The Rushford Times - A weekly newsletter from Jodi Taylor

Sent on Wednesdays to paid subscribers and Fridays to free subscribers

Jodi Taylor, Hazel Cushion, Stephen Lewis, and Rita Childers

Aug 05, 2026

This week we have:

Jodi writing about lettuce farming
Interview with Jodi Taylor
Another exclusive audio extract from A Family Affair
Get Jodi’s books on Kindle Unlimited
A new guest feature:
Short Story of the Month: The Battersea Barricades
There’s plenty to read this week and you can see everything on the blog too. CLICK HERE for the blog.

Lettuce farming in the Yemen West Country

OK, we can add lettuce farming to my fairly undistinguished CV. Blame the Church of England – I do.

I went to visit the Bishop’s Palace at Wells. In particular I wanted to see the gardens at the height of summer. Previously I’d only ever seen them in winter, and I have to say they are spectacular. Beautifully laid out and maintained, and, of course, putting the wells into Wells.

Anyway, on the way out – through the gift shop, obviously – I spotted a book. Things to Grow on Your Windowsill or something like that. Like me, my mother lives in a flat, and like me, she misses her garden. I usually take my dying plants to her for emergency treatment. I think she terrifies them back into life. We all describe her as a tiny terrorist with a walker.

Like everyone who buys books as a gift, I had to read it through first. Since I bought it in the Bishop’s Palace, I was moderately confident as to the content, but you never know with the Church of England these days, and I didn’t want to hit my ninety-seven-year-old mother with unexpected sex or socialism. Not sure which would have proved the most fatal.

Dragging us all back to lettuce farming – the book had a short article on what to do with lettuce stumps.

Editor warning – this doesn’t work with Icebergs by the way but is brilliant with Cos and Romaine lettuces. You know the ones – the tall thin lettuces.

And it’s easy-peasy.

You plonk your lettuce stump in a dish of shallow water and stand it on the window sill in a good light but not full sunshine. Not too deep either, or your stump will rot. Or rather, the lettuce stump will rot – just to avoid any confusion, your own personal stumps should remain unaffected.

Don’t let the stump dry out, and the water evaporates quite quickly in this weather, so keep an eye on it. At some point new leaves will sprout and voila – lettuce.

Yes, I know it’s a lot of effort to produce a couple of lettuce leaves at a time when entire lettuces are only about five pence each anyway, but it’s the sense of achievement that counts.

Coincidentally, Hot Fuzz was on the TV that night. I spent the entire film shouting, ‘Saw that. I was there this afternoon. Saw that. And that.’

Apparently, it’s very irritating. Which is no reason to stop doing it.

Love Jodi x

Interview with Jodi Taylor on Behind the Manuscript with Rita Childers

I’m thrilled to launch Behind the Manuscript with bestselling author Jodi Taylor. The Chronicles of St Mary’s is one of my favorite series. Some books become more than favorites; they become comfort reads, the ones you return to when you want to visit old friends. Jodi’s books have become that for me.

As a developmental editor, they’ve become just as rewarding to read. I’m always impressed by how Jodi keeps beloved characters true to themselves while weaving them through centuries of history, interconnected series, and long-running storylines. The time travel is brilliantly crafted, but it’s the people who keep me coming back. Her books are full of humor, suspense, romance, found family, and relationships that continue to deepen.

In this conversation, Jodi shares how Smallhope and Pennyroyal evolved from secondary characters into leading a series of their own, why the Smallhope family became so memorable (yes, we talk about the peacocks), how she approaches revisiting familiar St Mary’s moments from a new perspective, and what readers can look forward to in A Family Affair, releasing August 6, 2026.

I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.The Interview

You’ve created memorable characters across several interconnected series, and many of them move between those worlds. When prior secondary characters like Smallhope and Pennyroyal step into a different series or become the focus of a new story, how do you preserve the voice readers know while revealing a side of them they haven’t seen before?

A tricky question to begin with!

In a way this was fairly simple to achieve with Smallhope and Pennyroyal since my readers first encountered them as adults and fully-fledged bounty hunters. The characters in The Ballad of Smallhope and Pennyroyal are much younger – Smallhope is only about sixteen – which enabled me to show her as a teenager and just give subtle hints of the person readers knew she would become.

