Ridgeliners —

As you may have noticed, we’re on break. I’m on book hiatus, which is a real thing old magazines use to offer up to fancy writers. And if you were mega fancy, you still got paid while on hiatus. What a thing. (And it turns out, some magazines still offer it if you know how to wrangle it into your contract, but the era is generally over .)

This is Ridgeline, your supposedly weekly missive on walking. Different from Roden, your monthly humidity check. Both written by me, Craig Mod, who is deep in Book Work Mode.

In lieu of this weekly column, I’m writing daily “Nightingalingale” notes to SPECIAL PROJECTS members. We’re five days into the book writing diary and I’m finding it clarifying and fun and wholly unburdensome.

I keep something like this members-only because I don’t want to broadcast these little one-offs to thousands or tens of thousands, but rather a neat little group of a few hundred (there’re about 350 members on the list right now; it’s opt-in; it’s a great number; the stakes are appropriately low). The mailings are raw and largely unedited and sort of boring and meant simply to be a check-in on an otherwise lonely process. If you’d like to follow along, become a member and I’ll shoot over the secret newsletter URL.

Book Mode — unfortunately, however, unavoidably — is regularly interrupted by Kissa by Kissa Third Edition Launch Mode Issues, which, despite having done this now a few times, require much time and attention. Fixing little details in logistics. You think you’ve got it perfectly optimized and then a new rough edge pops up. This is the nature of anything involving shipping thousands of physical things around the world and doing it with as few incidents as possible. Lots of sanding.

Thankfully, we’re launching soon! SPECIAL PROJECTS members will get a notice about a forthcoming launch livestream, and discount coupon, and we’ll go live, and then I’ll hopefully just stick my head back in Book Sand for the rest of September and October, with the plan to hopefully (fingers crossed) head out on a big walk in November.

As always, thanks,
C