Goodreads asked Shelley Burbank:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Shelley Burbank Final Draft started as a flash fiction story. At the time, I gave myself a challenge to write a flash fiction every week and to try different genres, in this case detective fiction. I ended up posting the flash story on Wattpad where readers found it and said, "I can't wait to find out what happens next!" I realized they thought this was the beginning of a novel...so I wrote it for them.

The theme of plagiarism comes directly from my observation on Wattpad that young writers were extremely worried about other people stealing their books or their ideas. I thought they'd be interested in a mystery story about a professor/mentor who steals his student's manuscript and passes it off as his own. With over 500,000 reads on the platform, Final Draft (which had a different name at the time) did quite well. I'm excited it is coming out in print in March 2023!

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