From Pen Pals to Plot Twists: How We Connected Before Social Media

So—does anybody remember pen pals? No? Just me? Well then, buckle up, because I’m about to sound like a fossil digging through the dusty attic of childhood communication.

Back in the day, every kid or teen magazine worth its neon sticker collection had a pen pal section. The premise was simple: you sent in your name, your address, and (brace yourself) a small fee to be paid in stamps. Actual, lick-and-stick, make-your-tongue-feel-like-sandpaper stamps. I know—gasp! The Stone Age.

After a few weeks of waiting (because this was before instant gratification was invented), you’d get an envelope with names and addresses of kids around your age who were looking for friends in far-off towns or even other countries. That’s right—before sliding into DMs was a thing, we were carefully sliding letters into mailboxes.

And oh, those letters. We wrote pages about nothing—our grades (inflated), our lives (glamorized), our friends (fictionalized if necessary). Nobody fact-checked, nobody cared. It was the literary equivalent of telling your parents you definitely practiced piano while you were actually outside perfecting your pogo-stick world record.

Sometimes the friendships lasted for years. Sometimes they ended abruptly, when both pen pals sat there for months thinking, “Is it her turn or mine?” (Spoiler: no one wrote, the friendship died, and somewhere a Lisa from Wisconsin is still wondering why I never replied to her letter about her hamster’s escape attempt.)

But you know what? It was fun. It was harmless. And in its own way, it was magical. You never knew what you’d find in the mailbox. It might be bills. It might be junk. Or—it might be a wobbly handwriting scrawl from halfway around the world that made you laugh, or dream, or at least distract you from homework.

I think that’s why I love writing cozy mysteries now. There’s something about that sense of connection—about sharing stories, about making people laugh, gasp, and sometimes say, “Oh no, she didn’t!”—that takes me right back to pen pal days. Except now, instead of embellishing my grades, I embellish murder plots. Progress!

So if you ever had a pen pal, I salute you. And if you didn’t—well, welcome to my virtual letter to you. No stamps required.

Comments

A Labour-Free Labour Day? Yes, Please!

Hello and Happy Labour Day to all my lovely North American readers! Now, isn’t it just a little bit ironic that a holiday with the word labour baked right into the name is universally observed by doing absolutely none of it? Zero. Zilch. Unless, of course, you count the rigorous work of flipping burgers, casting fishing lines, and chasing wasps away from the potato salad. Then yes—we are a nation of highly skilled, recreational labourers. Olympic-level loungers, really. This year, I’m wholeheartedly leaning into the contradiction. After an exceptionally busy summer filled with writing deadlines, creative misadventures, and one unfortunate incident involving a Papillon, a pie, and a squirrel (don’t ask—Pixie is still refusing to discuss it), I’m embracing the art of not doing much at all. My Labour Day weekend plans include: Reclining in my favourite chair like a dramatic Victorian heroine recovering from a fainting spell. Watching the endless activity in the harbour just outs...

The Art of a Well-Timed Swear

There comes a moment in life when frustration bubbles over, and the only logical response is… well, a good, solid, soul-cleansing swear word. I’m not talking about casual, everyday muttering under your breath. No, I mean that moment when nothing else will do. The kind of moment where dropping your toast butter-side down feels like an act of war, where technology conspires against you, or when you stub your toe so hard you briefly see your ancestors. Now, I was raised in a house where we had a rule: Use your words, not you hands. This was my dad’s way of preventing sibling-induced concussions, and frankly, it worked. We weren’t an inherently violent bunch, but three kids in one tiny household meant tempers flared, and so did elbows. The logic was simple—if you had time to yell, maybe you’d have time to think twice before swinging. Or at least give your victim a solid head start. This philosophy stayed with me, though in adulthood, I’ve adapted it to use a well-placed expletive now a...

The Battle-Scarred ThinkPad and the Mountain of Notebooks: A Love Story

Let’s talk about favorite writing tools. Now, I know some authors might name drop fancy apps, sleek white minimalist keyboards, or those delicate fountain pens with gold nibs that require ceremonial ink rituals … But me? My tools are a little less... romantic. A little more indestructible . And, dare I say, a little more clunky with character . Once upon a time—cue flashback shimmer—I wrote all my stories by hand . Not just a page or two, either. I mean boxes and boxes of handwritten notebooks , full of scribbles, side notes, doodles in the margins, entire character backstories I forgot existed until ten years later. My early stories were a workout for my wrist. I had pens running dry faster than a coffee pot in a newsroom. It was chaotic. It was glorious. Typing those books up? A mission. A translation project. A cryptic decoding effort worthy of Indiana Jones. There were arrows. Stars. Entire paragraphs stuffed sideways in the margins like they were trying to escape the story. So...

Thinkingdog Publishing

Search This Blog