Break-In Period

Cozy Mystery · Cozy / closed door · 26 chapters + epilogue · 80K novel · 1st person

Complete planning package, 152 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.

Rox Vitale spent a decade being very good at getting into places she wasn't supposed to be. She spent three years after that building something she was allowed to have: a business license, a storefront on Main Street in Bethel Ferry, Ohio, and a retired racing greyhound named Alibi who sleeps across the velvet armchair in the shop window and has never once questioned anything about her past. It's a modest life. A boring life. Exactly the life she planned.

Then Bethel Ferry's richest widow calls about a stuck door, and behind it Rox finds a dead man — a financial advisor, locked in a safe room, killed with Rox's signature technique.

Before she can figure out what to do, there's the unmistakable signature of her own work staring back at her from the crime scene, an insurance investigator named Grady Donovan who is very good at finding the one detail people forget to hide and seems to have started noticing hers, the growing realization that whoever did this knows exactly who Rox used to be — or wants the police to think they do — and the problem that the only way to prove the crime was copied from a professional is to demonstrate exactly what the professional actually does.

She has spent three years becoming the kind of person who follows the rules, and the only way to prove her innocence is to be precise about her guilt. He has built a career on reading what people don't say out loud, and Rox has a lot of things she isn't saying.

Humorous cozy mystery with a locksmith who knows too much about how crimes are committed, an insurance investigator who notices everything, and a greyhound named Alibi who sleeps through the entire investigation. The kind of book where the most dangerous thing the heroine does is be honest about her past.

WHAT’S INSIDE THIS PACKAGE

⭐️ Story Premise — high-concept pitch, elevator pitch, and Market-Matched™ analysis with dual-category positioning, full Suspense Architecture (hidden pre-story timeline, 7-clue fair-play audit with chapter-specific solve points and concealment rationale, complete misdirection map), and competitive analysis against three comp titles

⭐️ Complete Codex — full story bible with Rox Vitale and six suspects, supporting cast of five including business partner Dee Marchetti and insurance investigator Grady Donovan, Bethel Ferry Ohio small-town river setting with the Kessinger estate and Vitale Lock & Key storefront detailed room by room, 10-day investigation timeline across 26 chapters and epilogue, single first-person voice system with four full example passages in Rox's dry wry register, Rox/Grady slow-burn tension arc, and series seeds for three additional Vitale Lock & Key Mysteries

⭐️ Chapter-by-Chapter Outline — 26 chapters + epilogue with action beats, emotional beats, key dialogue, chapter-specific sensory details, clue plant and misdirection notes per chapter, ending hooks, and word-count targets (~79,800 words total)

⭐️ AI-Ready Chapter Prompts — one fully self-contained prompt for every chapter and the epilogue, with a reusable Series Context Block plus complete voice guidance, clue-planting instructions, and misdirection 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 full art direction

⭐️ Reader & Promo Kit — Instagram and Facebook posts, newsletter announcement with three subject lines, reader magnet concepts, reader targeting, series marketing, hex color palette, generation workflow, thumbnail test checklist, and common refinement guide

⭐️ 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 > Amateur Sleuth sits at 2.8 sales-to-comp (Beaten Track Mainstream) with ~112 estimated daily sales per top 100 title — the strongest-performing category among all cozy mystery placements, and the exact fit for a sleuth whose professional expertise drives every plot turn from Chapter 1 to the resolution

→ Triple-category stack: Mystery > Cozy (S2C 2.1, ~152 daily sales) + Mystery > Amateur Sleuth (S2C 2.8) + Mystery > Cozy > Animals (S2C 2.2) — three legitimate placements from one manuscript with no cover or copy repositioning required; Alibi is a named recurring character with dedicated scene time and an on-page comedic function

→ "Reformed criminal" sleuth premise is structurally underserved at the category level — the closest successful comp (Finlay Donovan) lands in the top 20 BSL; reader appetite for this specific combination of professional crime expertise + cozy warmth + self-aware humor exists and has no current dominant franchise occupying Cozy's middle tier

→ Dual-threat comp positioning — "Janet Evanovich meets Finlay Donovan" speaks to two distinct cozy reader segments simultaneously: the high-volume Evanovich read-the-whole-series buyer and the slightly more literary Finlay Donovan reader who wants competence and complexity alongside the wit

→ Humor-forward first-person narration is the category's social-share engine — cozy mysteries consistently drive reader-group sharing and Bookstagram content; this manuscript's voice is written for screenshot-worthy lines that travel; the premise ("she knows who did it; she just can't explain how she knows") is a one-line hook that works in a caption

TROPES

• Small-Town Setting • Amateur Sleuth with Professional Expertise • Pets (Retired Racing Greyhound) • Closed-Door Romance • Slow Burn • Ensemble Supporting Cast • Humor-Forward Voice • Dry Wit Narrator • Fair-Play Mystery • Series Potential — Book 1 • Reformed Criminal Sleuth • Framed Protagonist • "Can't Go to the Police" Stakes • Reluctant Investigator • Enemy-to-Ally Romance • The Dog Who Sleeps Through Everything • Single First-Person POV • Self-Contained Mystery (No Cliffhanger)

HEAT LEVEL

Sweet / Closed Door — no on-page intimacy; the tension lives entirely in the sustained, suspicious regard between two very perceptive people who keep catching each other being more than they appear

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