I can't help but cringe when I see writing prompts that ask the writer to "keep it clean." Other than certain rules around basic grammar, punctuation and spelling that help ensure ideas can be conveyed clearly across audiences (and even here, there is arguably some flexibility), writing should be untethered. Good writing exists at the place where creativity and risk intersect - if there isn't some sort of fear or discomfort at play while you contemplate sharing your writing, you're doing it wrong. It's hard to be honest with yourself, let alone the world, but that authenticity is what makes writing sing - the best songs evoke strong emotion, connect people and move us to action.

This is not to say that good writing has to be full of "fucks" - obscenity, sexuality, violence and the like all have their place insofar as they further the story or characterization and help the author to build a world or setting that feels true. Many a work has been criticized for unnecessary rape, for instance, that does little to advance the plot or characters and is used more so for shock value, often offering insight into the writer's social/political views on women more than anything else. But to box someone in from the start - to tell them to keep it clean in a world that is very much the opposite - seems like a recipe for the production of writing that is superficial and half-hearted. Give me the grime and the pain any day, to remind me I am real.

Twice in my life, in separate decades, I lived off the proceeds of dispensing the elements of temporary physical euphoria. Consenting adults came to me and I gave them a drug for which they handed me money. When I was a bartender, the drug was in legal, liquid form. I paid taxes on what I earned and could tell my mother was I did for a living. Even though most of my regulars were alcoholics, I earned none of society’s contempt for getting them drunk, many on a daily basis.

When my own addictive choice changed from alcohol to crystal meth, I went from bar tending to drug dealing. It started with getting a little extra for my using buddies, to responding to the requests of their friends. At first my only payoff was in my own drugs being free, then I was suddenly turning a profit. It was its own addictive rush.

I was fairly atypical as far as most drug dealers go. I answered the phone on the first ring, I was friendly and my apartment was clean. Word of mouth was all the marketing I needed. I never in a million years would have wanted or needed to “recruit” any new customers, and the ones I had were mostly weekend warriors. I was about as far as you could imagine from the stereotype of the unshaven sleazebag who lounges near grammar school playgrounds, trying to “turn” kids into addicts, yet what I did qualified me for membership in one of the most vilified minorities in America.

Let me be clear. This is not an apologia. Meth is a nasty and addictive drug. I do not advocate its use, have not touched it in 10 years, and the most important thing I do is help others stay clean off of it. But just as meth is a symptom of the disease of drug addiction, so are its purveyors. Every dealer I knew was an addict. And if any of you have ever obtained some mushrooms for Burning Man, done a few bumps of coke at a party, or procured Oxycontin from your maid, you have had a direct or indirect relationship of some kind with a drug dealer. There are even many of you who at some point of your life considered one a friend—probably in direct proportion to his generosity.

As for the harm done by drugs, some interesting statistics. There are an estimated 443,000 deaths a year in this country due to lung cancer, and at least 100,000 alcohol-related deaths. But according to the CDC, there are less than 50,000 drug-overdose deaths 2014, around a tenth than can be attributed to the thoroughly legal drug of cigarettes. And yet the man at the gas station who hands over the 2 packs of Marlboro Lights is never called the scum of the earth, and the manager at Trader Joe’s can recommend Grey Goose or a nice bottle of Chardonnay without being compared to a child molester. The makers of Oxycontin, Valium, and Vicodin---the biggest drug dealers in the word—spend no time in prison cells.

It’s pretty well accepted that the drug war has been a dismal failure, although with the new Trump regime I’m not optimistic we’re going to see much change in this realm. Which doesn’t mean, as a population, we can’t take it on ourselves to do something simple, if not easy: Stop Dehumanizing Drug Dealers.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, a civilian in the wrong place at the wrong time can go from “bystander” to “insurgent” with the pointing of a bayonet. Once so labeled, the presumption is always of guilt, and the altered perception of human beings as “terrorists,” i.e, “not quite human” is directly linked to a willingness to torture them.

By the same token, once someone is labeled a “drug dealer,” they fall somewhere in between the homeless and terrorists in the continuum that constitutes “the other.” The orange jumpsuit distances us further—when we see the prisoner taken in handcuffs from the courtroom, we don’t want to think his experience behind those closed doors is like ours would be. We tell ourselves they must be guilty, they’re used to it, whatever we need to not empathize, to not imagine how grim and frightening and grey it is back there. We pass the exits to “State Correctional Facility” on the highway and if we think of it at all, it’s mostly to shudder in thanks that we’re not there.

