Town of Silverpine Bay  ·  Office of the Town Clerk

Register of Citizens  ·  Vol. I

Cover of When the Leaves Began to Fall by Daniela Metcalf: a lit cottage and a lighthouse above an autumn harbour at sunset.

Applications open  ·  No residency requirement

Become a citizen of Silverpine Bay

A small harbour town on a coast you won't find on a map. Sign the register and we'll send your welcome packet.

The Gazette arrives four times a year, plus a note when a new book does. Unsubscribe whenever — the door stays open either way.

You're on the register. Check your inbox for the welcome packet — it comes from Silverpine Bay, so look for the harbour in the sender line.

How it begins  ·  Book One, Chapter One

Paste Chapter 1 here
Roughly 150–250 words — enough to hear the voice, ending on a line that leaves them wanting the rest. Do this after your revision passes so the words on the page match the book. Then delete this box.

The excerpt goes here. Keep it to three or four short paragraphs. This is the highest-value real estate on the page: it is where a stranger decides whether they like how you write, and everything below it is easier to say yes to once they have.

End on something unresolved. A question, a door opening, a name she didn't expect to hear. Not a cliffhanger — just a reason to keep going.

Enclosed with your welcome

What arrives when you sign

Enclosure — Printed matter

Three recipe cards from Hearth & Harbor

Jonah's, printed the way the bakery prints them — ingredients on the front, an opinion on the back. Ready to hang on a fridge that is nowhere near the coast.

Pie only has one message, and the message is: stay another twenty minutes. Nikki — on the maple pecan

Enclosure — Map & register

A map of the town, and a card for the woman at the centre of it

Where the cottage sits. How far the chapel is from The Salty Cup. Which way Abby walks when she can't sleep, and what she passes on the way. Plus a resident card — who she was before she arrived, and what she came here to stop doing.

Standing subscription

The Silverpine Bay Gazette

The town bulletin, four times a year. A note from Nikki. What's baking. What Vivi is reading. What's on the calendar — Pumpkin Wharf Day, the Harvest Lantern Walk, the bonfire in November. And, reliably, a complaint from Margaret about parking.

Sign here

The door's open. It usually is.

Your welcome packet arrives within the hour. No spam, no daily anything.

You're on the register. Check your inbox for the welcome packet — it comes from Silverpine Bay, so look for the harbour in the sender line.

A note from the author

Write this in your own voice
Three or four sentences. Why this town, why these people, why now. Readers subscribe to a person more readily than to a series — this is where you become one. Then delete this box.

When the Leaves Began to Fall is the first of four seasonal novels set in Silverpine Bay — a town about belonging, second chances, and learning how to want things again after a long time of not.

Say something true here about where it came from. Keep it short and keep it yours.

— Daniela