We have news!

Exciting things happening for Laura and for this newsletter

This week, a fairly short post to announce two things:

1. It’s official—I’m writing a book!

2. Rural Reflections–The Reboot is going paid (sort of).

The book

Last week, I posted the photo on Facebook:

As you can see, the news actually is about a month old, and in many senses it’s quite a lot older than that. After all, one does not get to a book deal without actually, you know, writing at least part of a book (with nonfiction especially, you do not necessarily have to have the whole thing, believe it or not). This one began to take shape back in August 2022, after the Appalachian Writers Workshop in Hindman, Kentucky was cut short by a 1000-year flood. If you want to know more about how all this connects, read on.

Going paid

Ruth and I have been writing this Substack for well over a year now, completely free of charge. I am committed to continuing to share my grandmother’s writing without a paywall, not because I don’t think her words are valuable—I think we need them more than ever—but because I want there to be no barriers whatsoever to them reaching a whole new audience.

But here’s the thing, folks. Writing a book is expensive work. Splashy big advances aren’t a thing for the vast majority of the books in the world, and yet they require all kinds of time and no small amount of research¹ The two projects are closely connected, as my grandmother’s columns and work as a journalist in general inform the book in myriad ways, as you might have guessed from the description above.

Concretely, I could really use a flatbed scanner to speed up the work of preserving Ruth’s columns (right now I use a scanner app on my phone, which works, but it’s slow work, and the OCR², which helps me get them transcribed for republication here, is so-so), and it wouldn’t hurt if I had a digital camera. I’m saving my pennies and applying for grants, but I figured I might find some readers willing to help as well. At least it’s worth a try.

What do you get if you take out a paid subscription? The joy of knowing you’re helping a book come to life.

Just kidding.

What I’ve decided to do is make semi-regular posts (I’m aiming for once a month or so) in which I share book updates. Not actual excerpts, mind you—you’ll have to buy the book for that!—and nothing my editor would not want me to share, but I thought it might be fun to give supporters a peek behind the curtain, to see how the sausage is made. I have no MFA and no previous books, so it could be a pretty wild ride! Plus it has the added bonus of keeping me accountable and on track. If I am going to promise updates, then I’d best have something to update on!

Anyway, if you don’t want to pay for a subscription, I get it. Money is tight and I’m pretty sure things are about to get worse once January rolls around. Like I said, you’ll still get every Rural Reflection Ruth and I write. This is just a little something more.

Hindman: Where it all began (I took the first photo in 2024; the rest in July 2022)

1. For more on this, see Summer Brennan’s excellent post “Writing a Book is Like Going to Grad School.”

2. Optical Character Recognition. To be fair, I’m not sure how much better that can get, given the original condition (smudged ink, wonky edges, etc.), but at least the scanning process would be faster.