I remember how many of my fellow inmates never even received one piece of mail. The sense that you’ve been forgotten is a soul-killing despair. This willingness to throw away and forget men behind walls is the end of a long process of dehumanization that starts with a series of labels. The adjectives may be perfectly accurate, but they also diminish our capacity to remember there’s a human being involved, not just a “gang member,” a “defendant,” a “drug dealer.”

So change your thinking. Take a moment to question the meanings you attach to certain words, how you allow them to create a sense that what makes us different in the eyes of the law is somehow more important than what makes us similar as human beings. And when you pass one of those buses going down to County Jail full of handcuffed men, wave. The man who sees you may need to be reminded that he is still seen.

Mark Olmsted has been a writer and a poet since he graduated from NYU School of the Arts in 1980. After over a decade in Manhattan, he moved to California to pursue screenwriting and take care of his brother, who died of AIDS in 1991. Gay and HIV+ himself, Mark self-medicated through the worst of the plague years with crystal meth, which led to a conviction for drug-dealing in 2004 and nine months in prison.

Olmsted emerged into a life of recovery and activism, penning hundreds of essays for the Huffington Post and his personal blog, The Trash Whisperer, based on his hobby of keeping his Hollywood neighborhood free of litter. In 2011 he entered the Graduate Humanities programs in Mount St. Mary’s University, obtaining a Master’s Degree with a specialization in Creative Writing in 2013. He returned to screenwriting with The Exiled Heart, informed by his mother’s experiences growing up in Nazi-occupied France.

2015 arrived and so he began to shape the letters and short stories he wrote in prison into a book documenting his incarceration. The result: Ink from the Pen: A Memoir of Prison available now in Prose Bookstore. He lives with his partner of 20 years in Los Angeles, and works as an editor of film subtitles when he is not writing. Please follow him and interact with him here where he is @MarkOlmsted.

Go see the blog article with pictures and links here:  http://blog.theprose.com/2016/12/defense-gasp-drug-dealers/

I had a bit of a shock when I turned on my phone this morning. There were so many texts from relatives, friends, acquaintances, all asking the same thing: "Are you OK?"

The first thing I thought was that something had happened at the airport. I'd just gotten to Scotland last night; maybe a plane crashed or someone set off a bomb and my mom forgot to mention that I'd checked in with her safely. Then I noticed one of the texts was from her.

I tapped on my phone's keyboard. "Yes, what's going on?"

Three dots, then a reply. "So are we for now. Check the news. Have to go."

And that's when I saw the headlines about the zombie apocalypse. Lovely. I scrolled through a couple articles quickly. So far there weren't any cases reported in Europe, but plenty of airports were still open. My phone buzzed; this time it was an email from my study abroad adviser. Apparently they want any study abroad students to check in at the university; they had set up an improvised shelter and quarantine area. I checked out of the hostel and headed out.

It was odd. The streets were packed, and I could see that grocery stores were flooded, but everyone was so quiet. I couldn't tell whether it was shock or determination, maybe both. Anyway, I didn't bother with the roads. I just hauled my luggage and walked. It wasn't that far.

So here I am, stuck in the quarantine unit. I have no idea how long they want to keep me; it's not like they know for sure how long it takes for symptoms to show up. At least there's food and lights, plus I can still talk to people. No wifi though, so I don't know how anyone back home is. As for here it's getting worse on the streets; there are riots breaking out. Someone said people are attacking anyone who looks sick or behaves oddly.

Anyhow, this is definitely not how I thought my study abroad journal would look. I'm going to ask if there are any books I can read. Maybe someone has a survival guide or something.

If you, like so many others, don’t want to read a bunch of legalese, then this post is for you. With the launch of the bookstore comes a few additions to our terms and conditions pertaining to payments and refunds. This post brings you the lowdown without the legal jargon.

Payments

Once your wallet funds exceeds 5000 coins from your content sales, you may request to “cash out.”

So, how do you get them? Well, all you need to do is simply email, payments@theprose.com with the subject line “Cash Request.” In the body of your email, include your username, your PayPal email, and the number of coins from your partner content that you wish to liquidate.

We will then send your requested payment from our business PayPal account no later than the 3rd of each month.

** Remember: 1 coin = 1 cent (1/100 of 1 USD)

Refunds

Prose do not offer refunds on coins that you purchase from the coinstore, only on the coins that you spend directly on Partner content.

We do not offer refunds on short stories or chapter purchases.

