The Kindling Collection: A Writing Box of Ritual, Firelight, and Uneasy Traditions

If you’ve ever wanted to stumble across a secret you weren’t supposed to know.
If you’ve ever longed to piece together a mystery from scraps and whispers.
If you’ve ever wondered what really happens in a quiet village when no one’s looking.

Then this one is for you.

The Kindling Collection isn’t just a writing prompt. It’s a writing experience - immersive, eerie, and stitched together from fragments of a place that never existed, but feels like it could.

This box invites you to step into the quiet village of Ashwick, where the Longlight Festival is held every Midsummer. On the surface, it’s charming. Colourful bunting, cheerful raffles, handwritten recipes. But there’s something unsettling under the surface. A strange tradition. A name drawn. And a fire that burns bright.

Why I Created It

A few different things came together to inspire Kindling. I’ve always loved teaching The Lottery - a story that makes you question what happens when we blindly follow tradition. It sticks with you. There’s a touch of The Burning Girls in here. A flicker of The Wicker Man. That quiet dread beneath something seemingly celebratory.

And Scotland, where I live, is full of folklore, strange customs, and half-remembered rituals that are rarely questioned.

I knew I wanted to build something with that energy. Something layered, that spanned generations. I’ve always been drawn to eerie rural settings. Places that seem quiet, but feel like they could hide something. And while Kindling doesn’t take place in rural Scotland, it shares that same isolation. Ashwick is nestled in Northern England, loosely inspired by the empty beauty of Northumberland, where I used to drive through when I came home from boarding school.

The festival it surrounds? It’s called Longlight. On the surface, it marks the longest day of the year. But in Ashwick, it’s more than just a celebration.

A Box That Took Me by Surpise

Honestly? I created my first two collections around the same time, and I thought The Victoriana Collection would always be my favourite. For most of the process, it was. But the first time I printed and assembled Kindling, something shifted. It felt horrifying in a quiet, creeping way. Real, somehow. Like I wasn’t just reading the pieces anymore - I was inside them.

The photos. The cinnamon. The strange notes. It felt like a world that already existed. I just happened to stumble across it.

What It Can Inspire

When I first designed it, I imagined it would spark:
◆ Short stories
◆ Creepy folklore pieces
◆ A one-off mystery

But during testing, people went bigger. One person said there’s enough material in it to write an entire novel or TV series. Others imagined:
◆ A serial killer poisoning villagers
◆ Alien abductions
◆ Pagan rituals
◆ A psychological thriller

That’s what I love most. The box never tells you what to write. It simply opens the door.

What’s Inside

◆ Longlight Festival photographs across the decades
◆ Diary entries and letters
◆ A hotel cancellation notice from Ashwick Hall
◆ Scraps of nursery rhymes and shopping lists
◆ Meeting minutes from the village vote
◆ A will, a warning, a thank-you card with something wrong about it
◆ Physical elements: a wooden token, a dried flower, and a scent tied to tradition

If you’re using the digital version, you’ll get almost all the printable documents, but you’ll miss out on the tactile elements that help set the scene — the textures, scents, and subtle hints hidden in the physical pieces.

How to Use It

The beauty with these boxes is that there is no right or wrong way to use them:
◆ Writers: Use it as a spark. Start with one piece and build a short story. Or stitch the threads together and write something bigger.
◆ Teachers: Drop it into a creative writing lesson as a mysterious prompt. Use it for inference, drama, or collaborative storytelling.
◆ Curious minds: Explore slowly. Read aloud. Work with friends. Create characters. Let the story shift depending on who’s reading.

There’s no right way to use The Kindling Collection. There’s no one answer.

Just clues.
Fragments.
Atmosphere.
And that feeling that something’s not quite right.

The Kindling Collection launches in June 2025
◆ Want to be the first to get your hands on it? Join the waitlist here.