four book series. She’s a proud mother of three and a proud writer. With the love and support of her fiance, Cheyenne has finally released her years of work.
Quinn’s mistake wasn’t killing Leo Ashwood; it was bringing him back. Hands drenched in his blood, her powers brought to new heights, Quinn rushes home to Idabel, Oklahoma. Now in a cat and mouse game with a monster she created, Quinn learns fast what her powers are truly capable of. Brought together by a vision, Cecelia and Quinn are entangled in the chase of Leo Ashwood. Cecelia, a seer who is known for sticking her nose into other’s business for the better good, is now sent into a world unknown to her with no defense against the monster, her own powers, and the budding feelings for Quinn. Maggie, however, was merely at the wrong place at the wrong time and left with no other choice but to join forces. An up and coming youtube superstar struck down by sickness, her voice is both her magical survival and death wrapped in one. These three young, untrained witches will have to lean on each other if they want to survive. Navigating the world of humans, the new reality of witches, and the horror of magic, they might just make it… if they can keep their secrets to themselves
Coming April 19th 2021. Available in print from most Retailers and eBook from NineStarPress
We all know those tired clichés. It’s time to kill them. Take one of them and turn them on their heads or at least these will hopefully keep the errors out of your writing. If you think of any other way to change them up go right ahead. Happy hunting!
I shook my head, trying to clear the image. It was my imagination. There were fairy tales. Humans were not real.
Now first, I have to say, that the plot you’re able to come up with in one day is not going to be without its flaws, but coming up with it all at once, the entire story unfolds right in front of you and makes you want to keep going with it. So, where to begin?
What is your premise and basic plot? Pick your plot. I recommend just pulling one from this list. No plots are “original” so making yours interesting and complicated will easily distract from that fact, that and interesting characters. Characters will be something for you to work on another day, because this is plotting day. You’ll want the main plot to be fairly straight forward, because a confusing main plot will doom you if you want subplots.
Decide who the characters will be. They don’t have to have names at this point. You don’t even need to know who they are other than why they have to be in the story. The more characters there are the more complicated the plot will be. If you intend to have more than one subplot, then you’ll want more characters. Multiple interconnected subplots will give the illusion that the story is very complicated and will give the reader a lot of different things to look at at all times. It also gives you the chance to develop many side characters. The plot I worked out yesterday had 13 characters, all were necessary. Decide their “roles” don’t bother with much else. This seems shallow, but this is plot. Plot is shallow.
Now, decide what drives each character. Why specifically are they in this story? You can make this up. You don’t even know these characters yet. Just so long as everyone has their own motivations, you’re in the clear.
What aren’t these characters giving away right off the bat? Give them a secret! It doesn’t have to be something that they are actively lying about or trying to hide, just find something that perhaps ties them into the plot or subplot. This is a moment to dig into subplot. This does not need to be at all connected to their drive to be present in the story. Decide who is in love with who, what did this person do in the 70’s that’s coming back to bite them today, and what continues to haunt what-his-face to this very day. This is where you start to see the characters take shape. Don’t worry much about who they are or what they look like, just focus on what they’re doing to the story.
What is going to change these characters? Now this will take some thinking. Everyone wants at least a few of the characters to come out changed by the end of the story, so think, how will they be different as a result of the plot/subplot? It might not be plot that changes them, but if you have a lot of characters, a few changes that are worked into the bones of the plot might help you.
Now list out the major events of the novel with subplot in chronological order. This will be your timeline. Especially list the historical things that you want to exist in backstory. List everything you can think of. Think about where the story is going. At this point, you likely haven’t focused too much on the main plot, yeah, it’s there, but now really focus on the rising actions, how this main plot builds its conflict, then the climactic moment. Make sure you get all of that in there. This might take a few hours.
Decide where to start writing. This part will take a LOT of thinking. It’s hard! But now that you’ve got the timeline, pick an interesting point to begin at. Something with action. Something relevant. Preferably not at the beginning of your timeline - you want to have huge reveals later on where these important things that happened prior are exposed. This is the point where you think about what information should come out when. This will be a revision of your last list, except instead of being chronological, it exists to build tension.
Once you’ve gotten the second list done, you’ve got a plot. Does it need work? Probably. But with that said, at this point you probably have no idea who half your characters are. Save that for tomorrow, that too will be a lot of work.
just looked through about 700 werewolf books, good grief.
most seem to fall into two categories:
werewolf serial killer mysteries
domineering alpha romances
neither is really what I’m interested in.
here is what I’d want from the werewolf novel of my wildest dreams:
good relationships, especially friendships between packmates (lone wolves are boring)
werewolves who like being werewolves. (angsty wolves are boring)
the practical details of werewolfery: who’s got the bail money for animal control, whether anyone’s microchipped, what you pack in a bag for a night out werewolfing
the uses of werewolfery: hiring yourselves out as trackers or canine rescue, getting certified as service dogs, spending your free time at the library letting little kids read to a friendly doggie
female werewolves, and no weird gross hypermasculine alpha stuff going on in werewolf culture
queer werewolves, and no weird gross heteronormative ‘laws of nature’ stuff going on in werewolf culture
dog jokes.
