Letters – The Writers in Residence

It was a shock. How could they?

I’m talking about Denmark’s announcement to discontinue its PostNord postal service as of January 1, 2026 (after 400 years of continual service) and to remove all its 1,500 letterboxes.

Think of that! No friendly postmen. No possibility of letters from family. Or Christmas greetings. Or bills and solicitations. (Well, I wouldn’t miss those!)

Maybe not having snail mail wouldn’t bother you. (Tell me how you feel in a comment.)

And yes, yes. I know about email! I use it. But it’s not thick envelopes, colorful stamps, and paper “delight” in your hand.

Anyway…

This news made me aware of a writing phenomenon that has begun in earnest this year. If you are on Facebook at all, you will have noticed. It is the many opportunities we have to sign up for story-letters: snail-mail fiction divvied out twice a month for a fee.

A while ago, I interviewed the creator of “Letters from Afar,” Shawnee Mills. She researches (and sometimes visits) places around the world. Her fictional character tells readers about them in letters. She sends field notes, a map showing its location on the globe, and a “find me” game where she hides objects in her hand-painted illustrations. The Afar article.

Shortly after the “Afar” letters, I signed up for the “Flower letters,” where an actual story – romantic/adventure/mystery – was told through correspondence (and inserts and artifacts).

But now. Wow! In a short time, I discovered a baker’s dozen opportunities for you to receive bi-weekly story letters via snail mail. I’ve listed some. You can find them on Facebook by typing the titles into the search bar.

The Moonlit Letters – a cozy mystery where a young woman inherits her grandma’s cottage on Ocracoke Island and discovers/solves a mystery. Postcards, recipes, and a map are included.
The Lost Letters Society – four choices of historical-fiction war correspondence, most including romance. Authentic-looking letters.
Letters by Lanternlight – a choice of three small town cozy whodunnits (all include a cat)
Storyville Letters – mystery, romance, adventure. Two choices: one is from the 1920’s, the other is 1874, Victorian London. The creator of these is a filmmaker, so they are bound to be atmospheric.
P.S. (PostScript) Letters – These are original historical fiction, in “the imagined voice” of women you may know. Not biographies, just private, human letters. You will read letters by Emily Dickinson, Jane Austin, Helen Keller, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, etc.
Letter Joy – letters for history buffs. Produced by the same people that create the PS Letters. You’ll read everyday correspondence from authors like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, etc.
Epistolary – “Letters, Lattes, and Lies,” a cozy mystery told in letters of observations and evidence by a retired librarian, to a reclusive homicide detective.
The Heart Letters – a more serious “novel” told in letters. The creator calls this 24-letter series “therapy through storytelling.” It is designed as “a gift experience for women navigating transition, healing, heartbreak, empty nest, divorce, or loss.”
The Romantasy Letters – Bold, daring, fiery, spicy, romantic fantasy with passion, intrigue, and magic. (Not my cup of tea.)
The Titanic Letters – Passengers tell their secrets in correspondence. “An illicit affair and a gripping mystery.” The creator rates the letters PG-13.
The Asylum Letters – psychological suspense set in the Danvers Asylum in 1926: a secret correspondence between a female inmate with amnesia and a new doctor. By the creator of #10, rated PG-13.
The Salem Letters – correspondence by an herbalist held in prison for the witch trials. Dark mystery/romance. Rated PG-13.
Scaremail – a “terrifying, unfolding horror saga told through personal correspondence between characters. (The ocre envelopes are splotched with black dripping stuff! EEEEKKK!)

And there are more of these letter-stories available, like: The Max Letters, Writings from the Wild (animals), and The Cozy Letter Club (a farmyard mystery) for kids. (There are also fictional Pen Pal stories to interact with.)

Most of the serialized stories span 12 months of biweekly letters and cost $99-$149. It’s a bit expensive, but it’s fun to find them in your mailbox!

