Hi friend,
In the gold rush days of self-publishing, circa 2014, I would meet an author friend for writing dates. I was four books into my historical romance career and working a day job related to ebook publishing. She was writing full-time, which seemed like the dream. We met up punishingly early to write before my commute. We hung out at wine bars and wrote until closing. Sometimes we would drive to Half Moon Bay or Sonoma and check into fancy hotels for writing weekends. It felt like I was writing all the time, in bars and coffee shops all across San Francisco.
I lost that momentum, and that writing partner, and that city, somewhere along the way.
But in 2014, writing fortunes were being made — and like any gold rush, often lost. Authors bought mansions and horse ranches, only to go bankrupt a few years later. Tales of bad behavior and outsized egos spread in whispers. Female authors seized the moment and reshaped the publishing industry. Male authors picked up younger girlfriends and keynote speaking opportunities. Same old, same old.
It was a wild time to be a writer. The books I wrote in those days were fueled by caffeine and champagne in equal measure. My writing date usually bought bottled water to go with her drinks. She preferred Acqua Panna — a single-source spring water, bottled in Tuscany and sold in glass bottles with a twist-off metal cap. It sold for $10 a bottle.
Acqua Panna bottles are a memory I carry of that gold rush — more than high-powered writing conferences and extravagant book parties, more than the friends who made millions of dollars (disclaimer: I did not make millions of dollars, although I’m proud of what I wrote). A $10 bottle of water was an extravagance that my inner Iowan judged, especially since San Francisco’s tap water is pristine and eminently drinkable. My life was extravagant in other ways that I conveniently suppressed my judgment for, but I didn’t buy Acqua Panna.
I suppose I had reason to notice the drinking water. It’s always been in the background; tap water in Iowa is full of farm chemicals, and takes on distinct odors through the seasons. I’ve been assured those chemicals have absolutely nothing to do with Iowa having the second-highest rate of cancer in the US. Local reporting on our cancer rates covers individual risk factors (smoking, obesity) and dances around how we apply the most glyphosate and other herbicides/pesticides in the United States. Why let a little cancer get in the way of your Big Ag profits?
In my house in Iowa, I run three air purifiers and filter my drinking water — you can take the girl out of San Francisco, but you can’t make her forget about environmental issues. But money can’t eliminate risk no matter how much we tell ourselves it can. And sometimes, in gold rushes and established industries both, the luck runs out anyway.
I’ll write more about the business of writing at some point — this newsletter is mostly Iowa-focused, but I’m going to start letting in more of the rest of my life. Suffice it to say that the self-publishing gold rush ended, in the way that most gold rushes do — speculators flooded the market, established companies regained control, and a glut of product (in this case, ebooks competing with the million other types of content that demand consumer attention) drove incomes down.
It’s still possible to make a living as a writer, but the artistic life has always been precarious. Unlike farming, it’s dependent on shifting tastes instead of shifting weather. But writing, farming — probably everything in late stage capitalism — require luck and systemic support and perfect timing, not just hard work.
The end of the publishing gold rush in San Francisco, and the ongoing shifts in rural Iowa, do not fit neatly together. But they share a feeling of precarity.
They share a sense that the beforetimes were feast, and the present day is famine — that we’re all waiting for the cycle to turn and for another gold rush to begin.
And that, in the meantime, we have to make do with whatever joys we can find.
A couple of weeks ago, while I was wandering through the wreckage of my current book, my dad called. He didn’t say hello. He said, “What kind of yogurt do you like?”
He’s never willingly eaten yogurt before. Still, it did not occur to me to be suspicious.
I started answering with brands — Siggi, Strauss, Chobani when I’m in a rural-Midwest pinch.
He interrupted and asked for flavors. I told him I usually buy unflavored full-fat Greek, but sometimes vanilla, blueberry….
He interrupted again. “What about strawberry banana?”
“It’s not my favorite, but it’s okay,” I said, trailing off as the specificity of his questions became red flags.
“I’m on my way,” he said.
He pulled into my driveway five minutes later. I went outside to meet him. “My buddy had a truckload of yogurt he couldn’t deliver,” he said, motioning at several boxes sitting in his pickup. “Take as much as you want.”
