Who woulda guessed?  This is from Brian Cook at Book Publishing News. I wish I knew the original source.

"Books based on life in small town southern Appalachia sell like hotcakes!" stated one publicist.

According to book sales data, from 1998-present, America can't get enough stories about small town life in Southern Appalachia. Over twenty-five million books about life in the Appalachian mountain regions of America have been sold in the last decade alone. "That's an incredible statistic," said one industry spokesman, "I don't know of another region of the country that can tout such sales figures."

Interestingly, this phenomenon isn't a recent development. For many years, life in Southern Appalachia has been a favorite destination for readers of all ages.

Read on.

It's strange. I have Google alerts set up for various strange and not-so-strange search strings–one for 'Appalachia' alone– and this article wasn't listed among my daily articles, and there's no back-linking. So, be happy or interested, yes, but don't believe it until you see a primary source.

New fiction from Ray Norsworthy coming this afternoon or tonight.