WHAT’S INSIDE THIS PACKAGE
⭐️ Story Premise — high-concept pitch, elevator pitch, and Market-Matched™ analysis with triple-category positioning across Time Travel, Epistolary, and Women’s Fiction crossover, plus competitive analysis against The Lake House, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and One Day in December
⭐️ Complete Codex — full story bible with Lacey and Micah profiled across both timelines (28-year-old Micah in the letters and 46-year-old Micah in the present as two distinct characterizations), supporting cast of 4, Ferrin Lake and Larchside at full sensory depth, complete Fair-Play Audit table tracking all six letter→choice→changed-detail links, Do This/Not That period-texture reference for the 2008 sections, the time-mechanism rules locked and non-negotiable, dual-register voice system for Lacey (narration vs. letter-writing) and Micah (2008 letters vs. present-day dialogue), and Dial the Heat™ flags in two chapters
⭐️ Chapter-by-Chapter Outline — 28 chapters + epilogue with scene breakdowns, emotional beats, key dialogue, fair-play audit plants flagged at the point of planting in each chapter, chapter-specific sensory details, ending hooks, and word-count targets; final-third audit completed
⭐️ AI-Ready Chapter Prompts — fully self-contained copy-paste prompt for every chapter and epilogue, with fair-play audit plants flagged in context, 2008 period-texture rules embedded in interlude chapters, knowledge-gap guardrails named in every chapter where they govern Micah’s present-day behavior, and Dial the Heat™ flags in Chapters 16 and 26
⭐️ Marketing Copy — Amazon listing with categories and keywords, back cover copy, 50-word description, Instagram and Facebook copy, newsletter announcement with three subject lines, four reader magnet concepts including Micah’s first letter extended and the last letter Lacey wrote, reader targeting with the women’s fiction crossover strategy, soft Ferrin Lake series marketing, and an Ideogram cover prompt calibrated to the epistolary romance and dual-timeline market
⭐️ Market-Matched™ Brief — market snapshot table across three categories, five data-backed “why this will sell” points, competitive positioning with the Lake House problem named and solved, seven-keyword strategy including the “lake house book similar” search-intent keyword, and full launch positioning with pricing, cover direction, and series strategy
One buyer. One story. Exclusively yours.
EIGHTEEN SUMMERS
Lacey Holm arrived at Larchside with a plan that fit neatly on a legal pad: renovate the run-down lake cottage, sell it at a profit, and use the money to start over somewhere deliberately chosen. She has been making excellent plans for other people for fifteen years. It is, she has recently discovered, a different skill set from knowing what she actually wants.
Then she opens the old cast-iron mailbox at the end of the dock road and finds a letter dated 2008.
Before she can finish the renovation and figure out what’s next, there’s the reply that arrives by morning in handwriting she’s never seen, her own initials carved at shoulder height into the larch tree bark — carved, his letter confirms, the morning after her second letter — a treehouse weathered and solid in the larch fork exactly where she suggested it, and the quiet carpenter across the water who keeps appearing with the right materials before she’s asked, who looks at the cottage with the attention of someone looking at something he has known for a very long time.
She’s spent fifteen years being the capable one and has arrived at Ferrin Lake not knowing what she wants when no one needs anything from her. He’s spent eighteen years building everything the letters asked him to build, waiting with the patience of a man who has read someone so completely that presence is the only thing left to offer.
Epistolary time-slip romance with a lake, a cast-iron mailbox, and a man who knew her name before she arrived. The kind of book you read slowly because you don’t want to be the person who already knows how it ends.
WHY THIS WILL SELL
→ Romance > Epistolary sits at 7.2 sales-to-comp (Hot Niche) with only ~900 competing titles — the most undersupplied category on the romance shelf and the one most likely to reward a well-executed new entry
→ Recent-past time-slip (2008) eliminates the period-research burden of traditional time-travel romance — all texture, no real events or brands, no historical accuracy liability; the cleanest entry on the time-travel shelf
→ “He-fell-first, eighteen years” is the longest sustainable version of this trope in the current market — the reader watches the falling happen across the whole novel; the payoff lands with the full weight of its duration
→ Solves the known reader-frustration problem with the time-slip format — the HEA is present-day, on-page, and at true ages (37 and 46); no mechanism tricks, no deferred ending; positions directly against The Lake House audience’s documented complaint
→ Women’s fiction crossover buyer is a significant additional audience — the dual-timeline structure, renovation arc, and epistolary form qualify this for a reader who doesn’t identify as a time-travel romance buyer but converts strongly when the format is right
TROPES:
• Epistolary Romance
• Love Across Time
• He-Fell-First (Eighteen Years)
• Grumpy / Reserved Hero with a Secret Made of Patience
• Single-Father Backstory
• Small Lake Town
• Renovation Arc
• The Stranger Next Door Who Isn’t
• Dual-Timeline Reveal
• Age-Gap-That-Isn’t
• Guaranteed On-Page HEA
HEAT LEVEL: Moderate
Perfect for fans of: Josie Silver, Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows, Delia Owens, and Kristin Hannah