There’s a certain kind of beauty in chaos – in the strange patterns that emerge when the mind begins to see things that may or may not be there. That’s how this project began.
I had wanted to create a reverse coloring book (RCB) for a while, one where the color comes first and the lines are yours to discover. It’s common for me to splash paint or scribble madly on paper just to “find things” to outline (If you’re curious about the tools that work best for this kind of process, you can read my post on Best Pens & Pencils for Reverse Coloring Books). But every idea I sketched for my RCB felt too tidy, too expected. It wasn’t until another project – a long-simmering Victorian mystery I’d been quietly pecking at for years – began to stir again that something unusual happened: the two collided.
The result became Echoes Inked: The Forgotten Field Journal, part mystery, part art book, part forgotten relic uncovered by a modern reader who may find themselves more connected to the past than they’d imagined.
Finding the Story in the Stains
The story’s anchor is Professor Thalia Louise Wrenwell, a woman who, in the late 19th century, achieved what few of her time could: a professorship in natural sciences. She left her family estate in New York State for the promise of academia in Boston, where logic ruled and superstition had little ground to stand on.
Then came the letter. Both her mother and father had vanished. And so Thalia returned home to the estate of her youth to search for clues among its silent halls and overgrown fields.
But the home she remembered no longer existed as it once had. The air hummed with strange phenomena, and something unseen seemed to watch from the tree line. It wasn’t simply haunted; it was listening. Waiting.
From there, the journal takes over. What unfolds isn’t a linear tale but a collection of fragments, sketches, and field notes – a descent into uncertainty where the reader becomes the one deciphering the unknown.
A Collision of Worlds
The seed of Echoes Inked came from enjoying stories like Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher and, later, T. Kingfisher’s haunting reimagining What Moves the Dead. Though Echoes Inked doesn’t tread quite as deep into horror, it’s abbreviated and lingers nearby, in that fragile space where reason starts to slip into something otherworldly.
I’d originally been developing a story titled Disappearance at the Wrenwell Estate (not the catchiest name, I know) while separately experimenting with the abstract, watercolor-and-ink-splashed approach to reverse coloring. One day, while leafing through a popular RCB with a seasons theme – full of florals and abstract landscapes – I wondered what would happen if Thalia’s story entered the frame.
What if those painted washes weren’t backgrounds at all, but evidence?
What if every mark hid a trace of someone’s thoughts, fears, or discoveries?
What if, instead of simply coloring in, you were drawing out the mystery?
And from those questions, the journal began to take shape.
Between Fact and Fiction
(A brief note for those who prefer to experience the story first: the next few lines contain light spoilers.)
To keep the world grounded, I spent time researching the year 1887, the same year Thalia’s journaling takes place. The calendar you see in the book follows the real dates of that year, including a May Friday the 13th Thalia happens to comment on.
In the bonus material, you’ll find her musings on Groundhog Day, the curious celebration that, by several accounts, made its first official appearance in 1887. These small historical threads, and others, helped me feel as though the journal could have truly existed, hidden away somewhere, waiting for the right hands to find it.
The printer noted in the journal pages (bottom-center), G. B. Putnan & Sons, was inspired by a real New York publishing house (which, fittingly, went on to publish The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe in 1902).
The universities Thalia references are based on real institutions active in the region at the time, and the weather patterns she mentions come from actual reports of that winter and spring. It’s a subtle layering – just enough to make the fiction feel like something you could almost verify.
(If you’d like to see the journal’s companion pages – Thalia’s torn-out notes, newly transcribed and restored – you can uncover them through the bonus materials collection.)
What Lies Beneath the Ink
Not everything in Echoes Inked came easily. Early on, I imagined Maximillian Harrow, Thalia’s colleague and friend from her youth, as her adversary. But as the journal unfolded, I found myself unable to make him the villain. He became, instead, her last tether to reason – the one voice she hoped would lead her out of darkness.
I think that’s what this whole experiment became about: connection – between art and story, between the seen and unseen, between the maker and the reader.
I wanted the reader to step into the role of the modern discoverer, someone who has stumbled upon the estate’s remnants and begun piecing together the mystery themselves. Perhaps you are a distant relative of Maximillian Harrow, unaware of what your lineage once carried, and have just received a misplaced envelope marked Northwood University at your newly inherited estate.
Either way, once you open it, the ink begins to move.
The Quiet Invitation
Echoes Inked took longer to complete than expected. What began as a small experiment with story and watercolor became a full field journal, aged and worn, filled with hints of a life interrupted and voices that refused to fade.
My hope is that it doesn’t just invite you to draw, but to listen and imagine – to look closer at the chaos, to find the patterns that might not exist, and to wonder what remains just beyond the page: a story you can continue.
And if you’d like to wander a bit further into the Wrenwell Estate, the free bonus materials await – the torn pages, the recovered entries, and perhaps one or two things Thalia never meant to share.
They say the estate still murmurs when the wind shifts, searching for wanderers to tease with its otherworldliness.
Perhaps it’s only the fields, trees, and streams.
Or perhaps the estate still remembers – and thanks you for your curiosity.
– W. A. Chase, from a desk at Wren Cirrus, an imprint of Wren Atwood Creative
Step Deeper in the Mystery
The journal described in this post is real, and it is waiting for you to continue the story.