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Cozy paranormal fantasy · Premade three-book pack

The Stair-Counting Cat

Name: The Stair-Counting Cat: premade three-book series
Brand: PlotProse
Price: 705 USD
Availability: InStock

Pickle takes his time coming downstairs. If you sit beside him, you get to keep some of it.

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3-book package

$705

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The Stair-Counting Cat, a cozy paranormal fantasy concept package. The graphic shows 3 novel covers and the free lead magnet, Nine Steps in the Pantry.

The concept

Pat Tipping spends her shifts as a home-help making sure everybody in her Pennine town has what they need. At dusk the black-and-white cat who moved into her flat walks down a flight of steps. Where he stops, a sunlit landing opens for a few minutes between one tick of the town clock and the next. Pat has lived here for thirty years. She can count on one hand the people who have ever seen her sit still.

The three novels follow the house calls, friendships and rare evenings off of a woman everybody thinks they know. The free lead magnet Nine Steps in the Pantry opens the first landing and puts two mugs on it.

The worldAt dusk, Pickle can open one landing a day. He counts the steps his paws touch on his way down. Two people already beside him who choose to sit get that many unhurried minutes together. Cups, flowers and people fit. Unfinished chores wait outside. Standing up ends the visit. Pickle always picks the stairs.

Series tropesSmall Town • Hidden World • Rebuilding Life After Divorce

Intended readershipFor readers who would gladly spend another five minutes with a person they love. A cat with firm preferences, a steep northern town and the tiny politics of whose turn it is to rest carry the series.

Tone & contentClean, domestic fantasy with a safe animal companion. Caregiving, bereavement and family fatigue are handled with warmth and dry humour.

The people behind the promise

Free novellaPat Tippingnewly on her own after a divorce

Free novellaBill Farleya widower who lodges above an old grocer’s

Book 1Pat, her schoolfriend Etta Horne, and the evening groups sharing the steep old school building.

Book 2Pat, her teenage niece Bethan, and Bethan’s single father Graham, Pat’s younger brother.

Book 3Pat and Graham, who look after their mother Marjorie, and Bill, who tends roses behind the old grocer’s.

Series arc

Pat shares nine minutes in a pantry, tries to put a timetable on a landing, lets her niece call time on a family argument and finds a place to rest with her brother among the roses. The hill ends up with real benches as well as the one landing only Pickle can provide.

The three books

The direction is set. The books are written after you order.

Free novella

Nine Steps in the Pantry

Pat drops off Bill’s supper and does what she always does. She keeps her coat on. Then her cat counts nine steps into the old pantry and a patch of June sunlight opens on a November wall. Bill sets their two mugs on the sill.

Story outline

Story arc and endingBill sits. Pat can see that the minute hand has stopped outside, which disposes of her best excuse. He wants a few minutes to complain about his late wife’s appalling tea without everybody trying to cheer him up. Pat tells him the thing her ex used to do with a wet spoon in the sugar. The two laugh until the landing closes. Next evening she tries the pantry alone and nothing happens. She visits Bill on her next free afternoon anyway, with her coat already off. Pickle gets a saucer of water in the shop window.

Emotional payoffTwo people who miss a former version of home make a new, wonderfully untidy kitchen habit.

Story focusGrief to Hope

Length30,000 words planned

Book 1 of three

The Landing That Wasn't There

On the old school stairs, Etta and Pat discover fourteen minutes in which nobody can ask either of them to fetch a thing. Etta gives one other carer the good news. By Friday there is a queue at a landing which, in daylight, demonstrably isn’t there.

Story outline

Story arc and endingPat promises everybody a turn. Each evening people cluster around Pickle until he saunters off to sleep somewhere else. Etta has been left minding bags while the queue debates fairness. Her quarrel with Pat closes the evening group for a week. Pat returns to help Etta put a sofa in a real ground-floor room, recruit two tea hosts and post the bus times. At the first reopened group Pickle gives a landing to two people who already stopped on the stairs to chat. Downstairs Etta gets a whole unhurried evening to mend a friendship. Pat gives back the clipboard.

Emotional payoffPat’s oldest friend can ask her for company once Pat stops trying to allocate it by the minute.

Story focusChildhood Friends

Length55,000 words planned

Book 2 of three

The Cat Who Skipped Thirteen

Pat’s family has spent weeks arranging a thirteenth-birthday speech for Bethan. The birthday girl would trade all of it for a minute with her father in which he doesn’t ask how school is going. Pickle has just stepped clean over stair thirteen.

Story outline

Story arc and endingThe family plan a long, formal birthday landing by lining the stairs with cat treats. Pickle jumps sideways and stops after counting just two actual steps. Pat sends father and daughter ahead while she deals with the guests. In two minutes Bethan tells Graham she wants to stop competitive swimming and spend afternoons drawing. They come out to a table of swimming-club presents and a party nobody quite knows how to change. Graham takes down his prepared speech, passes out pencils and sits for the worst portraits anyone can manage. Over the next fortnight he helps Bethan tell her coach. She keeps a pool afternoon for pleasure. Pat learns the price of volunteering somebody else’s news.

Emotional payoffBethan chooses when to speak, Graham hears her, and her aunt becomes somebody she can trust with the news that comes next.

Story focusSingle Parent

Length55,000 words planned

Book 3 of three

The Step Beneath the Roses

Graham wants their mother to move down the hill. Pat keeps saying the house suits her fine. Marjorie, who is in the room for both opinions, puts her coat on and asks Bill to show her his roses.

Story outline

Story arc and endingThe siblings try to arrange the longest possible landing to settle the move. Marjorie chooses the single step under Bill’s rose arch, where she and Pat get one minute. She uses it to ask Pat to finish her own week’s leave. On an ordinary afternoon Graham hears that Marjorie wants a smaller place near the garden but fears losing her neighbours. The siblings try the hill routes with her, find a flat she likes and move her rose in its tub. Volunteers build seats along the walk. Pat returns from her first holiday alone to find her mother and brother sharing a bench and Pickle fast asleep on the step below it.

Emotional payoffPat can be somebody’s daughter while she is away and when she comes back. Her mother has made the move on her own terms.

Story focusOpposites Life Goals

Length55,000 words planned

From the free novella into Book 1

Pat’s first visit is inside a pantry conversion. The man who shares it invites her to bring Pickle along on her evening walk past the old school.

In the concept package

Includes the author pitch, editable Authorythm seeds and individual AI-generated front-cover concepts. The planned fiction totals 195,000 words.

Included free

Buy the 3-book concept pack and receive the companion lead magnet concept free. Each novel is planned at 55,000 words. The lead magnet, Nine Steps in the Pantry, is planned at 30,000 words.

Included in the pack

Author pitch PDF with the series premise, characters, book blurbs and complete story arcs. One editable Authorythm seed document. 4 coordinated front-cover concepts.