There is a series I didn’t mention above, because it was only available briefly. It is Mysteries in the Mail, written by mystery writer Sara Rossett. I signed up for the series and have received 3 letters so far. It’s different in that the “letters” seem like chapters in a cozy mystery book written in 1st-person POV. There are some lovely hand-drawn, colored illustrations among the text, but no other inserts.

Have YOU ever done or thought of writing and mailing serialized fiction? It would mean some creativity, a bit of postage, and of course a mailing list – but some of YOU have that already. What do you say?

Now is the time to jump on the bandwagon, especially if you have something unique. Any of the writers on this Writers in Residence blog could do what Sara Rossett has done.

And, who knows when the US Postal Service may discontinue!!! Yikes!

But… if you don’t want to go through all the rigamarole of sending out prescribed letters, you can always do what these authors have done. Write your story in a series of letters. It’s called an Epistolary Novel.

Lee Smith did it with “Fair and Tender Ladies.” Helen Hanff did it with “84, Charing Cross Road.” Annie Barrows wrote “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.” And one more by Virginia Even, the new, highly touted “The Correspondent.” Go for it, girls! (And guys.)

Me? I’ve written (and illustrated) several serialized letter stories in the past. They are fun. I wrote mysteries for each of my three elementary-aged granddaughters via letters in snail mail.

I also wrote a series of twelve letter-stories for the same-age kids at our church, about life in Africa. (These were actually email story-letters.)

If I can do it, so can you. Why not give it a try… while you still have time…. AND MAILBOXES!!!

by Jill Amadio

Were there ten fewer consonants and only three vowels in the English alphabet, here’s how two of the Bard’s indelible lines would have been written:

“Fr n mr th het f th sn…”

“Th ly’s th thg…”

Much of our English is derived from other languages, including Latin, French, Greek, Italian, German and the aliens for all we know. In fact, our precious alphabet initially descended from the Egyptian Pro-Sinaitic alphabet around 1,800 B.C. The Phoenicians took it up, followed by the Greeks, then the Romans, who brought it to the British Isles during their disgraceful occupation, only to be shunted aside by the bloodthirsty Anglo-Saxons. By the 13^th century, we are told, the “modern English alphabet had emerged from the Old English alphabet.”

Earlier, the Chinese, other Asians, and Russians had invented their own enigmatic images to represent words, adding to our confusion. The strokes used to appear to bear no relation to letters as we know them, but then the vice-versa is also true.

Some writers are rather taken by the French influence whereby we tend to add acute and grave accents over certain letters, and also by the German umlaut of two tiny dots placed over specific vowels.

My keyboard doesn’t provide any of these extra elegant little marks although to the left of my number 1 in the top row there is a funny little squiggle that resembles a drunken letter N: ~. I am sure it has great significance but the meaning escapes me sand I have never felt compelled to use it, even as an April Fool’s Day joke.

So, by the 13^th century the Normans generously presented the Brits with their very own alphabet, and many of the world’s most remarkable English writers went full-tilt into turning out their extraordinary literature.

In my Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, a 1,000-page tome, there is only a single reference to the alphabet. It is from Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers. He had one of his characters, Samievel, being advised that although “there were many things you don’t understand now, but…as the charity boy said when he got to the end of the alphabet, it’s a matter of taste.“

I think Dickens was indicating that knowing the alphabet was a choice but something a poor person may not have the opportunity to learn, if, indeed, he could even read English.

That should be the end of this saga but I became fascinated with my research. It turns out that we have been cheated. There were originally 29 letters in the English alphabet although three other letters were left out entirely: J, U, and W. I also read that NATO has its own phonetic alphabet to help members pronounce English words during their lifelong luxury residence in America.

What’s so interesting now is how our words have come to mean something else entirely, such as “swatting,” “hacking,” and many others.

I wonder how these words translate into other languages, and if the message changes with the wind. Their double meanings will undoubtedly show up in dictionaries although the editors might want to wait a couple of years in case an even different and additional meaning pops up.

At least we still have our five vowels and 21 consonants with which to create characters, settings, plots, and strategies.