Whispers in the Guest Book

Paranormal Cozy Mystery · Clean / closed door · 24 chapters + epilogue · 60K novel · 3rd person

Complete planning package, 147 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.

Nell Sutton spent thirty-one years sorting other people's mail — knowing which houses got the bills on the first, which surnames never matched the return addresses, which envelopes held things no one wanted to open. She is very good at reading what's not being said. When her sister Bette dies unexpectedly and leaves her a Victorian Vermont inn to manage through the holiday season, Nell drives north with two suitcases and the working assumption that this is just another thing that needs handling.

Then the antique guest book in the front parlor starts writing back.

The entries come in brown ink, in a schoolteacher's precise hand, dated 1947. The writer is Agatha Plimm — the inn's original owner, dead for seventy-seven years, and apparently not finished with the place. She knows everything that happens inside these walls. She's been watching for decades. And right now, she is watching one of the current guests with what can only be described as professional concern.

Before Nell can decide whether she believes any of this — there's the entry that says the woman in room 4 carries something she should not have brought here, the skeptical local fire chief who arrives for an inspection and stays for the conversation, a yes/no session at the parlor desk where Agatha's ink appears in real time while Garrett Dunlevy sits across the table and says absolutely nothing for thirty seconds before: your ghost does good penmanship, Agatha's warning the morning of December 21 that reads like an apology, and then the guest at the bottom of the back staircase who will never check out.

Nell has spent three decades learning to deliver difficult news without flinching. Garrett has spent twenty years treating fire as a problem with a solution and emotions as a problem for someone else. A week before Christmas, in an inn that holds its secrets in the guest book, both of them are about to run out of professional distance.

Paranormal cozy mystery set in a snow-covered Vermont inn at Christmas, with a slow-burn romance that earns exactly one moment. The kind of book you read under a blanket with a mug of something hot and then immediately press into the hands of your smartest friend.

WHAT’S INSIDE THIS PACKAGE

⭐️ Story Premise — high-concept pitch, elevator pitch, and Market-Matched™ analysis with triple-category positioning (Paranormal Cozy × Holiday × Women Sleuths), four comp titles with differentiation statements, Ghost Rules Codex with chapter-by-chapter compliance tracking, and all 7 fair-play clues locked and mapped

⭐️ Complete Codex — full story bible with Nell Sutton and Garrett Dunlevy character profiles with voice examples, Agatha Plimm's complete Ghost Rules Codex (what she can and cannot do, flagged chapter by chapter), supporting cast of 8 including the killer and all red herrings, Plimm House sensory atlas (entry hall, kitchen, sitting room, back staircase murder scene, Nell's room), day-by-day timeline December 15–25, all 7 fair-play clues mapped to chapters, and series seeds for 2 future books

⭐️ Chapter-by-Chapter Outline — 24 chapters + epilogue with emotional beats, word count targets, scene breakdowns, key dialogue, chapter-ending hooks, and a ghost compliance flag on every chapter with specific revision guidance for the two flagged chapters

⭐️ AI-Ready Chapter Prompts — 25 self-contained prompts (fresh-chat compliant — paste any prompt into a new session and it works) with complete character context, all ghost entries at exact or near-exact wording, paranormal compliance notes embedded in flagged chapters, and heat level explicitly capped in Chapter 24

⭐️ Amazon Launch Kit — the listing, written: Amazon listing with categories and keywords, back cover copy, and Ideogram cover prompts (story scene 1:1 and market cover 2:3)

⭐️ Reader & Promo Kit — 50-word description, Instagram + Facebook copy, newsletter announcement with three subject lines, three reader magnet concepts, cover design brief, and holiday launch strategy with series readthrough CTA

⭐️ Market-Matched™ Brief — market snapshot table, six-point "why this will sell," competitive positioning against primary and secondary comps, seven-keyword strategy with deployment rationale, and full launch positioning including category placement, cover direction, 90-day AMS ad strategy, and series pricing roadmap

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

→ Paranormal Cozy sits at strong demand with a loyal, binge-reading reader base — this is one of the most underserved quadrants in cozy mystery, with established comp authors (Alice Kimberly, J.M. Poole) carrying active readership and no dominant new series capturing the niche

→ Triple-category stacking: Paranormal × Holiday × Women Sleuths — Women Sleuths is cozy mystery's highest-demand driver; Holiday multiplies discoverability October–January; Paranormal differentiates from the saturated culinary/craft cozy market

→ The ghost has documented limitations — Agatha can observe, she cannot identify the killer; this architecture creates genuine fair-play tension that most paranormal cozy attempts fail to deliver, and it's the differentiator readers discuss

→ Vermont inn setting with a 59-year-old protagonist — the cozy mystery reader who is tired of bakery owners in their early 30s responds to Nell Sutton at the purchase level; the setting delivers the same "place as character" satisfaction as the Tea Shop series with an added paranormal layer

→ One kiss, earned over 24 chapters — correctly calibrated heat signals clean/closed-door to readers who search for it explicitly; eliminates heat-level uncertainty at the point of purchase

→ Series engine already built — Agatha's unfinished business, the unopened letter from 1957, and the third-floor storage room create natural Book 2 and Book 3 hooks; paranormal cozy readers binge long series

TROPES: • Ghost Communication • Reluctant Believer • Slow Burn • Fish Out of Water • Closed-Door Romance • Amateur Sleuth • Fair-Play Whodunit • Closed Circle of Suspects • Haunted Setting • Holiday Romance • Second Chapter of Life • She Moves First • The Ghost Has Rules • Competent Woman Past 50 • Skeptic Who Comes Around Quietly

HEAT LEVEL: Sweet / Closed Door

Perfect for fans of: Alice Kimberly (Pen & Inkwell), Laura Childs (Tea Shop Mysteries), J.M. Poole, and Diane Mott Davidson

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