Category Archives: Life in Mills Beary

Why I wrote The Hidden Village of Mills Beary 

“Magic lives quietly in all corners of the world, if you know where to look.”

There’s a reason Mills Beary isn’t found on any map. It was a place never meant to be searched for, but rather, it was meant to whisper its way into your life..

I started writing The Hidden Village of Mills Beary many years ago with one quiet hope: to remind children (and the grownups who love them) that you don’t have to look perfect to belong. I wanted to create a place stitched together by kindness and gentle magic, a world where what made you different could also make you strong. Where grace was power, and where being imperfect didn’t mean being incomplete.

Mills Beary lives in my heart. I know every nook and cranny of Mills Beary.  It’s the place I go in my dreams when I need rest or renewal. Sometimes I walk the forest paths, speak with the SnipPets, or sit quietly beside Duffels in the stillness of the workshop. Often I have a cuppa tea with Little Red, I don’t just imagine this world, I visit it.  Each time I return, I learn something new.

The SnipPets were never supposed to match. They were stitched from scraps of fabric and a touch of magical silver thread we in Mills Beary call the Thredyl. Crooked seams, mismatched eyes, tumbled colors, and yet each one carries magic, kindness, and strength.

Duffels didn’t set out to make anything perfect. He made something true. He was guided by forces unseen, perhaps the quiet watch of those who came before him, their presence woven into every path, every rustle of the trees. The SnipPets are protectors, stitched from scraps of forgotten fabric, bound by the silver thread called Thredyl, and full of quiet courage.  Wonderfully mismatched, yet unmistakably whole.

This book began as a story. But it’s grown into a world. A place where legacy matters. Where kindness counts. Where someone like Duffels Bear can become a guardian. And where a girl like Lily can find where she belongs, not because she fits in perfectly, but because she matters.

The plush SnipPets are real, the book is done., and Mills Beary is ready to be discovered.

I hope you’ll walk through its hidden doorway with me and step into the magical world I’ve created.

Janis (and Duffels Bear)

The Wooden Door in the Forest

“Magic lives quietly in all corners of the world, if you know where to look.”

In the woods, growing behind a field full of beautiful flowers, grows a dense hedge. If you were taking a stroll through the woods, you would not pay much attention to it. The bright bluebells, sunny yellow buttercups, and purple lavender flowers would catch your eye instead. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. If you look very hard at this hedge in the afternoon sun, something magical happens.

Within the hedge, a twinkle that looks like sunlight is magic from a special place called Mills Beary Village. Anyone with a kind heart can look past the rays of sunlight, and, right before their eyes, a heavy wooden door will appear.  That is, if you are invited or expected.

If you are one of the rare people who can see this door, you might ask yourself what a large wooden door is doing standing in the middle of the woods, but if you look closer, you will see a faded old sign under a green blanket of moss. Look closer still, and you will read the words that invite you to enter a world of wonder:

“Welcome to Mills Beary Village.”