I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but I write a monthly newspaper column for the “Cotton Chronicle,” a nonprofit newspaper in a small community in northern Minnesota, population 437. I got hooked up with it because that’s the community where our cabin is and it inspires some of the fodder for this blog.

My column began as a way to promote my blog-memoir, “Meander North.” I received a grant to publish it in several local media outlets, including the Chronicle. Once my grant ended, my column ended. Shortly after, I received an email from the editor. She’d heard good things from readers and asked if I would consider continuing my column.

I was like, “Well, would you pay me for it?” She was, like, “We’re not that kind of a newspaper.” We reached a compromise where I would write a column as long as I could mention of my book at the end of it.

Recently, I ran out of stories from my book that I thought would work for columns. I have plenty of blog posts that aren’t in the book that could substitute, but I’d recently read “Wild and Distant Seas,” a fiction book based around columns that Herman Melville used to write for a Boston newspaper. I recalled that Dickens did that, too.

Although I am no Melville or Dickens, the thought of doing a serial fiction column in the Chronicle intrigued me, and I had the perfect completed story in mind. I ran the idea and a few pages of it past the editor, and she said yes!

Now, instead of being titled, “Meander North,” my column is called “Through the East Door,” which is the name of my story. Well, it’s more like a novella. The piece is over 20,000 words long. My columns are only supposed to be around 1,200 words. This is going to be a long serial!!

The tale centers on a young woman reeling from the death of her husband. She retreats to her cabin (in the Cotton area) to heal. Along the way, she comes across a wounded animal. Caring for it takes her mind off her troubles. But is the animal real or is it imaginary? Readers will have to make up their minds themselves.

The first installment was published earlier this month. Except for some cute husky puppies, the plot is dark – focusing on sudden death. The Chronicle also has another columnist named Tom. I’ve never met him. Don’t know who he is or what his background is. But I was chagrined to see that his column also dealt mainly with death.

In it, he mentioned his wife said he’s stuck in a “groove” about writing about dying. He ignored her criticisms for several months until he read some of his recent past columns and realized she had a point. He’d rather think of his writing as being more of a “senior groove” than a death groove and said that it would be disingenuous to write about being a senior (elder) without including some element of death. He continued, relaying several stories about people dying or talking about dying and ended by saying he’s working on his tendency to write about death. However, he left readers with the final image of a male dragonfly being eaten by its mate.

Other than for community committee, town board, and fire department reports, the “Cotton Chronicle” this month was sure a downer! I felt sorry for its readers, overdosing on death. I want them to know that my story gets less depressing as it progresses (until the very end). And it sounds as if Tom is trying to get less depressing, too. I am interested to see how it all goes.

This post probably isn’t the best marketing technique, but if you want to follow my story and see if Tom can jump into a different groove, or just learn about small-town Minnesota life, you can subscribe to the newsprint version of the Cotton Chronicle for a year for a mere $12. It’s not available online. (P.O. Box 126 – 9087 Hwy 53, Cotton, MN, 55724-0126)