Dead in the Kitchen

Cozy Mystery · Mild intensity · 28 chapters + epilogue · 80K novel · 1st person

Complete planning package, 121 pages: the premise, a full codex, every chapter outlined, an AI prompt for every chapter, and the whole launch kit — listing, blurb, keywords, posts, newsletter, reader magnet — already written. One buyer only. When it’s claimed, it’s gone.

Darlene Ostrowski spent thirty-four years as a 911 dispatcher in Toledo, Ohio. She never saw an emergency. She only heard them — ten thousand of them, through a headset, from a room with no windows. She learned to read tone, breath, and background noise the way other people read faces. She retired fourteen months ago. She moved to a 55+ pickleball community in the Arizona desert because that was the plan she and her husband made, and he died before they could execute it, and she didn't know what else to do with a plan.

Then the club's four-time champion collapses on court three during the Founders' Cup, and Darlene is the one who stays on the line.

The deputy calls it heatstroke. The community wants the tournament to continue. The medical examiner never ran a tox screen. But Darlene heard what Rhonda Szabo said in the thirty seconds before she lost consciousness — a name, a reference to a wristband, and a background sound she can't identify yet — and thirty-four years on the phone trained her not to let go until she knows she heard what she thinks she heard.

Before she can prove it, there's a pickleball-equipment shed she can't get into, a Borer-Kill bottle on a shelf that shouldn't be there, a chamois wristband nobody uses anymore that Rhonda refused to replace, a retired shop teacher who strings paddles and notices things in a different register than she does, a deputy who says "I appreciate your concern" in the tone that closes doors, and a killer who has been organizing the memorial table since the morning after and crying perfectly while the evidence disappears.

She's spent her entire career being present for emergencies from the other side of a phone line. That was the job. This is different. This time she's in the room.

Cozy mystery set in a competitive 55+ pickleball community in the Arizona desert during the Founders' Cup tournament. The kind of book for anyone who has ever listened hard enough to hear what wasn't being said.

WHAT’S INSIDE THIS PACKAGE

⭐️ Story Premise — high-concept pitch, elevator pitch, and Market-Matched™ analysis with dual-category positioning, full Suspense Architecture (clue ledger with solve point, red herring map, dramatic irony map, hidden timeline, fair-play audit), and competitive analysis against three comp titles

⭐️ Complete Codex — full story bible with Darlene Ostrowski and six suspects, supporting cast of 8, Saguaro Springs desert community setting with six pickleball courts and an equipment shed that holds the key to everything, 10-day tournament timeline, single first-person voice system with four example passages in Darlene's wry dispatch-trained register, fair-play concealment ledger by chapter, and series seeds for 2 future books

⭐️ Chapter-by-Chapter Outline — 28 chapters + epilogue with action beats, emotional beats, key dialogue, chapter-specific sensory details, clue plant and concealment notes per chapter, ending hooks, and word-count targets

⭐️ AI-Ready Chapter Prompts — one fully self-contained prompt for every chapter and the epilogue with complete character context, voice guidance, specific clue-planting instructions, and concealment sequencing embedded in each prompt

⭐️ Amazon Launch Kit — the listing, written: Amazon listing with categories and keywords, back cover copy, 50-word short description, and two Ideogram cover prompts with settings lines

⭐️ Reader & Promo Kit — Instagram and Facebook posts, newsletter announcement with three subject lines, reader magnet concepts, reader targeting, and series marketing

⭐️ Market-Matched™ Brief — market snapshot table, five data-backed "why this will sell" bullets, competitive positioning, seven-keyword strategy table with rationale, and full launch positioning including category recommendations, pricing strategy, and cover direction

You write the book. The listing, the blurb, the keywords, the posts, the newsletter and the reader magnet are already written.

One buyer. One story. Exclusively yours.

WHY THIS WILL SELL

→ Club Mystery is the cozy shelf's highest-performing new category — $191K/month estimated royalty volume, sales-vs-competition index of 100 — and this is the shelf's first pickleball club mystery, entering with zero direct competition

→ Sport is the #1 hobby trope in Crafts & Hobbies cozy (index 100) — pickleball has grown to ~40M U.S. players, none of them have a cozy mystery yet, and that audience skews exactly to the cozy reader profile

→ Dogs (index 100, $118K/month) outperform cats as an animal trope — Biscuit the retired racing greyhound delivers this with a visual hook no standard lab or golden retriever can match

→ The Thursday Murder Club ecosystem dominates the top 6 of the cozy top 100 — this package enters with direct comp-author adjacency, a retirement-community ensemble, and a fair-play puzzle in the same register

→ Jealousy as motive is rising (+3 index positions) with thin shelf representation — this package positions ahead of the trend

→ Series architecture built in — 98% of cozy top-20 titles are series; this standalone is fully extensible with two future book premises seeded in the text

TROPES: • Senior sleuth • Club ensemble / found family • Newcomer who sees what insiders miss • Unusual sleuth skill (solving by ear) • Dog sidekick • Comic retirement-community setting • Small-community gossip as investigative tool • Light late-life flirtation • Fair-play whodunit • Amateur detective with a professional edge • The clock is ticking

HEAT LEVEL: Sweet / Warm — clean language throughout; emotional intimacy and dry wit; one kiss at the very end; nothing explicit or suggestive

Perfect for fans of: Richard Osman, Robert Thorogood, Deany Ray, Brian Thiem

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