31st August 2025
Dear Mary,
I hope this card finds you well. I’ve been meaning to write for so long, to thank you for your friendship online and encouragement on Substack. I’m so glad we reconnected over there, and that I’ve got to read your writing again and meet other writers through you.
I spent this Sunday shopping for gifts to take to my family and goddaughter in Brazil, when I travel there on holiday, in two weeks time. I’m taking a break at a simple café, with some hot chocolate, before heading to my friend Rachel’s place, where I’m currently pet sitting her cat Poochie.
How’s life treating you? And how are things with your Substack? Are you still enjoying the experience?
Whenever I hear E.M. Forster mentioned, I think of you: “Only Connect.” But I’ve also saved the recipes you shared and will try them out when I’m at my family’s guesthouse in Brazil.
I hope you are feeling inspired and working on new writing projects. I’m excited about your new one involving watercolours!
Sending you love from London and I’m sure we’ll chat online soon.
All the best
Ollie Redfern
XX
December 8, 2025
Dear Ollie,
When I got your note—fab stamp, I began thinking so much about you.
I remember so fondly when we were discussing Elena Ferrante’s tetralogy: all those grand novels that began with My Brilliant Friend. Then I wrote an essay about all the books with my theory that the two character were really one consciousness. I don’t know if we got to that when we were chatting about the books—but the idea kept percolating in me, especially as I watched the TV series that I thought was fab and threw me back to re-reading the novels and almost everything else this anonymous author has written. You and I became friends then and felt we could trust and rely on each other.
So, I guess I’m gonna share what I call the crashing surprise that happened to me after I serialized my novel Who by Fire. So, it was all up when Alisa Kennedy Jones who was reading it with fab comments that made my heart beat and who (who knew?) is the CEO of Empress Editions, a subsidiary with Hachette. So, I get this message, “How about a book contract as a special edition?” I thought I would faint or that maybe I was daydreaming. Anyway, I did get up off the metaphorical floor—and it does appear to be happening. The new cover is so gorgeous—I can barely breathe when I look at it. Some days I do think I dreamt this. Let’s hope not!
Anyway, I’m in the midst of a launch that’s taking by breath away.
Am I still breathing? I guess so: Up middle of the night doing stuff for all this—and now writing to you, my pen pal. I so hold you in my heart, dear Ollie. If what’s happening is real!
Fondly,
Dear friends,
It’s a real pleasure to introduce to you Mary L. Tabor as a brand new pen pal to this epistolary series, Between the Pines. Mary is an award-winning American author who lives by E.M. Forster’s motto “Only connect…” — which is exactly what happened 12 years ago when we met online in a space dedicated to literary writers and started a conversation on art, literature and family that continues to this day.
Mary's writing is poetic, philosophical, witty. But it's her generosity that first drew me in — the way she engages with readers and fellow writers as if each conversation matters deeply. I’ve now read her memoir (Re)Making Love twice (I’m of the firm belief that it would make a great romcom), her beautiful elegy to her son Benjamin (one of the most moving elegies available online), and her many essays.
More recently, Mary has been sharing on Substack a lovely series of letters with her own watercolors that she sent to her granddaughter some years ago at summer camp:
“Letters to My Granddaughter” was one of the inspirations for my epistolary series and, more recently, it got me thinking about my own 4-year-old goddaughter in Brazil…
4th January 2026
Dear Margot,
Do you like cakes? Which of these slices would you choose for yourself? I’m having coffee at a bakery called Irene, in London, and I regretted not having also ordered a delicious slice of carrot cake with chocolate frosting. The painting on this postcard is from an art exhibition I saw at the end of the year. It made me hungry!
Kisses from your godfather1
What if I also wrote regularly to Margot — postcards, colourful cards, maybe even drawings? Missives which her parents can read to her and which she’ll eventually (hopefully) be excited to read on her own? What if I saved them here for posterity, as a correspondence she can one day read back on?
Although Between the Pines is for paid subscribers, introductions to new pen pals will always be accessible to all. For correspondences with Mary, I propose to make an exception and keep the exchanges open to all while we discuss the launch of the new edition of Who by Fire. The novel is available for pre-orders and is released on 24th February 2026.
Dear Mary, I’m looking forward to our conversations about writing, publishing, and the art of connection that brought us together all those years ago. I hope Who by Fire is a great success and I can’t wait to have my own copy!
Querida Margot,
Você gosta de bolos? Qual destas fatias você escolheria para você? Eu estou tomando café numa padaria chamada Irene, em Londres, e me arrependi de não ter também pedido uma deliciosa fatia de bolo de cenoura com cobertura de chocolate. A pintura deste cartão é de uma exibição de arte que eu vi no final do ano. Me deu fome! Beijos do seu padrinho
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What a love you are, Ollie! And your goddaughter is so lucky to have you.
I agree wholeheartedly about Mary's warmth (what you, Ollie, call generosity.) It drew me to her writing as much as the writing itself.