A Murder That Hasn’t Happened Yet

A murder hasn’t happened. Not in Falls Church. Not in L.A. Not in D.C.

But I’ve been called in to stop it. Inside J.J. Abrams’ next feature film, Ghostwriter.

It sounds insane, I know. But welcome to Pre-Crime.

When Fiction Bleeds Into Reality

The movie Minority Report (yes, the Tom Cruise one, not Tom Hanks) was supposed to be fiction. Yet predictive policing already exists today — in the U.K., Chicago, Los Angeles. Algorithms analyze crime data, weather patterns, even personal histories to forecast who might commit crimes before they do.

And Abrams’ Ghostwriter? That may be the next crime scene.

The evidence is laughably thin. But that’s how detectives of cultural crimes work. We build cases out of scraps. We solve plots before they’re written. And sometimes, we rewrite the ending.

Exhibit A: The Suspects (Cast)

Line them up. Hand them a script. Watch the cracks appear.

• Glen Powell — boy-next-door charm with a dangerous glint. Too polished to be the villain, too bankable not to be the lead. Prime candidate for “author who writes a murder into existence.”
• Jenna Ortega — leopard-print coat in paparazzi shots, screaming “gothic wildcard.” Victim? Accomplice? Either way, she’s already in holding.
• Emma Mackey — period wardrobe in a modern shoot. Out of place, out of time. Maybe red herring. Maybe corpse.
• Samuel L. Jackson — noir logic says if his voice enters the frame, the crime’s already happened. He’s narrating the bloodstains while they’re still wet.

Exhibit B: The Crime Scenes (Filming Locations)

Crime scenes hum before the first drop of blood.

• Edinburgh — Parliament Square shut down. Cobblestones don’t lie. You don’t close a city that old unless it’s a witness.
• Glasgow — hover buses, futuristic storefronts. Translation: Edinburgh in disguise. The murder could unfold in any world.
• Providence — Point Street Bridge sealed, storefronts reborn as Graffiti Comics. Set dressing to most. To me? A chalk outline waiting for its close-up.

Exhibit C: The Modus Operandi (Abrams’ Style)

Every perp’s got a pattern. Abrams is no exception.

• Alias: Mr. Mystery Box.
• Rap sheet: Lost. Cloverfield. Super 8.
• Signature: Keep the audience hooked with breadcrumbs until the last five minutes. Sometimes later. Sometimes after the credits.

That’s his crime.

The Charge: Murder in the First Degree

Every case needs a charge sheet. And this one’s ugly.

A fantasy author crosses into his own story. And there, inside the world he created, he plans the murder of Jenna Ortega’s character. Premeditated. Cold-blooded. Call it Murder, First Degree.

Here’s my Minority Report:

• Powell, as the author, types Ortega’s death into the manuscript.
• Ortega either tries to stop him — or becomes the unwitting weapon.
• Mackey is collateral, left behind as the timeline folds in.
• Jackson narrates the crime scene like a coroner reading scripture.
• Abrams? He’s the true ghost. The architect smiling behind the camera.

On paper, the author commits the murder. On screen, the fingerprints vanish into the reel.

But I’m not here to watch the body drop. I’m here to stop it.

Rewriting the Ending

So how do you change a story already written?

You don’t call the cops. You don’t call a priest. You ghostwrite the rewrite. Slip into the margins, edit the draft before the ink dries.

One word here, one line there. Suddenly the knife becomes a quill. Suddenly Ortega lives.

It’s dangerous work — ask Marty McFly. Alter the script, and the whole timeline shifts. But better that than another chalk outline.

The Real Pre-Crime

Some will say the evidence is paper-thin. And they’d be right.

But that’s how Pre-Crime works. You don’t wait for corpses. You intervene.

And here’s the kicker: Pre-Crime isn’t fiction anymore. It’s happening now.

