Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒

Writers, editors, & metalheads. 🖋️🤘
Curiosity, coffee, ink. ☕︎
🦒 Sculpting stories at the "Long View". 🌈Belonging.

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

Back in the flow. 🦒🖋️

Sculpting words at the Ink-Stained Hearts studio and seeking the 'Long View' through poetry, prose, and the occasional playlist.🎵🎧

Come find the heart of the story at https://t.co/ERkrtYwkfp and see the Studio in action: https://t.co/AUPqJirOdZ

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

Blasting "Damage" by Lord of the Lost today! ⚡️ It's part of the epic OPVS NOIR trilogy. Ever since we saw them tear it up live in Southampton last year, we've been hooked. 🤘🔥

#WeekendCountdown Listen to our playlist: https://t.co/Bmo5L4m2SP

#LordOfTheLost #MetalHeads

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

Does the book always beat the screen? 📖 vs 📺

For today’s #MysteryMonday, we’re looking at a post-Cold War classic: John le Carré’s The Night Manager.

Read our full review and find out why this gilded cage didn't entirely deliver:
👇 https://t.co/7pOHIJRgQO

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

Nine years ago, a split second of spinning started an uncertain journey. On my birthday today, I’m celebrating the woman I've become.

To anyone in their own spin: follow your heart, embrace your inner self.

Sharing a piece of my heart with you.❤️🌷https://t.co/tbGbcJ0H1k

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

Skeletons in the cupboard? Absolutely. 💀✨
This #MysteryMonday we're revisiting #ErinKelly's The Skeleton Key. A brilliant, intricate puzzle of family secrets, love, dangerous obsession.
Our 9/10 review is live on the blog! ➡️ https://t.co/G2FOei1IJe

#BookReview #ModernGothic

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

@theislandwriter Fabulous!! Huge congratulations 🌷

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

@KoalaQuillHQ We love the feel of the pen in our hands but yes, Caz has the same issue.

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

Analogue soul in a digital world?🦒
There’s something about the weight of a pen and the texture of a journal. It gets the creative gears turning in a way a keyboard can't.
We're curious. Do you use a notebook or are you Team Laptop?
#editing #InkStainedHearts #writingcommunity

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

🦒Mystery Monday: The Chandler Rule🖋️
Raymond Chandler’s standoff with the blank page is legendary. Two simple rules:
a. You don’t have to write
b. You can’t do anything else
When you’re facing a deadline or a tricky chapter, do you have a ritual, or do you wait for inspiration?

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

Some people need total silence to edit, but we’ve always found that the right rhythm helps the words flow. 🦒🎸

In the studio today, we’ve got our Ink and Iron playlist on. You can listen along here (and hit 'Shuffle' for the full Ink & Iron experience): https://t.co/youHFKENPS

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

"Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend." — Agatha Christie

Starting the week with a classic perspective. Gotta love our Queen of Crime!🗝️🕵️‍♀️

Happy #MysteryMonday from the studio.

#AgathaChristie #WritingCommunity #InkStainedHearts #MysteryWriter #CrimeFiction

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

Wrapping up the final edits of April! It’s been a whirlwind month in the studio, but there's nothing like that feeling of a cleared desk before a fresh month. 📁✅🦒

It’s time to step away from the screen. What’s one project you’re glad to have ticked off your list this week?

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

#TuesdayThought Staring at the blinking cursor again. 🖱️This brass giraffe isn't just a desk accessory; he’s a metaphor for the entire writing process. Stand tall, hold the light, and wait for the spark... 🦒💡

#WriterLife #InkStainedHearts #CreativeProcess #Productivity

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

Amen to that. We love it, and couldn't agree more (even if we also are somewhat guilty...). Just sometimes, you need to realise it! Thanks for sharing, @readswithravi

#inkstainedhearts #editorialstudio #TuesdayThought

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

#MysteryMonday #bookrecommendation
Our own "Susan Ryeland" aka Caz's first pick: The Caius Beauchamp series by #CharlotteVassell @FaberBooks.
Sharp, incredibly witty, and enormous fun.
📅 Book 4, A Fatal Legacy, drops July 2nd!

https://t.co/KwQieMdUYn

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

From separate journeys to a shared shelter. It’s been a few years of tracing what unfolds, and we're so glad we found each other.