You are eligible for a refund on purchased books as long as

A) You purchased the book within thirty (30) days

And

B) You have read less than ten percent (10%) of the book content.

For any refund requests, all you need to do is email us at refunds@theprose.com with the subject line “Refund Request” and we will get back to you within 7 working days. Depending on the nature of the email, you may receive a response sooner. Make sure to include as much detail within the email body, along with your username, to ensure swift handling of your request.

N.B If you paid for Partner Content but received no such Content in return, for whatever reasons, then please directly message the Partner, who is responsible to respond and resolve the issue.

It’s finally here, Prosers,

Before we begin telling you all about our launch, we cannot ignore the events that have just unfolded. This presidential election has had passions running high; with lots of debate, healthy discussion, and unfortunately, some not so healthy discussion. Whether you agree or disagree with the outcome, we hope that everyone can continue to agree on one thing, Prose is the shit. Balls to politics right now because we are about to remove the politics and red tape from the publishing industry.

Yep, that’s right, the full bookstore is now live. Partners, you can begin to sell your books, and readers, you’re in for a treat with a plethora of word porn for you to drool over.

We have been working so hard for the past year, from concept to release, to bring you all something unique and refreshing, something that gives readers and writers alike the freedom and flexibility that a lot of you have told us conventional social media and publishing platforms do not.

Prose Coins:

With this update comes Prose coins. Prose coins are our exclusive currency enabling you to buy books. Each coin is equal to one cent. (1c)

To purchase coins, all you need to do is visit theprose.com/bookstore/coins and choose the coin package you wish to purchase. Follow the onscreen prompts to complete the purchase and those coins will deposit into your wallet. The more coins you buy, the better the reward. Most of our coin packages will offer you free coins for your purchase; because we’re nice like that. Let’s take a look at the coin packages we have to offer:

$5 = 500 coins

$10 = 1,020 coins

$20 = 2,080 coins

$35 = 3,710 coins

$50 = 5,400 coins

$100 = 11,000 coins

From that point onward, you can spend the coins on the website on any juicy title that takes your fancy.

Running out of room on your physical bookshelf? Your Prose one will hold infinite books.

**Within the upcoming weeks you will be able to buy coins on the web and then spend them on the iOS app. Currently, you will have to buy and spend the coins on the website, but once you have, you’ll be able to read the books on your iPhone. For Android users, we will be updating the app in the future, once we have all of the features built for iOS and the Website, however, you can always access Prose through mobile browsers in the interim.

Royalties:

In previous updates we spoke about our royalty structure. We’ve had to tweak this slightly to make sure that Prose can continue to bring you a platform that is always evolving, with you, our Prosers, in mind.

Up until today, we have relied solely on generous people with deep pockets to help us build up our business. Today marks our evolution as a company, the day where we pave our path to go it alone. We’ve crunched our numbers, worked on our humble budgets and costings, and have come up with a royalty structure that will forever be in your favour as writers, and they are as follows:

Full Books:

If you’re selling your book as a whole you’ll be pleased to know that we are still offering competitive royalties. Let’s first take a look at what our competitors are offering on eBook sales.

Amazon:

For books priced below $2.98 and above $10.00 the author gets just 35% royalties

For books priced between $2.99 and $9.99 the author gets 70%

Kobo:

Their royalty structure once again depends on pricing points sliding between 70% and just 45% for authors.

iBooks:

Seems like the best deal to us nerds here at Prose, whereby Apple offer 70% royalties across the board.

So, how are we better?

Prosers who publish their book will receive 75% royalties on all book sales regardless of what you choose to price them at, leaving Prose with 25%. Flexibility to choose is something we want to give you in spades and we will not penalise you for pricing your books too high or low. It really is up to you.

Per Chapter / Short Stories:

Not only can you sell your books as a whole, but you can now sell short stories, or sell your books per chapter.

There is one other company doing this and we have made sure our royalty structure for this part is far more competitive, and again, in the favour of the Proser.

Radish Fiction:

Radish sell their coins (currency) through their apps iOS and Android, thus incurring a 30% charge from the respective App Stores. Therefore their royalties work like so:

Apple / Android 30%

Radish 35%

Author 35%

We have avoided sharing your money with any app store, simply speaking. Coins are only purchasable on the Prose website, but your coins can be spent in-app. This allows us to give you a way more competitive royalty.

Author: 60%

Prose: 40%

Once again, we believe that you, the author, should always receive more money for your words than we do.

