The Sweetheart Contest

Holiday Romance · Sweet / closed door · 26 chapters + epilogue · Dual 1st person

Complete planning package, 176 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.

Maisie Dunleavy runs her late grandmother's candy shop on Depot Street, where the conversation hearts are still stamped by hand and the brass tray still smells like wintergreen. She hasn't told a soul that the loan on the roof comes due March 1: eighteen thousand five hundred dollars she does not have. Her best friend since kindergarten, firefighter and single dad Aram Kazarian, has spent twenty-eight years fixing things around her that were never broken.

Then Aram's eight-year-old daughter secretly enters them in the town's Valentine's couples' contest. The prize is eighteen thousand five hundred dollars.

Before they can figure out how to back out without explaining why, there's the entry form read aloud to the entire town at the opening ceremony, a bake-off where he wipes frosting off her nose in front of everyone she's ever sold a lollipop to, a firehouse betting pool with a laminated chart, a torchlit ice-sculpture night where "for show" stops being true, a wintergreen dress that has to be taken in at his mother's alterations shop, and one third-grader with a spiral notebook marked Investigations who is taking very thorough notes.

She's spent a year smiling so no one will see how scared she is of being the last one left. He's spent twenty-eight years deciding she's the one thing he can't risk losing, which is why he has never once said so. Three weeks of pretending is about to make them both terrible at it.

Sweet, funny small-town romance with festival lights, cocoa steam, and a very persistent eight-year-old. The kind of book where a child puts in pencil what two grown adults have avoided saying for twenty-eight years.

WHAT’S INSIDE THIS PACKAGE

⭐️ Story Premise — high-concept pitch, elevator pitch, and Market-Matched™ market validation with multi-niche positioning and competitive analysis

⭐️ Complete Codex — full story bible with main characters, supporting cast of 23, Dunleavy's Sweet Shop, Wintergreen Grange Hall, a 25-day festival timeline, dual first-person voice system with distinct verbal patterns for Maisie (bright, quick, jokes in threes, deflects with food) and Aram (spare, deadpan, exact), relationship progression, closed-door intimacy guidance, and series seeds for 3 future books

⭐️ Chapter-by-Chapter Outline — 26 chapters + epilogue with emotional beats, word count targets, scene breakdowns, and a festival-event structure

⭐️ AI-Ready Chapter Prompts — detailed writing instructions for every chapter with tone, pacing, heat-level progression, and distinct voice guidance for alternating POV

⭐️ Amazon Launch Kit — the listing, written: Amazon listing with categories and keywords and back cover copy

⭐️ Reader & Promo Kit — social media posts, newsletter announcement, reader magnet concepts, cover art prompts, and seasonal launch strategy

⭐️ Market-Matched™ Brief — market snapshot, why it will sell, competitive positioning, seven-keyword strategy, launch positioning, and Kindle Unlimited recommendation

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

→ Friends to Lovers is the strongest trope niche in Market-Matched™ at a 22.8 sales-to-comp ratio — twenty-eight years of best friends sits squarely inside it

→ Romance > Firefighters sits at 11.2 sales-to-comp (Hot Niche) with fewer than 4,000 titles — high reader demand, low competition

→ Single-dad heroes appear 14 times in current Top 100 bestseller blurbs — readers are actively buying this hero

→ Small Town is showing sales growth; Holidays is crowded at 2.0 sales-to-comp across about 22,700 titles — the trope stack sells, Valentine's is the hook

→ The kid matchmaker's entry form is built to be shared — one pencil-written line readers screenshot and send to a friend

→ 86% of the current Top 100 are Kindle Unlimited titles, and $5.99 is the top-earning price — clear launch roadmap

TROPES: • Friends to Lovers • Childhood Best Friends • Single Dad • Firefighter Hero • Small Town • Kid Matchmaker • Everyone Can See It But Them • Save the Family Business • Forced Proximity (Contest Challenges) • Valentine's Festival • Pretending to Pretend • The Heroine Saves Her Own Shop • An Ex-Wife Who Is Actually Kind • Love Letters Read Aloud

HEAT LEVEL: Sweet / Closed Door — warm kisses, spoken consent, and one night that closes the door on the reader; emotional intimacy carries the story

Perfect for fans of: Sarah Adams, Abby Jimenez, and Courtney Walsh

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