Biography and non-fiction prose

I won an international literary award. Then they told me what it would cost to claim it. Oxymoron Life is a darkly funny memoir about what happens when sincere effort collides with systems designed to monetize hope rather than reward integrity. It's the story of writing books while caregiving, chasing visibility that never came, and slowly realizing the game was …
I won an international literary award. Then they told me what it would cost to claim it. Oxymoron Life is a darkly funny memoir about what happens when sincere effort collides with systems designed to monetize hope rather than reward integrity. It's the story of writing books while caregiving, chasing visibility that never came, and slowly realizing the game was rigged from the start. I did everything right.
I showed up consistently. I followed the advice. I optimized, marketed, and hustled until my soul felt like a product I no longer recognized. The result? A perfect record of spectacular non-performance. Sales that flatlined. Algorithms that yawned. And a growing stack of invoices for courses, coaching, and exposure that promised breakthrough but delivered only more debt. Somewhere along the way, I lost count of how many books I'd written.
Not dramatically. I just... forgot. Was it forty-two? Fifty? Sixty? The number stopped mattering because the result was always the same: a perfect, immaculate record of not mattering. This isn't a guide to success. It's a record of what it costs to keep hoping inside systems that charge for hope by the month. It's about the moment you realize effort and progress aren't the same thing. That visibility is something you rent, not earn.
That community is just audience in a softer jacket. That the suffering you document can become the product they sell back to you at a markup. Written with razor-sharp wit and unflinching honesty, Oxymoron Life dismantles the toxic fairy tales of the creator economy. It's for anyone who's ever felt like they were doing everything right while somehow still losing. For caregivers who became invisible while writing about isolation.
For artists told to "just try harder" when the math stopped mathing. For everyone who built something meaningful and watched it disappear into the algorithm's indifferent void. This is what happens when you refuse to lie with better lighting. When you choose the whisper in a hurricane. When you finally stop paying for permission and start keeping the change. No breakthrough promised. No transformation guaranteed.
Just the quiet, subversive truth about what it costs to care in a world that only values what converts.

In the rugged landscape of Southwest Virginia, the history of the coal industry is often told through the lens of the men in the mines. Matriarchs of St. Charles shifts the focus to the sunlight above the shafts, documenting the lives of the women who built the foundation of the St. Charles coal camps. This work is an intimate exploration of the "unseen labor" that kept the region alive...
In the rugged landscape of Southwest Virginia, the history of the coal industry is often told through the lens of the men in the mines. Matriarchs of St. Charles shifts the focus to the sunlight above the shafts, documenting the lives of the women who built the foundation of the St. Charles coal camps.

This work is an intimate exploration of the "unseen labor" that kept the region alive. Through a collection of oral histories, community records, and personal reflections, Jerry Buchanan honors the resilience of the women of Lee County. From the company store to the one-room schoolhouse, these stories highlight the mothers, healers, and educators who transformed a harsh industrial environment into a home.