We’d also like to make this clear: after crunching numbers, these are the royalties we believe we need to take to cover our costs, not to become mega billionaires. If after the first quarter or two our figures turn out to be over cautious, you will benefit by a raise in your royalties and we will reduce ours. That’s a Prose Promise right there, even though it sounds cheesy.

Making Money

So, how do you make money from your words? Well, in short, once you’ve checked you meet our Partner criteria, you need to apply to be a Partner. It’s that simple. Whilst logged in, visit theprose.com/p/partners, read our Partner requirements and follow the steps to apply. We personally read and respond to all Partner requests so give us up to fourteen working days before chasing us up if you haven’t heard anything. Once you are accepted, you’re all set up.

Our terms and conditions have changed to reflect this change to our service, so be sure to give them a read if you’re a Partner and are about to sell your stories or chapters.

We have lots of promotions and giveaways coming up, along with a whole host of new ways in which we can help you reach a wide and vast audience.

All FAQ’s / Instructions / Partner requirements will be winging their way into the Community Portal within a hot minute so if you don’t subscribe to that Portal, we suggest you hit that subscribe button now.

So what’s next for Prose?

Well, this is the first brand-new chapter of a whole new book; many more will follow, where we’ll add finesse to the bookstore, and give you another new way in which to make money from your meanderings. We will keep bringing innovative technology to your screens with you, our Prosers in the forefront of every decision we make.

Until next time, Prosers,

Prose.

PS: We have a Thunderclap campaign that needs your support. All you need to do is visit the link https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/49541-set-the-book-industry-alight?locale=en and click the support button.It costs nothing but a few seconds of your time. This will enable us to reach a huge amount of people, which in turn means more readers for your books.

eyes filling

coffee staining

typing intensifying

I wish I did less

dawn swelling

time slimming

and as anxiety rears its ugly head

I fold in

The street was quiet. She guessed the neighbors were all on vacation. She would be on vacation, but instead her parents decided they had to spend their summer moving across the country. She left her friends, her home, even her dog behind.

Her father just didn't understand. "I'm building a better life for us. Why can't you be happy?" he had asked her.

"Happy? I'm supposed to be happy? You made me leave Beth, Cory, even little Daisy behind! How am I supposed to be happy? I hate you!" She screamed this and more as she stormed out of the house.

Now, trying not to cry, she kicked a stray rock down the road. Thinking about how selfish her father was, she gave the rock a good kick. It clanged against a fence post, and she looked up.

Immediately she was transported to another time. She looked at the house, and saw a beautiful Victorian style home. Rose bushes lined the front of the house, and a white porch wound its way from front to the side. Lace curtains hung in the windows, and from inside you could hear the sound of music and laughter. 

As if in a dream, she walked to the door and went inside. She felt as though she belonged here. It was her home. Within was an array of beautiful cherry furniture, arranged as a welcoming entry for guests. Just inside the door was an elegant winding staircase. The wood was so polished that it reflected the light from outside. 

The girl went up the staircase, seeming to know exactly where she was going. She turned the corner when she reached the hallway above, and took the second door on the left. Within was an eighteenth century style four poster bed with a canopy of velvet and drapery of mesh. A victrolla played in the corner, an opera of great intensity. 

Out of nowhere a shadow of a man dressed in black appeared. She fell backward, landing on the steps. He came toward her, ready to kick her down the stairs. She braced herself against the coming force, eyes shut tight. There was a crash of sound, then silence. The kick never came.

Slowly she opened her eyes. She lay in a hallway filled with cobwebs on a floor of moth eaten carpet. The winding staircase was dusty, with chips in the railing. Disoriented, she made her way back down the stairs. The furniture and curtains were gone. The house smelled musty, obviously abandoned. 

Shaken, she wandered outside. The rose bushes were there, but long dead. Curious and disoriented still, she followed the porch around the side of the house to a large backyard. She wandered aimlessly to the back of the yard underneath an old oak. Her face went pale, and she began shaking with fright.

There, beneath the tree, was a grave. The stone read "Here lies Anna Marie Wallace. Her life cut short, she is forever in our hearts. May 1832-1845."

Thirteen. Anna was thirteen. She looked on her arm at the birthmark there, the shape of a footprint. Now she understood why they were here. But they were in the wrong house. She ran to her new home, desperate to tell her mother. She saw her past life, a memory, not a dream. And she knew now where she belonged.

What does it take to maintain, develop, and grow a social media network like Prose?

I am sure many of you will have asked yourself that question at some point along your Prose journey, and we are about to answer it.

