Weekly Notebook: Christmas in July? Yes, Really.

🌿 The Maple Grove Update

Fellow sleuths, it is Memorial Day weekend in Maple Grove, which means the parade happened, the potato salad was contested (as it always is), and Jenna McGregor somehow ended up at the center of something that began as a simple float decoration dispute and ended with Mildred involved in a way nobody had anticipated and Charlene filing a second formal petition.

Details will follow in due course. The important thing is that everyone is fine, the float looked wonderful in the end, and Lisa's energetic pre-screening of the parade route apparently worked, because nothing caught fire.

Progress.

📜The Weekly Tasting Menu

Guest Sleuth picks this week — each one hand-selected because I think you'll love them. Here's the lineup:

🔍 Guest Sleuth Spotlights

🧁 The Main Course

Okay, fellow sleuths. I've been hinting. It's time to actually say something.

Book 5 is a Christmas book.

I know what you're thinking. It's May. Yes. And I'm telling you about a Christmas book in May because it is going to be available this summer — specifically as a Christmas in July release — and I want you to have time to get excited about it.

Here's what I can tell you:

It's Christmas week in Maple Grove. The town does Christmas the way small Midwest towns do Christmas, which is to say completely, almost aggressively, and with great conviction about the correct way to hang lights on the Main Street trees. There will be a candlelight church service. There will be a town square that looks like a snow globe. There will be Jenna's parents, making their another appearance in the series that incudes a call to Jena’s siblings! There will be Lisa, who does something at the aforementioned candlelight service that I promise you will not see coming.

There will also be a disappearance. A mystery that starts with someone Jenna has known her whole life. And there are some new characters arriving in Maple Grove this Christmas who are going to shake things up in ways that will carry through into books to come.

Joe and Jenna's relationship is also... evolving. That's all I'll say about that.

I'm targeting a July release — Christmas in July is a real thing that readers love, and I think this book is going to land beautifully in summer. More details as I get closer to having a title I can actually say out loud.

In the meantime: if you want to make sure you're the first to hear when the pre-order goes live, the best thing to do is make sure you're on my newsletter list. Which, if you're reading this, you probably already are. Welcome, fellow sleuth. You're in the right place.

✍️ Behind the Scenes

I am three-quarters of the way through the first draft and the story is doing that thing where it starts to feel like it was always supposed to exist, like you're discovering it rather than inventing it. That feeling is the whole reason I do this. Charlie is still stealing scones. Some things are constant.

Happy Memorial Day, fellow sleuths. Summer is coming.

Willow 🌿

Meet Willow

Author, School Board member, and gluten-free baker. I write the Jenna McGregor mysteries from my home in Michigan, fueled by coffee and Peloton PRs.

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