Dad’s buddy is a trucker, short- or long-haul depending on the job. He might haul grain, or equipment, or dry goods. In the lead-up to Ramadan, he’ll spend a few weeks hauling goats from ranches in Texas to halal butchers in New York. Sometimes, he hauls refrigerated or frozen products. This is where we sometimes benefit; this is not the first time my dad has shown up in my driveway with an absurd offering from his buddy’s truck.
The yogurt in question had been properly transported, at least until some of it fell off the refrigerated truck and ended up in my driveway. But the trucker knew even before he attempted delivery that the purchaser would refuse it. The expiration date was too close, which was too much of a risk for the buyer to accept. It also wasn’t worth it to anyone to pay the cost of hauling the yogurt back to the original factory.
I assume the trucker was supposed to destroy it. But no one here would want to waste free food, and so, off the record, the town was suddenly swimming in yogurt. I took a case, which was more than I needed. My dad drove off to find other people to give yogurt to before it got too warm.
It was only after he left that I discovered that it was all kids’ yogurt pouches.
And, of course, they’re all strawberry banana.
Between my brother and I, we ate most of the yogurt pouches before they expired, sucking down snacks in child-sized portions. Beggars can’t be choosers, as they say, especially when there’s no gold rush in sight.
Out in the country, five miles from the nearest town, there’s a discount food store. Bargain hunters who don’t mind a little botulism with their beans can find some real steals. The store stocks hundreds of badly dented cans, which the USDA says are safe as long as the dent isn’t on a seam. Most things they sell are expired — best-by dates three or six or twelve months past, on everything from jello to cereal to mayonnaise.
The store is run by the Amish. Enough non-Amish shop there that the owners must have special dispensation from their local elders to run a generator for lights and refrigeration. I want to ask them what their supply chain is. How do products filter down and out of the food ecosystem and reach this tiny rural grocery store, which obviously is not doing any internet ordering? Do they fall off trucks like my dad’s friend’s offerings? And if they can’t sell something here, is there somewhere even more depressed that takes this store’s leftovers?
My understanding is that this store takes whatever they can get. You’ll find bargains, but you’ll rarely find the same thing twice.
The products that aren’t expired are usually foods that may be common ingredients somewhere else, but are never eaten in rural Iowa. A friend once brought me a pitcher of perfect Thai iced tea that she’d made from a blend she found there. I’ve stopped in a couple of times, leaving with a jar of some unusual-for-Iowa product, like shakshuka sauce. I spurn the expired cans — and feel guilty that I can afford to ignore them — but the store is often busy with people who will buy them.
I went this week to see what was on offer. Somehow they’d acquired a dozen jars of British mincemeat. They had a row of jarred gefilte fish next to some Tostitos spinach dip. The same shelves held nopales (cactus), curry, mole sauce, a dented can of gulab jamun (the sweet syrupy Indian dessert), and cocktail onions. None of those products were expired, but there’s a chance they will be if someone doesn’t come along and snap them up.
I bought the jar of curry sauce on a whim, along with a bottle of unexpired Cholula and two bottles of Kikkoman gluten free orange stirfry sauce. At $1 each, they’re worth a try.
I also smiled when I saw, tucked away on a bottom shelf, a stash of Acqua Panna. The glass bottles were dated sometime in 2025 and seemingly undamaged. What supply chain misfire caused them to end up in an Amish discount store next to a bunch of expired apple juice?
I’ll never know, but I bought two bottles in memory of the gold rush. They were seventy-five cents each.
Cheers,
Sara
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Iowa really sounds like a different country--and I speak as someone who has lived in other countries. But that is the thing about countries of any size, isn't it, that parts of it would seem entirely foreign to people in other parts. Also, the bargain hunter in me is squealing at the 90%+ discount on the fancy water, even though my regular policy is to stay away from bottled water. (She says, while guiltily eyeing the canned, store-brand sparking water on her pantry shelf because it just taste so good on a hot day and there had been so many scorchers this years.)
Those 4 books will always have a special place in my heart. It is time for another reread!