Pennyroyal, I suspect, has been Pennyroyal since birth and will never change. I could just imagine him frightening the midwife to death!

Enjoy another exclusive audio extract from Chapter Four of A Family Affair

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-2:56

Pre-order now on Audible - CLICK HERE

Get Jodi’s books on Kindle Unlimited

The St Mary’s and Time Police books will soon be available on Kindle Unlimited in the UK, USA and Australia - yes, we heard you down there! This will not prevent them being available on other retailers platforms. Click the links below to get Kindle Unlimited.

USA

Australia

Guest Post: The Best Laid Plans by Stephen Lewis

It was late August 2025 and I was about to start a five-week vacation to England and Norway. I had a very detailed itinerary with all the dates and times for prepaid flights, trains, coach tours, and hotels. Everything went according to plan except the train from London to Exeter was about two hours late, causing me to miss my connection to Barnstaple. I was able to check in late to my accommodation and, to their credit, GWR refunded the full fare.

After a short stay in Devon and Cornwall, I caught a bus to Bodmin Road station for a train to York. Standing on the platform, I saw the station master waving at me across the tracks. He was holding my credit card. A kind person had found it on the ground and handed it in, and somehow the station master remembered my name and where I was going. If anyone knows either the person who found my card or the GWR employee, please thank them on my behalf. That could easily have been the end of my holiday. To quote the bard, all’s well that ends well.

Or so I thought.

For the next three weeks everything went according to my carefully prepared itinerary through England, Wales and Norway.

The final weekend was to be the highlight of the holiday. My niece and I spent Friday in Bergen before I caught a taxi and headed to my airport hotel. About an hour later, just as we arrived, I realised I had left my luggage at her hotel. We had to drive all the way back into the city and then return to the airport during a mad Friday rush hour. Fortunately, the taxi driver was wonderfully understanding.

Maybe blame my excitement about the reason for the whole trip: Jodi Taylor’s launch for The Ballad of Smallhope & Pennyroyal and performing in the murder mystery. My schedule was tight. I was due to fly from Bergen to Gatwick and travel by train to Cheltenham, arriving at the Leonardo Hotel by 1.00 pm. Then I discovered engineering works had replaced part of the train journey with buses and I wasn’t due to arrive until about 4.00 pm. Karin came to the rescue by finding a kind Jodi fan to collect me from Reading so I could still make the murder mystery rehearsal.

Very early on Saturday I walked to Bergen Airport, arriving just after 5.00 am. Around 6.00 am we were told our flight to Gatwick was delayed, and alternative arrangements would be explored. There was still time to fly to Bristol via Amsterdam on another airline, but an hour later I was told they couldn’t transfer me because my flight hadn’t been cancelled, merely delayed by eleven hours.

Disaster. I would miss the rehearsal, the murder mystery and the book launch.

The airline, no names mentioned, provided meal vouchers and instructed us to stay at the airport “just in case”. I contacted Karin again and, thankfully, someone else stepped into my role

in the murder mystery. I was deeply disappointed to miss it but what else could possibly go wrong?

The next day, sitting on my flight home via Toronto, I accepted a complimentary glass of champagne. I hadn’t drunk wine for many years. About thirty minutes before take-off, the champagne decided it wanted to stay in England.

My use of the sick bag was spotted by a flight attendant, and I was politely escorted off the aircraft because illness over the Atlantic was contrary to airline policy. The aircraft had to wait while my luggage was removed and I was instructed to wait until a medical assessment could determine whether I was fit to fly.

I explained about the champagne and wondered if the rule against rebellious stomachs was a throw-up, sorry back, to Covid. The original plane left ninety minutes late, so I would have missed my connection anyway.

Meanwhile, an airline employee found me the last available seat on a direct flight home the following day, and the airline paid for my hotel, transfers, dinner and breakfast.

When I finally arrived home, there was an email from the airline apologising profusely for my delayed arrival in Toronto due to “circumstances beyond their control.”

Quite.

I hope to see many of you in Cheltenham this September.

What can possibly go wrong?

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