From SRP author Mark Posey:
Sometimes I amaze myself. For the past several months, every Sunday morning I’ve been publishing a new episode of The Summer Garden on my Substack. Readers have been following Scotty’s journey, meeting the residents of Mill Creek Community Garden one chapter at a time.
And somehow…I never actually mentioned it here.
Oops.
Most of you know me through my thrillers. If you’ve read Saving Grace or are waiting for Fall From Grace, you’re used to presidents, conspiracies, assassins, and people making life-or-death decisions under impossible pressure.
The Summer Garden is something completely different. It’s the story of Bill “Scotty” Scotsford, a recently widowed retiree who notices a community garden across the street from his condominium. He doesn’t realize it yet, but walking through that garden gate will change his life.
It’s a story about grief that slowly softens. About strangers who become friends. About laughter over coffee. About tomatoes, shared suppers, terrible jokes, and the quiet ways ordinary people help each other heal. More than anything, it’s about discovering that sometimes the family we need isn’t the one we’re born into.
The response from readers has honestly been wonderful.
“OMG, I love all these characters. I can’t tell who I identify with yet. Maybe all of them. I love this serial. Thank you.”
— Johanna Rothman
“This is shaping up to be a wonderful story. I can’t wait to read more about Scotty and the community garden.”
— Kathy Z.
“I’ve been reading Mark’s episodic stories for a while now. This one is simply beautiful.”
— TK Eldridge
Rather than tell you more about it, I’d rather let the story introduce itself.
The sign on the gate read:
MILL CREEK COMMUNITY GARDEN
Plots Available
Please Contact Coordinator Before Planting
No Pesticides
No Stealing Tomatoes
Seriously, Dave
I decided I liked the sign maker immediately.
Inside the fence, the garden looked less organized than it had from above, which made me like it more. Beds leaned. Labels faded. Someone had built a trellis from hockey sticks. A plastic owl with one missing eye guarded a row of seedlings with the tired menace of a retired nightclub bouncer.
Near the shed, a woman wrestled with a padlock.
She was about my age, maybe a few years younger, with gray hair pinned up badly and reading glasses hanging from a cord around her neck. She wore purple rubber boots and a jacket that had seen better decades. A clipboard lay on the ground beside her, held down by a rock.
“Come on, you miserable little bastard,” she muttered at the lock.
I stood by the gate, unsure whether to announce myself or retreat before becoming part of whatever this was.
The lock popped open.
The woman straightened triumphantly, then saw me and put one hand to her chest.
“Oh, hell. You scared me.”
“Sorry.”
“You always lurk at gates before seven in the morning?”
“Only when I’m trying to make a good first impression.”
_________________________________
If you’d like to find out what happens next, I’d love to have you join us. A new episode of The Summer Garden is published every Sunday on my Substack, and it’s completely free to read.
And if you’re the kind of reader who prefers to curl up with the entire story in one sitting, the complete novel will be released on December 3, 2026.
Either way, I hope you’ll come spend a little time at Mill Creek Community Garden.
I have a feeling you’ll like the people who garden there as much as I do. You can find the first episode here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-199131308
— Mark