• The U.K. runs Sharing Data to Improve Risk Assessment — predicting homicide before it happens.
• U.S. cities deploy PredPol and HunchLab — forecasting crime hotspots like lottery numbers.
• IBM rolled out Blue CRUSH. DARPA pushed ADAMS — sniffing insider threats before they strike.
• Los Angeles and Chicago already claim reductions in crime. Civil liberties lawyers call it surveillance creep.

So if the data says Powell’s typewriter is the murder weapon, am I supposed to sit back with popcorn and wait for the credits? Not on my watch.

Verdict: Art Imitates Life

This isn’t life imitating art. This is art imitating life.

Abrams’ Ghostwriter is just the dramatization. The real investigation? That’s happening here.

So here’s my ruling:

• The murder is written by Powell.
• Carried out by the author’s rage at Ortega.
• Witnessed out of time by Mackey.
• Narrated like scripture by Jackson.
• And masterminded, inevitably, by Abrams.

But Pre-Crime ghosts don’t just observe. They edit. And I slipped into the margins, rewrote the Shooting Script with no one noticing.

Changed a weapon into a quill. Swapped a death scene for a plot twist. Ortega walks. The author stays guilty. Abrams still smiles.

But the body never drops.

Case Closed… For Now

As Chandler once wrote: “There’s no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”

Abrams set his. But I sprung mine first — hidden in the rewrite.

That’s the edge of being both ghost and detective: you don’t just solve the crime. You change the story.

Case closed. Until the sequel.

#JJ Abrams #Ghostwriter #MinorityReport #FilmNoir #FanTheory #Screenwriting #Hollywood #DetectiveStory #EggmanChronicles

Filed under: The Eggman Chronicles. Case notes from Season 1: The Secret Lives of Ghostwriters. Coming soon… maybe in your feed, maybe in a theater.

If you’re writing your first book and staring down the “publish” button on Amazon, you’ve probably asked yourself the same scary question every new author asks:

“What if nobody buys it?”

Here’s the truth: writing the book is only half the battle. Publishing and selling it is a whole different beast. Part strategy, part grind, and yes — part luck. But luck favors the prepared. Here’s how you stack the deck.

1. Treat It Like a Product Launch, Not Just a Passion Project

If you want readers, you can’t just toss your book into the Amazon ocean and hope it swims.

• Who’s your audience? Be ruthless. It’s not “everyone.” It’s a tribe. Name them. Reach out to them.
• Why should they care? Even memoirs scratch an itch — inspiration, escape, a mirror. When you can answer why, you’ll know how to sell it.

2. Covers Sell Books — Period

I don’t care how brilliant the prose is. If your cover looks like it was whipped up on MS Paint, you’re dead in the water. Hire a pro.

Then write a description that sizzles — more cinematic movie trailer than book report.

3. Buzz Beats Crickets

Don’t wait until launch to start talking.

• Drop snippets, behind-the-scenes, or quotes online.
• Hang out where your readers already are (Reddit subs, Goodreads groups, Facebook pages).
• Hand out ARCs like candy and beg for reviews. Momentum feeds momentum.

4. Look at Amazon as a Channel, Not a Strategy

Sure, it’s the biggest bookstore on earth. It’s also the noisiest.

You’ve got to go wider: Goodreads, BookBub, podcasts, LinkedIn, newsletters. Hell, even Quora answers like this one. Every breadcrumb leads back to your book.

5. Don’t Expect Fireworks Overnight

Most books don’t explode on Day 1. That’s fine. Books are evergreen. Relaunch them. Repackage them. Write sequels. Play the long game.

Pitch for movie deals or a docu-series.

Case Study 1: John Grisham — the Lawyer Who Almost Quit

His debut novel, A Time to Kill (1989), flopped. He couldn’t give it away from the trunk of his car. His publisher was ready to drop him.

But undeterred, Grisham wrote another: The Firm (1991).

Before it was even published, Hollywood snapped it up — and Paramount bought the rights for $600,000. Suddenly, this unknown Southern attorney had Tom Cruise starring in his movie.

The hype pushed The Firm to sell 7 million copies out the gate, eventually 20 million worldwide. The film grossed $270 million on a $42M budget.

