Sweet Ruin

Holiday Rom-Mystery · Heat-flexible, high ceiling · 26 chapters + epilogue · 78K novel · Dual 3rd person

Complete planning package, 123 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.

Willa Croft rebuilt herself from scratch after she left Mirabel, Vermont. New city, real clients, a career she's genuinely good at. The phone call she made ten years ago — the one that ended her best friend's engagement and cost her everything she had in this town — was the right thing to do, and she'd do it again, and she has spent a decade not thinking about what it cost.

Then her aunt dies and leaves her a chocolate shop.

Seven days. That's all she needs. Sell the building, close the estate, drive back to Portland before the town's version of events can find her. She has a realtor's number and a tight timeline and no intention of feeling anything about the way the shop smells like Bea.

Then she opens the walk-in cold storage on day two and finds Roy Aldridge dead on the floor.

The detective assigned to the case is Graham Sutton — the man whose engagement she ended with that phone call.

Before Willa can close the sale and leave clean, there's a body whose death looks like a heart attack until it doesn't, accounts that don't balance, a forged signature in her aunt's name, a woman from out of town whose grief performance is one beat too smooth, and a thermos labeled in handwriting nobody can place. There's also a back hallway four feet wide, late nights comparing evidence at a table that was never meant for two, and the growing problem that she called Graham first when she was frightened — and he was there in eleven minutes.

She's spent ten years building a life around the shape of what she left. He's spent ten years not-thinking about her with the kind of diligence that is itself a form of thinking.

A Valentine's week romystery set in a Vermont chocolate shop, where the murder and the decade-long almost are the same unsolved problem. The kind of book where someone finally says the true thing out loud — and it's better than the silence ever was.

WHAT’S INSIDE THIS PACKAGE

⭐️ Story Premise — high-concept pitch, elevator pitch, and Market-Matched™ analysis with triple-category positioning (Mystery Romance / Culinary Cozy / Valentine's Seasonal), full Suspense Architecture (hidden timeline, reveal order, fair-play audit with every planted clue mapped to the chapter it appears in), and competitive analysis against three comp titles

⭐️ Complete Codex — full story bible with Willa Croft and Graham Sutton, supporting cast of six (including the killer and two legitimate red herrings), Mirabel Vermont chocolatier setting with five fully sensory-detailed locations, verified seven-day compressed timeline, dual close-third-person voice system with four distinct example passages per POV character, heat-flexible intimacy guidance with Dial the Heat™ flags, fair-play clue-concealment ledger by chapter, and series seeds for two future Mirabel Mysteries books

⭐️ 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, Dial the Heat™ flags on the escalation chapters, 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, both voice systems embedded, specific clue-planting and concealment instructions, and Dial the Heat™ flags for the three intimacy escalation chapters

⭐️ 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 with landing page copy, reader targeting, and series marketing with tagline and read-through CTA

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

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

→ Romance > Mystery Romance sits at 6.2 sales-to-comp (Hot Mainstream) with 55–75 estimated daily sales per top 20 title — romystery readers actively want equal-weight romance and mystery, and this delivers both at full depth

→ Dual-category play with Cozy Mysteries > Culinary (5.8 sales-to-comp, Hot Mainstream) stacks a chocolate shop setting across two high-traffic categories simultaneously

→ Valentine's Day is the most underpopulated seasonal slot — Romance > Holiday Romance > Valentine's Day shows 7.1 sales-to-comp (Hot Mainstream, seasonal) with no established comp title holding the Valentine's romystery hybrid position

→ The "named cause" second chance converts better than generic — one honest phone call, one decade of silence, a resolution that requires him to say the true thing unprompted is a social-share hook that travels without marketing effort

→ Built as a fair-play mystery — every clue is on the page before the 70% mark, activating the "I caught it at chapter X" reader behavior that extends the book's social life past release week

TROPES

• Second chance romance (missed possibility, never a prior relationship) • Small-town return • Enemies-to-lovers with a single named cause • Forced proximity through investigation • Amateur sleuth / reluctant detective partnership • Valentine's Day setting • Chocolate shop / culinary cozy setting • Compressed timeline (seven days) • He makes himself available and lets her choose • The one honest conversation that unlocks everything • Fair-play whodunit with a solvable killer

HEAT LEVEL

Moderate / Open Door — emotional intimacy runs deep throughout; physical escalation is sensory and present but not explicit at default heat; intimacy scenes are flagged for Dial the Heat™ so the buyer can adjust up without restructuring the outline

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