Welcome - To The In-Between Pages

Written By Erika Aylward

Welcome.

If you’ve found your way here, it probably means you’ve lingered somewhere inside one of my stories.

Maybe you’ve sat in a quiet bookshop after closing time.
Maybe you’ve stood on a harbour as the light thinned into evening.
Maybe you’ve held your breath in the space between two people who almost say what they mean.

This space — The In-Between Pages — exists for everything that doesn’t quite fit inside a novel.

It’s where the drafts live.
The almost-scenes.
The sentences I couldn’t let go of.
The moments that happen before Chapter One, or long after The End.

It’s where I can talk to you properly.

When I write a book, you only ever see the finished version. The polished one. The one that knows where it’s going.

But stories aren’t born like that.

They begin as fragments. As feelings. As questions I don’t yet know how to answer.

A flicker of light in a darkened shop.
A man who doesn’t send the email.
A woman who pretends she isn’t waiting.

There are entire conversations that never make it onto the page. Backstories I carry quietly. Scenes that live only in my notebooks. Versions of characters that existed for a week before becoming who you now know them as.

This is where they go.

You might find:

  • Deleted scenes

  • Character journal entries

  • Playlists that shaped a chapter

  • Thoughts about why I wrote something the way I did

  • Flash fiction that doesn’t belong anywhere else

  • Reflections on writing, grief, love, and staying

Some posts will be short. Some might feel like letters. Some may simply be a paragraph that wouldn’t leave me alone.

All of it is intentional.

I’ve always believed the most powerful moments in a story don’t happen in the grand declarations.

They happen in the quiet.

In the pause before someone speaks.
In the decision to stay.
In the almost-touch.
In the half-light between closing and opening.

The in-between.

That’s where I like to write.
And that’s what this space is for.

If you’re here as a reader — thank you. Truly. It means more than I can say that my characters have found a home with you.

If you’re here as a writer — you’re welcome here too. I’ll be honest about the messy parts. The doubt. The drafts. The moments when the story refuses to behave.

And if you’re just passing through — stay a while.

The kettle’s usually just boiled.
The lights are low.
And there’s always something unfinished on my desk.

Love,
Erika ✍️

Erika Aylward