That flop of a debut? Reissued, it roared back. A Time to Kill became a bestseller and a film in 1996 starring Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey, grossing $152 million.

Today, Grisham has sold 300+ million books in 42 languages. But he started in the same place you are: a scared, unknown first-timer.

Case Study 2: T.J. Newman — the Flight Attendant Who Said “Never Die”

She was literally working red-eye flights and scribbling her novel idea on napkins between serving peanuts.

She got rejected by 41 agents. But the 42nd said yes.

Her debut thriller, Falling (2021), about a pilot forced to crash a plane, sold in a seven-figure deal. The film rights went to Universal in another seven-figure deal.

Today, Newman is a bestselling author with another blockbuster (Drowning) under her belt.

From flight attendant scribbles to million-dollar book and movie deals. Yes, it can happen to you.

Final Takeaway

Fear is normal. But fear isn’t fatal.

If you treat your book like a launch, build buzz, think bigger than Amazon, and — most importantly — keep writing and showing up, you give luck the oxygen it needs to catch fire.

If Grisham could go from “failed small-town attorney” to selling 300 million books, and Newman could go from “rejected 41 times” to Hollywood deals, you can absolutely sell your first book.

✍️ About Me:
I’m Steve Eggleston, a professional ghostwriter and literary manager. I’ve written and co-written 25+ books, including seven Amazon bestsellers. Some became films, others hit #1 in the UK.

SteveEgglestonWrites.com | EggmanGlobalAgency.com

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As a professional ghostwriter who has written and published over 25 books — including 7 Amazon bestsellers — I’d start by gently pointing out that in publishing, we don’t measure book length by words per page.

Why? Because “pages” can mean wildly different things depending on context:

• Manuscript pages in Word or Google Docs depend on font type, font size, margins, and spacing.
• Trade paperback pages (5.5″×8.5″ format) have tighter typesetting and typically fit 250–300 words per page on average.
• Hardcover pages (often larger trim) can hold 300–350 words per page.
• eBook screens vary completely because readers can change the font size.

That’s why the industry standard is to measure length in total word count, which stays constant across formats.

Your numbers in publishing terms

If you have 400 words per page × 300 pages, that’s about 120,000 words.
That would make your book a very long novel by today’s standards — perfectly fine for epic fantasy or sprawling historical fiction, but potentially a harder debut sell in other genres for traditional publishers and self-pub alike.

Industry standard word counts

• Commercial & Literary Fiction: 70,000–100,000 words
• Romance: 50,000–90,000 words
• Mystery / Thriller: 70,000–90,000 words
• Epic Fantasy / Historical Fiction: 100,000–150,000+ words
• Novellas: 20,000–50,000 words

In my ghostwriting agreements, I typically scope 60,000–80,000 words for a standard commercial novel, or 70,000+ words if aiming for traditional submission to a publisher (it often ends up longer, but we then trim and edit).

Famous exceptions

• Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea — was 40,000 words (a novella) and a Nobel Prize–winning masterpiece.
• George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones — was over 280,000 words, an epic in every sense.

The real key is whether your pacing and content justify the length.

What to consider

1.

Genre norms — Match or intentionally defy them.

2.

Publishing route — Traditional houses are cautious with debut novels over 100k words. Self-publishing offers more freedom if you want to be the genre exception (but brace yourself for reflective sales success, or lack thereof).

3.

Editing & reader focus — The longer the book, the more essential a developmental edit becomes (long, unwieldy novels can be the kiss of death, even if you are a famous author).

Bottom line

• If self-publishing and your story needs the scope to breathe, 120k words can work (but that’s a long book in today’s world of reduced attention spans).
• If aiming for a traditional debut deal, consider trimming to 70–90k unless your genre supports more.
• Always measure by total word count, not words per page — it’s the language the industry speaks.

Steve Eggleston
Ghostwriter, Author, Literary Manager
Professional Ghostwriting Services | Steve Eggleston Writes | HOME | Eggman Global Agency

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