Everyday Magic behind the Village door

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 never meant to be searched for. It was meant to arrive softly, when it was needed.

I began 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 could be a kind of power, and where being imperfect didn’t mean being incomplete.

Mills Beary lives in my heart. I know its paths and corners. It’s the place I return to when I need rest or renewal. Sometimes I walk the forest trails, sometimes I sit quietly beside Duffels in the workshop, and often I share a cup of tea with Little Red. I don’t just imagine this world. I visit it. And each time, it has something new to show me.

The SnipPets were never meant 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 kindness, courage, and quiet strength.

I didn’t begin with a plan to build a world. I followed a feeling, and the world grew around it. Guided by forces unseen, perhaps by those who came before him, their presence woven into every path and rustle of the trees. The SnipPets are protectors, stitched from what was once forgotten, bound by the Thredyl, and wonderfully mismatched, yet unmistakably whole.

This story began as a book, but it has 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 perfectly, but because she matters.

The village is here now, quietly waiting.

I hope you’ll step through its hidden doorway and spend some time there with us.

Janis (and Duffels Bear)