I WROTE A BOOK!

even though I really didn't want to.

Two years ago, my writing group was planning to gather for our annual retreat together. We’d been meeting monthly for a decade by then, first at the Panera on Sudley Road in Manassas, then, when we lived in different places, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond and, when the pandemic hit, over Zoom. We made it a point to get together for a few days every year, to talk, read, enjoy each other’s company and, mostly, eat.

Two years ago, in the midst of our retreat meal planning, our friend Lauree told us she needed to back out of the gathering. She’d been in and out of the hospital with breathing issues and doctors couldn’t manage to diagnose her problem. “My sense is that things are simply winding down for me,” she wrote, “not in itself a concern.” Lauree had turned 90 a month before and celebrated big time. She’d long known that she would leave this life when she was good and ready to do it, and I think she’d been feeling ready for a while.

We changed our plans and rented an AirBnB in Durham, where Lauree lived. We weren’t sure what kind of “retreat” we’d have, but we knew we wanted to be together. We spent a bunch of time sitting with Lauree in the common space of her co-housing community, until we tired her out. She told us she was inviting hospice in, and didn’t know what would happen next. When our group left, I knew I needed to go back.

When I did go back to Durham a couple weeks later, Lauree was much weaker but still her sharp-minded self. For years, she had been working to divest herself of as much as she could, wanting to leave the world without forcing anyone else to clean up her life. She’d sold her perfect little house surrounded by gardens and moved into a studio unit in a very intentional co-housing community. I had helped her donate an amazing immensity of canning supplies stored in the attic to Black woman farmer just starting out, which delighted Lauree to no end. Her tiny car was going to her granddaughter, soon to be driving back and forth to college. And I knew she’d been diligently distributing whatever financial stores she still had.

I knew Lauree had been doing end-of-life work for a while. But I did not expect to be part of it. After we talked for an hour or so, she told me how important our friendship had been, and handed me a check, which I stuffed in my purse, kind of annoyed that she would ruin that moment with money. Lauree didn’t say it outright, but I knew - because she had been pestering me about it for a decade at least, and because she’d asked our friend Kathie not long before how much it cost to publish her own memoir - that she wanted me to use that money to publish a book.

It made me mad. I didn’t really want to publish a book. I’ve been running my mouth on the internet for decades. Hundreds of people already read everything I write here, twice a week. Why go to the trouble of writing and publishing a BOOK, those things that nobody even reads anymore? Plus, I was mad at Lauree for dying, and in the illogical logic of grief, I wanted to refuse anything she dared ask of me, still stuck here in the land of the living.

Lauree died on September 24, 2024. Her sons wrote a gorgeous obituary. Nine months later, they hosted a celebration of life at the nature preserve/natural cemetery where Lauree was buried. I went to the celebration and I visited the cemetery on my own (it’s gorgeous, you should go take a walk there, too). I wrote about Lauree, and I missed her. But I refused to spend the money she’d foisted on me.

And I kept living, and thinking, and being curious, and getting ideas, and acting on them. I got obsessed with tyrants in scripture, and started teaching a class about them. More than 100 people joined that study over the course of a year. I started thinking that maybe I DID want to write a book, about those tyrants and our ancestors who subverted their reign.

Last spring, I heard about a publisher who ran cohorts for marginalized writers, sharing resources and processes for publishing manuscripts in non-traditional ways. The cost for joining the cohort - which included a publishing contract - was almost exactly the amount of the check from Lauree. I investigated, procrastinated, thought about it more than I should have, deferred my participation for an entire season and eventually participated in Tehom Center’s Ministry from the Margins cohort last fall.

I was skeptical. I knew nothing about publishing, very little about this publisher, and was still being ornery about writing and publishing a book at all. But the cohort was incredibly helpful. The workbook was a step-by-step process guide to getting a book written, published and marketed. I’ve been writing for decades and I started out the process feeling uncertain, condescending and insecure. I didn’t know that someone holding my hand and naming each next step was exactly what I needed.

And then, over the course of the last nine months, I wrote a book. I WROTE A BOOK. That might not sound like much to you, reader: you get these internet missives in your email from me twice a week. It’s true, I write ALL THE TIME. But a book is much harder to write than a Substack post or a sermon. It has to, you know, make sense. And have a point. And sustain that sense and that point through chapter after chapter, tens of thousands of words at a time.

It took three writing retreats, a summer without much income, the oversight of a tiny pomodoro tomato kitchen timer and an ungodly amount of Nerds Gummy Clusters, but I did it. I wrote a book. And yesterday, I signed a contract for that book to be published.

“All Tyrants Are Boring: Biblical Stories of Regular People Taking Down Despots - Ancient Wisdom for Modern Resistance” (yes the title is far too long and I love it) will be published in May. There’s a lot to do between now and then, but I hope you’ll stick around and join me in the anticipation and excitement. I’ve got a bunch of fun things planned - pre-order bonuses, fun extras, and maybe even a party or two.

For now, here are two invitations:

First: Tehom Center is hosting another round of the Ministry from the Margins cohort this fall. I highly recommend participating if you’ve got even an inkling of an idea for writing a book. Super supportive, very structured, the kick in the ass I needed to do the thing that Lauree knew I should do years before I did it. If you join, tell them I sent you, please.

Second: Are you famous? Or maybe kinda famous in your own particular corner of the world? Or really good at being an encourager and connector? I’m going to need some help getting the word out about this book. You’ll hear more about that in coming months - I’m going to create a launch team and fun ways to share about tyrants. I also need a few folks to be endorsers, to blurb the book and lend their cache to its entrance into the world. Let me know if you’ve got cache to share.

And:

Thank you. This substack project has been a lifeline for me in a season when I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Your company in this space, your continued reading of my writing, your financial support and your encouragement to keep doing the thing and see where it leads has been more important than I can possibly express. I am grateful.

I WROTE A BOOK!