A Familiar Face

Paranormal Cozy Mystery · 28 chapters + epilogue · 1st person

Complete planning package, 182 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.

Mona Pelletier has spent twenty years being the sensible one in Port Alder — the witch you call when you need someone calm, capable, and not likely to make it about herself. She runs Fetch & Familiar out of a converted carriage house behind the village square, and she is very good at helping other people find the animal companion they didn't know they needed. What she is less good at is needing anyone herself.

Then someone murders the gallery owner during the Harbor Lights Festival — and the only witness is Pemberton, a deeply opinionated hedgehog who cannot tell Mona a single thing she can use, because a familiar only speaks to his witch, and they are not bonded.

Before she can get his testimony, she has to find him a witch — except he's already chosen the prime suspect. Before Mona can dismiss Corinne Lattimer, the stranger who won't explain herself and was found at the gallery at 11 PM, Pemberton stages himself at the shop window every morning until she notices. Before she can stay safely skeptical, there are emergency matching sessions that go nowhere, a relay system delivering a hedgehog's formal testimony through a woman who shouldn't be able to hear it, and a lavender-and-old-wood clue that points exactly one direction — except it doesn't.

Mona has spent two decades being reliable and not the kind of person who extends trust before it's earned — and she is about to discover the cost. Corinne has spent two years being invisible on purpose, because invisible felt safe, and Pemberton just made that very difficult for both of them.

Paranormal cozy mystery with a hedgehog who witnessed a murder, excellent opinions, and a great deal to say — once you can finally hear him. The kind of book you recommend to someone the same week you finish it, with specific instructions to pay attention to everything Pemberton says.

WHAT’S INSIDE THIS PACKAGE

⭐️ Story Premise — high-concept pitch, elevator pitch, and Market-Matched™ analysis with dual-category positioning, full Suspense Architecture (hidden timeline, fair-play audit, clue ledger, and misdirection map), and competitive analysis

⭐️ Complete Codex — full story bible with Mona Pelletier, Corinne Lattimer, and Pemberton plus supporting cast of 8, Port Alder coastal Maine setting with six named locations, 10-day investigation timeline with chapter-by-chapter tracking, single first-person voice system with four example passages in Mona's dry-observational register, seven-rule familiar magic system with fair-play conceal-and-reveal guidance, 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 misdirection notes per chapter, Pemberton testimony session beats, 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 testimony relay instructions, fair-play concealment sequencing, and the seven familiar magic rules embedded in every 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

→ Mystery > Cozy > Animals is Hot Mainstream with an estimated 59 daily sales per top 20 title and sustained upward growth since April 2025 — the strongest trajectory of any cozy subcategory and where the top paranormal cozy titles are placing their primary category

→ Fantasy > Cozy is a Hot Niche — introduced December 2025, growing fast, and currently under-stocked — dual-stacking here captures the cozy fantasy crossover reader before the category saturates

→ Witch-run shop + animal familiar is the top paranormal cozy trope stack — A Familiar Face adds fair-play architecture and a relay testimony mechanism the current bestsellers don't have

→ Animal covers are the fastest-growing cover type in the genre (+13 percentage points, Market-Matched™ Top 500) — Pemberton as cover focal point enters the market at exactly the right moment

→ The relay testimony hook is BookTok-ready in one sentence — "the only witness is a hedgehog, but she can't hear him yet" works at any thumbnail size and in any recommendation context

TROPES

• Witch Protagonist
• Animal Familiar
• Talking Animal Mystery
• Amateur Sleuth
• Cozy Village Setting (Coastal Maine)
• Murder at a Festival
• The Witness Who Can't Testify (Yet)
• Familiar Bonds the "Wrong" Person
• The Opinionated Witness
• Relay Testimony (Familiar → Witch → Investigator)
• Fair-Play Magic Rules
• Reluctant Allies
• The Outsider with Secrets
• Trust as a Practice, Not a Given

HEAT LEVEL

Clean Cozy — death off-page; no gore; no animal harm; one observation that Detective Harrow is handsome, then a murder to solve; the most intimate moment in the book is Pemberton climbing into Corinne's lap.

Perfect for fans of Sara Bourgeois (Wicked Witches of Cauldron Hollow), Molly Harper (Jane Jameson), Amanda M. Lee (Wicked Witches of the Midwest), and Jana DeLeon (Miss Fortune Mysteries).