Finding the Door: A Letter from Joules Young

 

 

Finding the Door: A Letter from Joules Young

Welcome to Hollyhock books

 Hello. I'm Joules Young, and this is the first time I've ever written anything like this—a letter to people I haven't met yet, about stories that have been living inside me for longer than I can remember.

 

If you're reading this, you've probably already seen Sophia's introduction over here at Hollyhock Books. She was kind enough to say some things about my writing that made me blush and hide behind my hands when I first read them. But she also did something more important: she opened the door to this space and invited you to step through.

 

So here we are. You and me. The beginning of something.

 

I thought, for this first post for Hollyhock books, I'd tell you a little about how I got here—not in the practical sense (that would involve trains and bad decisions about carrying too many books), but in the deeper sense. How does a person become a writer? How do stories find their way out of the silence and onto the page? And what on earth is a Hocksbox, anyway?

On Doors and Discoveries

 

When I was very small, my grandmother had a cupboard in her kitchen that I was absolutely convinced led somewhere else.

 

It was just a cupboard, of course. It held tins of beans and bags of flour and a biscuit tin that actually contained sewing supplies, which felt like a betrayal every single time I opened it. But in my defense, it was exactly the right size and shape for a door to somewhere magical. It had the right creak when it opened. It sat in exactly the position a portal should sit—slightly out of the way, easily missed if you weren't paying attention, waiting for someone who knew how to look.

 

I never did find Narnia in that cupboard. But I learned something important from all that hoping: the world is full of ordinary things that can become extraordinary if you look at them the right way.

 

That's what writing feels like to me now. It's the practice of looking at ordinary things until they reveal their secrets. It's the act of paying attention so closely that the world starts paying attention back.

 

I think that's why I started writing stories in the first place. Not because I had something important to say—I was eight, I had important opinions about ice cream and which colour pencils were the softest—but because writing gave me permission to keep looking. To keep wondering. To keep believing that cupboards might still lead somewhere, even if I hadn't found the right one yet.

 

The Stories That Made Me

 

I've been asked before about influences, and it's always a difficult question to answer. Not because I don't have them—I have shelves and shelves of them—but because the stories that shape us work in strange ways. They don't just teach us how to write. They teach us what writing can be.

 

The books I loved as a child were the ones that took me seriously. The ones that didn't explain everything. The ones that trusted me to keep up, to pay attention, to figure things out for myself. They were funny in ways that adults sometimes missed. They were sad in ways that felt true rather than manipulative. They created worlds that I could step into and wander around in, worlds that felt bigger than whatever room I was actually sitting in.

 

As I grew older, I kept finding those kinds of books—stories that treated their readers as partners rather than passengers. Stories with narrators who had their own voices, their own opinions, their own ways of looking at the world. Stories that could make you laugh on one page and catch your breath on the next.

 

When I started writing seriously, I didn't try to imitate any of those voices. That would be impossible, and also probably illegal, or at least rude. But I did carry something away from all that reading: an understanding of what stories can do. They can hold a mirror up to the world, yes. But they can also hold a window open to somewhere else entirely. They can make the ordinary strange and the strange feel like coming home.

 

That's what I try to do in my own work. I want to write stories that feel familiar enough to trust, but unexpected enough to surprise. I want to write sentences that you want to read aloud, just to feel them in your mouth. I want to create characters who feel like people you might actually know, even if they're living in houses that couldn't possibly exist or having conversations with animals that shouldn't be able to answer.

 

 

Why Hollyhock Books?

When Sophia first reached out to me, I assumed it was a mistake.

 

Not because Hollyhock isn't a real publisher—they very much are, and they've been doing remarkable work since they opened their doors in 2024. But because I'd spent so long writing in corners of the internet where no one was really watching. Posting stories on quiet blogs. Sharing pieces with small groups of readers who'd found their way to me somehow. It felt like shouting into the wind and occasionally hearing a shout back.

 

Sophia's email was not a shout. It was a conversation.

We talked for weeks before anything was official. About stories we'd loved as children. About the books that had broken our hearts and put them back together. About what makes a piece of writing feel alive rather than assembled. She asked questions that made me think harder about my own work than I ever had before. She pointed to things in my stories that I'd done without realizing, patterns and themes I hadn't noticed I was weaving.

 

When she first mentioned the idea of Hocksbox—a dedicated space where I could share my work, supported by Hollyhock but shaped by my own vision—I couldn't quite believe it. This was the thing I'd been hoping for without quite knowing how to hope for it. A door that actually opened somewhere.

 

I said yes before I'd finished processing the question. I think I may have interrupted her. If I did, I apologize, Sophia. I was just very, very sure.

 What Is Hocksbox? (The Version From the Person Who Named It)

 

Sophia explained the name beautifully in her letter, but I want to tell you what it means to me.

 

A hocksbox, in my imagination, is a specific kind of container. It's not a treasure chest—that's too grand, too obvious. It's not a safe—that's too serious, too locked away. It's a box you might find in an attic or under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe. A box that's been there for years, accumulating dust and mystery. A box that someone, at some point, decided was worth keeping.