The standard urban fantasy female protagonist dating a werewolf who is not an alpha. Bonus points for it being a cute beta werewolfess who thinks her girlfriend’s perpetual posturing as the ‘baddest bitch on the block’™ is the most adorable thing ever. Extra bonus points for fuzzy baby werewolves and adopted babies. (Because actual wolf packs? Exist to raise children. They’re family units, focused around rearing cubs.)
okay this is one of the cutest reblogs I’ve gotten.
imagine it
werewolves just going YES FAMILY GOOD and adopting everyone and making sure they get attention and food and understand that it’s fine to be who you are and that you’re not alone, you’re pack now
and the kids that can’t turn into wolves get to ride on the dogsleds to make sure they’re not left out during the full moon family bonding time (… you have to be an adult to pull a dogsled. mistakes have been made.)
werewolves on the PTA. werewolf den mothers. werewolf little league coaches. werewolves filling the bleachers and auditioriums and dance halls and galleries, cheering for their kids. werewolves helping kids with their homework, werewolves sewing costumes for the school play, werewolves showing kids how to change a tire
werewolves with battered kitchen tables with chewed legs. werewolves with huge family dinners. werewolves ferrying pies and casseroles and fresh baked bread back and forth between family members’ houses. werewolf extended families. massive werewolf packs that are technically only about 25% werewolf but still definitely packs
puppy teeth being left for the tooth fairy. fangs being left for the tooth fairy. cuttlebones being left for the tooth fairy. stolen teeth being left for the tooth fairy. werewolves with giant families full of kids with different needs and species.
werewolves adopting everyone. werewolves fostering everyone. werewolves who wind up with dozens of kids, all of whom are family and therefore pack.
WEREWOLVES BASED ON ACTUAL WOLF PACK BEHAVIOR INSTEAD OF BULLSHIT DOMINANCE THEORY! All the werewolf fiction I’ve read involves everything falling to shit due to infighting over who gets to be alpha like WAY TO ILLUSTRATE EXACTLY WHY THIS IDEA DOESN’T WORK. You really think wolves would be successful hunters if they were constantly getting injured and wasting energy fighting each other?!
The whole idea of “alpha” dynamics is based entirely on the behaviour of wolves in captivity! If you so much as google “wolves in captivity alpha”, you’ll get a bunch of results about why it’s not representative of actual wolf behaviour.
As it turns out, if you capture, restrain, and shove together wolves from unrelated packs, they will fight and form a hierarchy of power.
Kind of like prison. Because, functionally, the exact premise of that kind of captivity is kind of like prison.
Wolves are social animals, and they interact in the wild pretty much the same way other family-centric social animals do.
Hey, you know what another family-centric social animal we’re all familiar with is?People. Just, you know, take away the oppressive idea that one parent is the definitive and unchallengeable head of the household that most of us have lived under for so long first.
Wolves are apparently group problem-solvers, and presumably, in large packs, you’re going to get squabbling and older pack members mitigating it, just like that one patient aunt or uncle or grandparent or close family friend who is essentially a relative often does in big families.
There’s a very legitimate basis for writing werewolves as friendly, community-minded folks. If your werewolves view their human neighbours as other packs not in competition with themselves, they’re likely going to be those people that the entire neighbourhood views as very nice, but “a little overwhelming.” (And maybe a little too indulgent with their kids, according to the neighbourhood snobs.)
Your gigantic werewolf family is probably going to be a litle less threatening and overtly secretive and a little more “we’re having a barbeque, when can we expect you??? you didn’t come last week, were you sick??? we were all worried- do you not eat meat?? oh, okay, I’ll have Sophie and Thaddeus pick up some Halal burgers and we’ll scrub off the second barbeque for them and some vegetable skewers, too, does that sound good?? so when can we expect you????”
(Also: werewolves taking in queer kids and mentally ill kids and kids from broken homes even though they’re mundane because they can’t comprehend how someone could not want them. Werewolves taking in street kids.)
#…a pack of werewolves living in a huge house together like one of those huge families people sort of smile incredulously at#multiple generations#a pack occupying a trailer park because it’s near the woods and there’s a certain amount of security in having a mobile home#packs being viewed by mundanes as those eccentric families that fill the school gymnasium every time there’s an event with one of their kids#packs migrating to accomodate new packmates and encountering other packs#packs fusing to form entire communities#wolves taking in mundane street kids#werewolves#writing#urban fantasy
*SLAMS FIST ON TABLE* NOW THIS IS THE KIND OF CONTENT I WANT TO SEE
“Whoa there,” you say. “Whoa there, Pen. This looks a lot like that other thing.”
OMG! Yes it does! That’s because they are macaroni and cheese. They belong together.
Characters, after all, don’t just develop all by their lonesome. It is their journeys and experiences that prompt a person to change- or tests whether they are capable of change. I like to think that the bond between the hero’s journey and the character arc was not something that was created so much as “discovered” in a way. It’s always been there.
“Whoa there, Pen!” Some of you say again. “I have seen the Hero’s Journey before, but I’m pretty sure it said different things?”
Yes it probably did. The different points can have many names, but ultimately, they represent the same type of event. I chose this one because it is, to me, one of the less overly grand and therefore less overly confusing.
In selecting and sequencing pieces for the book, I tried to balance inspiration, frustration, and imagination - essential elements of the creative process and everyday life.
The Shape of Ideas is in bookstores May 9, in time for graduation and moments spent contemplating leaps from the high dive.
also seriously if a character isn’t white, i promise your only descriptive options aren’t food words and varying degrees of tan. it’s okay to say brown. pale brown! light brown! golden brown! medium brown! dark brown! deep brown! so many kinds of brown!
