Story That Killed Its Author

The Story That Killed Its Author
A metafictional horror novel by Philip Stengel

Adrian Locke was a novelist once-critically lauded, commercially forgotten, and emotionally hollowed. When a mysterious manuscript appears on his doorstep, written in crimson ink and detailing his most private thoughts, Adrian believes it's a prank. Until the deaths begin.

The manuscript knows him. It writes reality. It kills with plot twists.

As Adrian races to outwit a living story that rewrites itself in real time-claiming victims to fuel its tragic arc-he must team up with the one person who still believes in him to unravel a dark literary conspiracy stretching back to 1888. But the deeper he reads, the more the story twists around him. And the final chapter demands one last sacrifice: the author himself.

A psychological and supernatural thriller exploring ambition, obsession, and narrative as weapon, The Story That Killed Its Author is a terrifying ode to writers-and the stories that consume them.