Hello, and come in — the kettle has only just boiled.
This little corner of the internet belongs to Elderberry Cove, a cozy medical mystery about a doctor who moves to the friendliest village on the coast and discovers that friendliness, applied with enough discipline, can hide almost anything. The book is in its final rounds of polishing now. When it has a publication date, the people on the letters will hear it first — that's a promise, not a marketing line.
What will appear here
Roughly once a month, a note like this one. Sometimes it will be news from the writing desk: what Evelyn Thorn is up to, how the edits are treating me, the small victories and the mutinous chapters. And sometimes it will be photographs.
The Cove is fictional, but it is stitched together from real places — harbours where the boats lean over at low tide, lanes where the hedges meet overhead, tea rooms with three tables and strong opinions. I take a camera on my walks, and the pictures that survive the wind will end up here, so you can see the bones of the village before you ever read about it.
Here are the first few, to start the album.
Until then
If a mystery with a proper pot of tea sounds like your sort of thing — no gore, warm hearts, a puzzle that plays fair — then join the letters, and I'll write to you when there's something worth saying.
It's quiet here in the Cove. That's rather the point. Though between us: it's never quite as quiet as it looks.
— Barnaby