Following the Thread

There’s a moment I get before I write — usually when I’m staring at the blank page — when I remind myself of something simple: I never meant to share Rowendrey at all.

It started as a private corner of my imagination. A place I drifted to when real life was loud or busy or just… ordinary. A village with crooked lanes and steady bells. A lake that held the whole sky. An arboretum that somehow always felt warm, even in winter. It was loosely based on a theme-park idea I once had, but honestly, it became its own thing pretty quickly.

I wasn’t writing for anyone. There were no early readers, no grand plan, no encouragement other than the small spark of wanting to see what happened next.

And then, one day, I wondered:
What if these letters arrived the way they’re meant to — in the mail, on paper, as if they’d travelled from somewhere real?
And that idea just wouldn’t leave me alone.

From there, Rowendrey grew the way most worthwhile things do: slowly, quietly, and with more stubborn joy than I expected. I wrote. Rewrote. Scrapped whole pages. Rebuilt them. Designed boxes. Fiddled with parchment types. Played far too long with fonts. (And yes, reminded myself again that “neighbour” has a u in Canada.)

I eventually handed a few letters to some beta readers. They gave small but important notes — clearer fonts here, a push toward more Canadian spellings there — and, thankfully, a lot of warm encouragement.

Everything after that has just been following the thread of a place I’ve grown to care about more than I ever thought I would.

That’s why this subscription exists. Not because of marketing advice or trends, but because this little village felt real enough that it deserved to be shared — one envelope at a time.

If you’ve already stepped into the story, thank you. If you’re thinking about it, there’s room for you on Market Street, a warm nook in Linnea’s Arboretum, and plenty more to discover in the letters ahead.

— W.O. Rowen
(Keeper of the ink, though the Recorder does most of the heavy lifting.)