Dead in Print: Deadlines Installment #3

Howdy from Texas,

A few things to note before we move on to Deadlines. 

The Secretary Volume II releases next week. Pre-order it here. 

I also have another new standalone thriller coming in June.

As for Deadlines...

She was supposed to fade out.
That’s not what happened.

In this week’s installment, Mallory becomes the industry’s favorite bad idea—complete with mid-century furniture and murder weapon quizzes.

In case you missed the first two, you can catch up here:

📖 Installment One: The Dead Author’s Society
✏️ Installment Two: Kill Your Darlings, Especially Him

---

Welcome to Deadlines
A note before we begin

Deadlines follows Mallory Blythe, a writer who doesn’t just revise the endings she hates—she rewrites everything. Fiction. People. Outcomes. It’s satirical. It’s dark. And sometimes it gets a little close to the bone.

These are fictional stories. That part’s not up for interpretation.

Mallory’s opinions and actions are hers—and hers alone.

Each installment stands on its own. But together, they build something messier. More dangerous. And, I hope, fun.

____________________________

Dead in Print

Deadlines: Installment Three

The show dropped on a Thursday. By Friday, my inbox was full of podcast invites, threat assessments, and one marriage proposal signed “From a fellow editor.”

Everyone had a take.

“Ruthless.”

“Genre-breaking.”

“A middle finger dipped in ink.”

Someone started a subreddit called Mallory’s Red Pen.
Someone else got a quote from my book tattooed across their ribcage.

And just like that, I was no longer a cautionary tale.

I was trending.

Even BuzzFeed did a feature. The bad kind—full of mid-century furniture and a quiz titled “Which Literary Antihero Are You Based on Your Murder Weapon?” The photos made me look like I’d just buried a man and gotten away with it.

The critics who once called me “bitter and ungrateful” now requested advance copies and insisted they saw it coming.

One headline read:

She rewrote the rules. Then she burned the manuscript.

I didn’t disagree. But I also didn’t care.

It was all just noise now.

And for the first time in a long time, I felt bored.

Until—despite the blood, the backlash, and a very dead protagonist—the show got picked up for a second season.

The final script was due in six weeks. I turned it in the following Tuesday, because nothing inspires me like spite on a deadline.

The showrunner called me “refreshingly unapologetic.”

The executive producer called me “Mallory with a capital M.”

My agent called me at 2AM and asked if I had finally lost my mind.

“Probably,” I said. “But it’s testing well.”

In the final scene, the thinly veiled Theodore character—now renamed Dorian Vale (because of course he was)—gives a reading at a university named after a donor who once funded a startup that sold biodegradable paper straws.

As he finishes the passage (one of mine, naturally), a student raises her hand and asks why all his female characters sound like they’ve never spoken to a real woman.

He says something evasive and profound, like “Aren’t we all speaking into the dark?”

Then she shoots him. Once. Clean. Center mass.

The gun? A gift from a female colleague he once condescended to in a Paris Review interview.

Roll credits.

****

Against all odds—and the quiet panic of every man who funded it—it took off like wildfire. Despite the network’s NDAs and one executive whose only job was to tell me it wouldn’t work, there it was. Unavoidable. Unapologetic. On fire. No one saw it coming. Least of all the ones who insisted they did.

“Bold,” they said.

“Uncompromising.”

“Exactly what literature needs right now.”

Next thing I know I’m in Vogue. As in the magazine with the sidebars about Danish cookware and headlines like:

“How This Author Went from Cancel Risk to Cult Classic.”

“Mallory Blythe: Redefining Rage—The Feminine Way.”

“How This Unmanageable Author Became the Industry’s Favorite Bad Idea.”

I wasn’t redefining anything. I just gave them the version they deserved. And I was finally having fun.

The real irony? The critics who’d once called my work “graceless and hostile” now hailed me as “the intellectual heir to Bret Easton Ellis, but with a pretty face.”

What can I say? You kill a man once—fictionally—and suddenly everyone wants to invite you to dinner.

****

I went. Of course I did.

The award ceremony was held in a refurbished opera house. Chandeliers. Velvet. The kind of place where everyone whispers like the carpet might be listening.

I wore black. Not because I was mourning anything. Because black makes people nervous. And I was in the mood to be misunderstood.

They handed me the award with trembling hands and called it “a lifetime achievement in contemporary narrative clarity.”

What they meant was:

She killed the right man, and made it look literary.

****

After the photos, after the fake congratulations and strategic air kisses, I stepped outside and lit a cigarette I didn’t particularly want.

A young woman approached me. Late twenties. Nervous energy. A pen tucked behind her ear. The kind of person who still believes the ending of The Great Gatsby was sad for the right reasons.

She held out a copy of The Ghost of Strang. The spine was cracked. Annotated. Pages marked with tabs in shades of rage.

“Could you sign it?” she asked.

I took the book, flipped to the last page, and wrote:

Write like you’re leaving fingerprints on purpose.

—Mallory Blythe

She laughed. Honest. Startled. Like someone just told her a secret she didn’t know she already knew.

“I’m writing something too,” she said, almost apologetically.

“Good,” I said. “Don’t let them fix your ending.”

She thanked me. Tucked the book under her arm. Walked away like something important had just begun.

I stayed where I was. Smug. Satisfied. Alone.

Almost.

“You got the wrong man,” a voice said behind me. Calm. Cold.

“But the right idea.”

I turned.

And there he was.

No smile. No introduction.

Just a marked-up copy of The Ghost of Strang, held out like a dare.

Like it was the first time anyone had ever tried to edit me. Like he already knew I’d take it.

“Just look,” he said.

So I did.

Every note in the margins hit its mark.

Every cut knew where to hurt.

I should’ve walked away.

Instead, I reached for the book—and his hand didn’t move.

Not right away.

And just like that, the story changed.

New installments post Sundays at 10AM CST. Newsletter subscribers get them Saturdays.

---

Want to make sure you never miss a post? Sign up to have them delivered straight to your inbox.

---