DEADHEAD

Raylene Hobbs is three truck payments from losing the only thing she's built that's actually hers. She's been running Lady Blue — a 2019 Peterbilt she knows by sound and by feel — solo out of Bakersfield for four years, and she has a load of sporting goods due in Reno in 72 hours that she cannot miss.

Then she climbs into her sleeper cab at 2 a.m. and finds a man. Wire-frame glasses. A gunshot wound soaking through his shirt at the shoulder. A duffel bag between his feet he's very careful not to explain. Two men are working the lot outside with flashlights. Patient. Methodical. She tells him to get flat. She drives.

Before Raylene can drop him at the first hospital — there's a cash bag that opens just wide enough to show her what category of serious they're in; a man whose answers are technically true and somehow miss the actual question; a name he drops when he isn't being careful, the kind that tells her he's known who's been hunting them since before she found him; a small magnetic device she finds on her own undercarriage; and an 80,000-pound argument on a Nevada mountain grade that shows him, definitively, which one of them is the dangerous one.

She's spent sixteen years building a version of trust that only extends as far as she can verify. He spent eighteen months feeding information to the one man who was supposed to protect him — who was protecting someone else instead. Seventy-two hours on a Nevada highway is going to make them both prove it.

Pulp road thriller with a slow-burn romance and a heroine who uses her rig like a very specific kind of argument. The kind of book where the most dangerous person in the story is the one behind the wheel — and the most dangerous thing in the story is her deciding he's worth the trouble.

WHY THIS WILL SELL

→ Thrillers > Pulp carries strong demand against limited competition — approximately 51 daily sales per top-20 title against only ~7,500 titles total; a new quality entry has real shelf visibility without fighting through an oversaturated field

→ Dual-shelf play with Thrillers > Crime adds a second discovery path into a large, actively buying category; Romantic Suspense crossover readers create a third

→ The role inversion is social-share optimized — she protects him, she drives the weapon, she makes the call; this is the concept readers describe in detail to each other rather than just tag

→ The trucking setting is entirely unoccupied in romantic suspense — readers who want this setting don't have options yet; first entry in an uncontested space

→ "72 hours" sells the book before the blurb does — communicates urgency at thumbnail scale; belongs in the subtitle and every short ad without additional setup

TROPES: • Road chase • Stranger in danger • Forced proximity • Race against the clock • Reluctant protector — she protects him • Heroine saves the hero • Opposites attract • Slow-burn romance • HFN • The Lie That's Technically True • She Does the Driving • He Thought He Was the Smart One • Competence as Foreplay

HEAT LEVEL: Moderate / Dial the Heat™ Flexible — first physical intimacy arrives only after all deception is gone; consent architecture clean at every heat setting; intimacy scenes flagged so you can dial any level from warm to steamy without restructuring the outline

Perfect for fans of: Sandra Brown, Harlan Coben, Lee Child, and Janet Evanovich

WHAT'S INSIDE THIS PACKAGE

⭐️ Story Premise — high-concept pitch, elevator pitch, and Market-Matched™ analysis with dual-category positioning in Pulp Thriller and Crime, three comp titles with differentiation statements, and a full Tension & Reveal Progression

⭐️ Complete Codex — full story bible with Raylene and Mitch's complete character profiles, supporting cast of 11, five Nevada settings from Winnemucca to Reno, a 72-hour surface timeline plus hidden timeline (what actually happened before page one), dual third-person voice system with distinct patterns for Raylene (short, tactical, dry) and Mitch (careful, qualified, withholding the right things), Suspense Architecture with full clue ledger, fair-play audit, and solve-point map, and Dial the Heat™ intimacy guidance

⭐️ Chapter-by-Chapter Outline — 32 chapters + epilogue with action beats, emotional beats, key dialogue, chapter-specific sensory details, concealment notes tracking what each character knows and when, ending hooks, and word-count targets

⭐️ AI-Ready Chapter Prompts — 33 fully self-contained writing prompts (one per chapter + epilogue) with POV, target words, scene, tone, key dialogue, and Dial the Heat™ flags embedded — each one works as a standalone paste into a fresh AI chat with no prior context required

⭐️ Marketing Copy — Amazon listing, back cover copy, 50-word description, Instagram and Facebook posts, newsletter announcement with three subject lines, reader-magnet concepts, reader targeting guidance, and Ideogram cover prompts (story scene image + market-matched cover, with settings lines)

⭐️ Market-Matched™ Brief — category snapshot, competitive positioning, seven-keyword strategy with rationale per keyword, and launch guidance on categories, pricing, cover direction, and shelf strategy for the Dark & Dangerous series line

One buyer. One story. Exclusively yours.