Today (3/19/26), publisher Hachette / Orbit announced the cancellation of the publication (originally coming out on 4/6) of Mia Ballard’s SHY GIRL, an extreme horror novel about one woman’s descent into ferality after entering into an agreement with a man intent on turning her into a dog. Originally self-published in 2025, the book was pulled by the author soon after it was released on Kindle to be sold to Orbit Books for traditional publication. The author and publisher were quickly called out for the original cover art used during self-publishing and the advanced reader copies being stolen, which the author admitted to. That was quickly changed. Not too long after, people began to notice clunky metaphors, similes that made no sense, and the use of the word “sharp” over 100 times in 247 pages as a descriptor (including three times on one page). Some quotes highlighted for making no sense but sounding “pretty”: “I hate myself for it, for the pathetic tremor of gratitude that blooms like rot.” “My dad stayed, but in pieces, in fragments that didn’t add up to enough.” “Time here doesn’t have edges; it drips and folds, days bleeding into years, into nothing at all.”
