THE CURSED PRINT RUN
A GRIPPING NOVELLA ABOUT THE PRICE OF WORDS AND FORBIDDEN CLOSENESS
Seven days left till the official release of the novel “Ink of Dead Words”. The advance copy is still warm. The ink is still wet.
Junior editor Vera Korsakova comes to the night print shop on the Fontanka to sign the acceptance papers. On page three hundred she finds a handwritten insert in violet ink. It describes her own death with frightening accuracy — today at 00:15 in the cold water of the Fontanka.
The brakes of her old Toyota really do fail. The man she has hated all these months saves her — the author himself, writing under the name Christian.
His ink is not just words. It changes reality. Every line demands payment: a memory, blood, someone else’s life. The publishing house “Slovo” knows about this and uses the magic as a perfect printing press — on blood, on deaths, on million-copy runs.
Vera can no longer stay just an editor. To survive and save those she loves she will have to take the pen herself and rewrite the ending. Even if she has to pay for it with her own memory.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: ADVANCE COPY
CHAPTER 2. BUSINESS ON BLOOD
CHAPTER 3. HOUSE BY THE BAY
CHAPTER 4. FIRST BODY
CHAPTER 7. CANCELLATION SYNDROME
CHAPTER 8. NIGHT SCARS
CHAPTER 9. FATHER’S ARCHIVE
CHAPTER 11. FORBIDDEN ZONE
CHAPTER 12. BLACK MARKET OF LETTERS
CHAPTER 14. MASQUERADE BALL
CHAPTER 15. YOU ARE CROSSED OUT OF THE INTRIGUE
CHAPTER 16. PROOFREADING FOLLOWS US
CHAPTER 17. THE ENDING REWRITTEN BY HAND
BONUS CHAPTER. EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTIAN
CONCLUSION
AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LEGAL NOTICE AND PUBLISHING HOUSE POLICY
This book was born from a simple and scary question: what happens if words start coming true for real?
Not in a figurative sense. Not as a pretty metaphor. But physically — when a line written with special ink reshapes the asphalt, breaks the brakes, erases a person from the lists of the living and leaves someone else’s name on the skin.
I worked a long time in the publishing world and know too well how easily a text becomes a product and a person turns into expendable material for a nice binding. “Cursed Print Run” is the story of what happens when the magic of the word falls into the hands of those who can count only print runs and profit.
At the center is Vera, a junior editor who is used to fixing other people’s manuscripts and believing only in facts. And Christian — the author whose ink stopped being paint a long time ago. Between them is a forbidden closeness that kills faster than any hitman, and a countdown to publication that cannot be stopped by ordinary means.
