Chapter 1 Is Free. No Catch.

At Ink & Aether Studios, we believe the beginning of a story should be easy to step into.

So we made one available.

You can now read Chapter 1 of Murder at the Midsummer Feast by J.P. White for free on Inkbound Realms. No email gate. No complicated scavenger hunt. No requirement to hand over your firstborn, your favorite fountain pen, or a neatly labeled jar of blackberry preserves.

This was, admittedly, a very specific request from J.P.

She’s been insisting that readers deserve to meet Blackvale properly before anyone asks them to make a commitment. We agree. We also felt it was wise to agree with unusual speed, because J.P.’s definition of “following up” has recently included increasingly pointed messages, a suspiciously well-timed thunderclap, and what may have been a curse placed on the office printer. We can’t confirm that last part. The printer is working now, though. Mostly.

Here’s what waits inside Chapter 1:

• A return to Blackvale, North Carolina, where the air is warm, the town remembers everything, and the shadows are not entirely decorative.

• Cressida Vale, arriving home in search of a quiet reset and finding that Blackvale has other plans.

• Aunt Sylvia, Vale House Inn, the Midsummer Feast, and the first taste of a town where sweetness and suspicion are often served on the same plate.

• The opening notes of a cozy gothic mystery built around a smart amateur sleuth, small-town secrets, and the kind of community that can hold you close while keeping a few things very carefully hidden.

Murder at the Midsummer Feast begins with summer light, old history, and the promise that something is just slightly off beneath the gingham tablecloths. If you enjoy atmospheric small towns, capable heroines, complicated neighbors, and mysteries with a little gothic weather rolling in at the edges, Blackvale has a chair waiting for you.

And because this is genuinely an invitation, not a sales ambush: read the chapter, take a look around, and see whether the town gets its hooks into you.

Read Chapter 1 of Murder at the Midsummer Feast

We’ll be here when you return.

Probably making tea.

Definitely keeping an eye on the printer.