A new poem for our very personal milestone: Beneath the Tide.
https://t.co/G9yBkhxpuP

#engagementanniversary #livingtogether

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

Starting the week in a sea of purple! 💜

A long walk through #Winchester’s bluebells was the perfect #MondayMotivation for us.

We've just updated our gallery with this and a few more favourites. 📸✨

Take a look: https://t.co/scaJWf8joB

#Hampshire #Bluebells #Winchester

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

“To live without passion is to make the body a cathedral without music.”

A profound reminder of why we do what we do. In a world of destroyers, we choose to be creators, listeners, and witnesses. This is the heart of the journey. ✨🦒

Thank you for these words, @Joseph_Fasano_.

[Joseph Fasano @Joseph_Fasano_]

When I received an email from a young person saying she "wants to be a writer" but wonders "if it's worth it in the world today," I thought for a long time and wrote her this message:

Dear Abigail,

You ask me, in your lovely note, if I have any advice for writers, especially young writers. I don't know what advice I can give you, because every day one tries to write is a chance to be more deeply humbled before the mystery, by the things one cannot do. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be; if we're not trying something impossible, are we really living at all?

But I love you for wanting to be an artist in this world, so I will tell you this:

I only know the life of a writer is a life of wild passion and quiet devotion; it's every day searching for truth, challenging that truth, starting over again; it's finally learning how to write in one way and then knowing you have to abandon it precisely because you know how to do it; it's moving into the unknown, always, taking risks that look from the outside like nothing but that inside the secret heart are matters of life and death, life and death.

That's what it is, I think. It's listening to the dead speak, knowing when to hear them, when not to; it's hearing your neighbors' voices and knowing they have worlds in them, worlds; it's listening and listening and listening; it's finding a great question that can carry you all your life, because you have to ask it with your life, Abigail, you have to.

It's making mistake after mistake after mistake, and it's being willing to say what you have to say even when no one is listening, absolutely no one, because if you say it clearly and humbly and truly enough, even if it takes you all your life, they will.

The world is not over, only broken—that is a writer's hope. Because writing is witnessing, whether what's witnessed is a blossom or a great crime; writing is turning powerlessness into power; it's tenderness and empathy and the ache of them; it's the radical compassion of becoming everyone you pass on the street, everyone who lives and suffers and dies; it's losing your mind at times because you've forgotten who you are, and it's finding your soul because you remember...

...and it's passion, Abigail; it's not apologizing for your passion, because to live without passion is to make the body a cathedral without music; and it's loving; above all it's loving the broken world so hard it hurts, it just hurts, and trying, always trying—to love, to speak, to open, to rid yourself enough of your old ghosts that at least the voice of their going may be your own.

The life of a writer is a life of learning to listen more deeply—to the self, to the other, to the world. And that is precisely what we need in our world today: more listeners. As I once wrote to a student who was feeling the powerlessness of her words, "Let your words be the witnessing, the listening. Poetry can hear the world for what it is, and for what it could be. Wars are made by those who hear no birds."

I believe in you, Abigail, because you've started. And that's the hardest thing of all.

I wish you joy and luck and the right kinds of struggles on the way. Hope, but don't turn from the shadows. Suffer, but don't love suffering. And love the work, the miraculous task. Because to fail at this is better than to succeed at most things this world pretends to love.

And because in a world of destroyers we need every creator we can get.

With love,
Joseph Fasano

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

Atmospheric, sharp, and perfectly paced. @MHollingdrake captures the grit beneath the Harrogate polish beautifully—a masterclass in local noir. 🕵️‍♂️🖋️

Dive into our full series review at: https://t.co/lLUR6YuUb2

#HarrogateCrime #BookRecommendation #CrimeFiction

[Malcolm Hollingdrake @MHollingdrake]

The Harrogate Crime Series. Fourteen books all set in Harrogate and the surrounding dales. #HarrogateCrime #TheStray @Harrogate_News Available for Kindle @Kindleunlimited https://t.co/F0kpI6v1hg

[Jon & Caz Cole | Ink-Stained Hearts 🦒 @JonCazCole]

@London_W4 Unbelievable... and then they complain about people having no social skills... you can see a whole generation not being taught by example. Makes you sad. Even sadder than today already is.