Prose has a way of getting under your skin. It’s true. The Prose team live, eat, and breathe all things Prose. We are all in love with words, the way words can evoke such vivid imagery and provoke thought and emotion.

We spend each and every day thinking about and working on Prose; even within our limited downtime we use Prose just like you all do too. We read and feel each and every word you type, and agonise over each and every word we bleed.

Every single day is different in terms of what we do. We have the regular things we do, that need to be done every day, and other things that come up from brainstorms or team meetings that become a focus until that task is completed.

We are a small team, that we will be introducing to you better, through a Q&A blog series with each and every one of us! HB, Paul, & Sammie work on everything non-code related, Z (Zach) works on everything code, and our two wonderful interns Ryan and Vanya work on Android and iOS respectively. Last but never least we have our genius designer, Karen, who provides us with everything visual, we love her images so much we just want to lick them!

Having such a small team could be perceived as a negative thing, however, we all get on incredibly well, even if Paul’s jokes are rubbish! (Ask him to tell you one, we’re not kidding, they suck). We are a family, very tight-knit, and extremely supportive of each other. Both within our careers but within our personal lives too. It really is a one-of-a-kind team.

Paul, Karen, and Sammie, reside and work from the U.K, so if you have ever received communications from us at stupid-o’clock, that’ll be us working away while you’re asleep.

So what do we all do daily?

To itemise everything would take a long time, and probably bore you, we also don’t want to spoil anything that we have in the pipeline, so we’ll spare some information to keep the suspense.

Karen creates beautiful images, all-day-long. We often spring last minute requests too, because we are nice like that. Karen’s designs have us all discussing how awesome they are behind her back and during message / phone conversations. Karen has also just helped lighten the load on Instagram, so be sure to say hi, and be nice to her, she’s awesome! You’ll also find her meandering through Twitter on certain weekend days too. Yep, we cover social media in real-time, seven days a week!

Paul and Sammie write ALL copy for the company. Let us tell you, that is a LOT of copy. From blog pieces, to email newsletters, in-app announcements, social media captions, you name it, they write it.

They also share the customer service side of the company. Any time you contact us by email, in-app via direct message or comment, through social media, anywhere, it’ll be them.

Every marketing initiative you see, either in app, on social media, or via email, will be a team effort. Data mining, writing design briefs, outlining the plan, execution of the plan, copy, scheduling, launching, it takes every single one of us to make it work.

Sometimes we have to liaise with outside agencies for partnership opportunities, or for awesome interviews, and you’ll find us all sending emails, hitting the phones, and banging our heads against brick walls.

HB spends a lot of his time tapping the keys of calculators, and keeping us all in the loop with metrics and analytics. We, just like any company, keep an eye on statistics, they help us know whether we’ve done things correct, or not. (This has happened. We have got things wrong. And boy does that hurt us all.) He also spends some of his time networking with colleges and the education authorities.

HB’s researching skills are incredible, and we rely on lots of research for a lot of our initiatives. We do not want to replicate what is already out there. We want to provide you all with a fresh and new experience with words, one that is always evolving.

Z and the tech team spend hundreds of hours per month cranking code, fixing bugs, and fine tuning the apps and the website to make your experience even better than before.

We meet as a team once per week, 5pm GMT / 9am PST, every Monday. We share our triumphs, our low-points, we talk about you guys, pieces we have read, feedback we have received, you name it, nothing is off limits.

We usually begin each meeting with a joke, hence how we can tell you how rubbish Paul’s jokes are, or a random fact. These are often NSFW yet there we are being completely inappropriate, and non-funny in Paul’s case. (Yes, we’ve milked that enough now.)

Once the jokes are done, it’s straight down to business. We can’t tell you how long each meeting is, because it depends what we need to discuss. Our longest meeting has lasted almost 3 hours. Putting creatives on one phone call can bring a plethora of ideas we discuss and explore.

We use a communication application called Slack, which is where we all keep in touch throughout the day. We talk, we discuss, we share ideas - some good, some awful, we even share random meme’s or articles that we find online.

We read, we read a lot, inside and outside Prose. We keep up-to-date with what technological advances occur, and how we can use them to shape Prose. We keep our ears open for new changes in the publishing world, the literary industry, and the social media world.

We make mistakes, we learn from them. We are constantly learning and improving. We hate it when we get things wrong. We want to make you all happy, and we want everyone worldwide to use Prose. We want the world to write more, and read more than what shows up on their Twitter newsfeed, or Facebook timelines. We want imaginations to be woken, and ultimately, we want everyone, to love words and Prose, just as much as we (the Prose community) do.

