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THE RULE WE BREAK

Catalina Reyes needs a home she can afford. Ronan Diaz understands consequences. Their solution is simple enough: pretend to be a committed couple, secure a coveted apartment at The Maravilla, and keep the lie convincing until neither of them needs it anymore.The building has rules. Their lease has expectations. And Catalina and Ronan have boundaries designed to keep an arrangement from becoming something neither intended.But performance becomes dangerous when it begins to feel honest. Every shared room, practiced touch, and partial truth draws them deeper into a relationship that was supposed to exist only for everyone watching. Soon, the hardest rule to follow is the one meant to protect them from each other.Paperback ISBN: 978-0-557-87722-5
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-557-87642-6

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WHAT RUIN COULDN'T TAKE

He built their future carefully. She was already walking away from it.Silas Sterling believes in things that can be measured: numbers, plans, promises kept over time. He has spent years quietly building a future for the woman he loves—a life with room to breathe, a home of their own, and maybe one day, the family he has always imagined.He doesn't realize his marriage is already breaking.When the truth finally reaches him, Silas doesn't just lose the woman he trusted. He loses the future he thought they were building together—and the certainty that loving someone well is enough to make them stay.Starting over was never part of the plan.Neither was Mira.She enters his life without demands, without promises, and without asking him to become someone less damaged before he's allowed to keep moving forward. She carries scars of her own, and she understands something Silas is only beginning to learn: trust isn't proven through access, love isn't ownership, and healing doesn't happen because someone new arrives to erase what came before.It happens slowly.In conversations that don't need to be forced. In boundaries that are respected. In miles walked beside someone who doesn't ask you to surrender yourself to be loved.But the past doesn't always stay where you leave it.And when the life Silas has begun rebuilding is threatened by the ruins of the one he escaped, he'll have to decide whether surviving betrayal was enough—or whether he's willing to risk believing in a future again.A deeply emotional story of betrayal, rebuilding, second chances, and the quiet kind of love that doesn't rescue you—it reminds you that you were never beyond saving.Paperback ISBN: 978-0-557-84034-2
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-557-83981-0

WHY THIS NOTE MATTERED

Before Shadow Shift Media and before I ever considered publishing, I was still riding the fence. I didn’t know whether I wanted to keep writing only for myself, close friends, and family—or take the much bigger step of putting my stories out into the world and asking people to take a chance on them.It was a huge decision, and honestly, I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to make it.Then an early reader finished The Rule We Break and gave me this handwritten note. Her words, along with the encouragement of a few others, helped push me off that fence. They made me believe these stories might mean something to people beyond the small circle I had written them for—and convinced me to try.

AN EARLY READER • THE RULE WE BREAK

“Hey C—This was fantastic!!! The plot, the build up, the imagery. The reminder about the importance of finding a home & a person you don’t have to perform for. Please print this so the world can experience it.—Q”

IN DEVELOPMENT

NO GRAVE BUT MINE

Gideon Falk has spent a decade alone on Mercy Null, a remote black-site platform where the condemned arrive only after the world has been told they are dead. His work is precise. His isolation is deliberate. Seven hundred twenty-nine executions have given him no reason to question either.Then investigative journalist Dahlia Fontaine arrives as number seven hundred thirty.She has uncovered evidence powerful people will kill to erase. Gideon has orders to make her disappearance permanent. Instead, one impossible decision turns executioner into captor, witness, and the only barrier between Dahlia and the system determined to silence her.On an installation built to leave no survivors, control becomes obsession, defiance becomes intimacy, and keeping one woman alive threatens every rule Gideon has ever obeyed.

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C. M. Clark

C. M. Clark’s love of storytelling began with the Hardy Boys—the mysteries, the adventure, and the chapter illustrations that made their world feel alive. That early fascination grew through the novels of Clive Cussler, Stephen King, Tom Clancy, and many others.Today, Clark writes contemporary romance and romantic suspense about relationships under pressure: friendship becoming love, a carefully constructed lie becoming real, and the courage to trust again after betrayal. Attraction starts the story, but the choices people make—and the boundaries they learn to respect—give that love something to stand on.Balancing work, writing, and everyday life, Clark continues building a collection of emotionally driven fiction through Shadow Shift Media. Each story explores what it takes to be seen, to choose someone honestly, and to build something worth keeping.

“I’m interested in what happens beyond attraction—the boundaries people set, the truths they avoid, and the choices they make when loving someone becomes complicated.”

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SHADOW SHIFT MEDIA

Shadow Shift Media is the independent publishing home of author C. M. Clark, releasing original fiction in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover editions.Each title is developed under one creative direction spanning editorial preparation, design, production, and release.Digital editions are available through Amazon Kindle. Paperback and hardcover editions are produced on demand and sold through the Lulu Bookstore.

LATEST FROM THE SHADOWS

September 22, 2026
The paperback and hardcover editions for What Ruin Couldn't Take are now available through the Lulu Bookstore. The Kindle edition is available on Amazon!

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