 When you open it, you don't know exactly what you'll find. Maybe photographs. Maybe letters. Maybe small objects that don't make sense out of context—a key that doesn't fit any lock you know, a pressed flower that still holds a trace of color, a ticket stub from a journey someone took long ago. Nothing obviously valuable. But everything precious in its own way.

 

That's what I want this space to be. A collection of stories that someone thought was worth keeping. Stories that might not fit neatly into categories. Stories that are here because they matter to me, and because I hope they might matter to you too.

 

Some will be long. Some will be short. Some will be funny, I hope. Some will be sad, probably. Some will be about ordinary things—a conversation on a bus, a walk in the rain, a meal shared with someone you love. Some will be about extraordinary things—doors that open where doors shouldn't, conversations with the dead, moments when the world tilts slightly and shows you what's underneath.

 

All of them will be written as carefully as I know how.

 

 On Whimsy and Weight

 Someone once described my writing as "whimsical but not lightweight," and I've never forgotten it because it felt so exactly right.

 I love whimsy. I love the ridiculous and the improbable and the gently absurd. I love stories where characters have earnest conversations with badgers, where the weather has opinions, where the rules of reality are treated more like suggestions. I love language that plays, sentences that dance, narrators who can't resist a digression.

 

But whimsy without weight is just decoration. It's a cake made entirely of icing—pretty for a moment, then sickening.

 

The stories I love best—the ones I keep coming back to, the ones that feel like home—are the ones that earn their whimsy. They make you laugh, yes. They delight you, yes. But underneath all that, they're paying attention to real things. Loss. Loneliness. The terror and wonder of being alive. The impossible difficulty of loving people who won't be here forever. The equal impossibility of not loving them anyway.

 

That's what I'm trying to do in my own work. I want to write stories that make you smile, maybe even laugh. But I also want to write stories that stay with you after the smiling stops. Stories that you carry around without quite realizing you're carrying them. Stories that surface at strange moments—waiting for a train, washing dishes, trying to fall asleep—and remind you that you're not alone.

 

What Comes Next

 

Over the coming weeks, I'll be sharing stories here. Some will be brand new, written just for this space. Others will be pieces I've been working on for years, finally ready to find their way into the world.

 

I won't promise to post on a strict schedule—I'm too much at the mercy of inspiration for that, and I've learned not to make promises my brain can't keep. But I will promise to show up regularly. To keep writing. To keep opening the box and seeing what's inside.

 

Sophia and the wonderful team at Hollyhock will be here too, making sure everything runs smoothly, providing the kind of support that lets me focus on the work itself. It's a partnership I'm deeply grateful for, and one I hope will last for years to come.

 

An Invitation From Me to You

 Here's the thing about stories: they don't really exist until someone reads them.

 Words on a page are just marks. Ink and pixels and dead trees. They become stories in the space between the page and the person—in the act of reading, in the alchemy of one mind meeting another across time and distance.

 

That's why you matter to this project. Not in a vague, marketing-department way. In a real way.

 

The stories I write will only come fully alive when you read them. When you laugh at something I found funny. When you catch your breath at a moment that caught mine. When you finish a piece and sit quietly for a moment, just sitting with whatever it left you feeling.

 

That's the conversation I'm hoping for. Not me talking and you listening, but something more like a dance—a back-and-forth, a call and response, a relationship built over time through the strange magic of written words.

 

So here's my invitation:

 

Read when you can. no deadlines, no guilt about falling behind. Stories keep. They'll be here when you're ready.

 

Respond if you want to. Leave a comment. Send a message. Tell us what you liked, what you didn't, what stayed with you, what made you put the phone down and just think for a while. We genuinely want to know.

 

Share what matters to you. If something here resonates, pass it on. Send it to a friend who needs it. Post it somewhere. Word of mouth is still the oldest and best way for stories to find their people.

 

Be patient with me. I'm learning as I go. This is my first time doing anything like this, and I'll make mistakes. I'll post things that don't quite work. I'll probably overthink everything and then underthink something important. That's part of the process. I hope you'll stick around anyway.

 

A Final Thought

 

I started this letter by telling you about my grandmother's cupboard—the one I was so sure led somewhere magical.

 

I never did find a portal in that kitchen. But I've come to believe, over the years, that I was looking in the wrong direction. The magic wasn't about going somewhere else. It was about coming home to the same place, over and over, and finding new things in it each time. It was about the looking itself. The paying attention. The willingness to believe that ordinary things might be hiding extraordinary secrets.

 

That's what writing is for me now. It's the practice of paying attention. It's the discipline of looking at the world until it looks back. It's the slow, patient work of opening cupboards and seeing what's inside.

 

Hollyhock books — and this space we're building together—is my way of sharing what I find.

Thank you for being here at the beginning. Thank you for opening the box. Thank you, already, for the conversation we haven't started yet.

 

I'll see you soon with a story.

With warmth and wonder,

Joules Young

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