Prose is our baby. Prose is your baby.

We want you to help us shape it. We are working hard behind the scenes. Blood, sweat, tears, pride, joy, passion, and happiness go into every single day. If you want to support us further than you already do by being here, sharing your words, and supporting your peers, we’d really appreciate you spreading the “Prose Word.” Whether that be by social media, or by word-of-mouth, it really would mean a lot to us. If you’d like to help further than that, please contact us. There is always something we’d love to collaborate on with you.

We are writing this on a Monday, it’s 16:17 GMT, the team meeting will be in 40 minutes, and we’ll get to talk all about the place that we all adore. Prose.

That’s all for now, but stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes snippets real soon.

Happy Prosing.

The Prose Team. 

A while back we set you the challenge of writing a 500-750 word synopsis of your work-in-progress or completed novel manuscript, and to pitch it to us. A selection of judges would then decide upon the top entry for publication on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo. Exciting stuff!

We told you that the lucky winner would also be provided a fully customized package of editing, design, and marketing services and we cannot wait to get started.

We’ve made the decision. Admittedly, we’re a little late announcing the winners, but that’s purely because the standard was so high. We’ve had all genres from people from all walks of life from all around the world. We laughed, we gasped and we shed a tear or two.

We wanted to publish them all, but we can’t. You guys are good. So good, in fact, that we had to take the basis upon which we shortlisted down to how the entries worked as a pitch in its purest format.

How did it grab us in the first few lines? Were we intrigued? Did we need to know more? If we were sat in a boardroom and had to take the pitch on its immediacy; who would we choose?

This is who. Congratulations to @AyeMich with her pitch for her book ‘Redemption’. We will begin working with her in the new year on ‘Redemption’, and look forward to reading the entire story.

Keep your eyes peeled for the next challenge, and keep writing. We want to read you all!

Here is the Prose Pitch from @AyeMich in its entirety:

Redemption

“Jessica Wright has wanted nothing more than to be a writer. For years, she worked extremely hard, doing grunt jobs at small tv stations and local newspapers. She’d been working on the same novel for almost four years, sending it out to publisher after publisher. It was only when she began to give up on herself, that someone took a chance on her and her skill.

Three years later and she’s one of the bestselling authors of her time. Life is good. She works with people she’s come to call friends, she’s in a stable and loving relationship and she’s on the verge of releasing her newest novel. But then, weird things start to happen.

Bodies of women begin turning up all throughout the city of Brentwood. She pays it no mind, though she’s been having really weird dreams about her girlfriend being killed in all sorts of ways. Frank Albane, the Chief of Police and current father figure to Jessica, takes his job seriously and vows to put an end to the murders, along with Daniella Santiago, who just happens to be the lead prosecutor and the girlfriend of Jessica Wright.

While working the case, the Chief starts to notice little things, minuscule things that no one else could ever catch on to. He works endlessly alongside Daniella to bring this case to a close and catch their unsub.

When the last victim gets away, she immediately calls the Brentwood PD and the message is relayed to Chief Albane. He takes it upon himself to question her and that’s when he realizes why things seem so familiar...he’s seen this before. Back in the station, he mulls over the evidence, spending countless house piecing things together until a light bulb clicks: he knows this because he’s read it. And he read it in Jessica’s first draft of her very first novel.

When he brings Jessica and Daniella up to speed, Jessica shuts down. Her entire world begins to fall apart. With Daniella having worked day in and day out on the case, Jessica turns her attention elsewhere and accepts a dinner invite from Christina James, her assistant. As they are enjoying the night, Christina begins to say the right things at the right times and one thing leads to another until they are interrupted and Jessica realizes the mistake she’s just made. Now, she has to fight to bring herself back, fight for her relationship and fight for her innocence because how could one person know something that you’ve only shown to a handful of people? There are murders happening that mimic her very own writing. She’s become the number one suspect.

Fighting for all that she’s lost, Jessica has to step out of her very comfortable life and step into the world of a killer; a person who has become hellbent on ruining everything she’s built for herself. And soon, those dreams become a reality when she’s told that the latest of the unsub’s victims is Daniella. Scared out of her mind, she runs to Chief Albane, who tries to reason with her and when that fails, he agrees to let her go through with the plan. With all the bravery she has in her, she steps out of her cookie-cutter life and into the unknown and vows to make it out alive.”