Books by Matt Headley

Standalone

God & the Algorithm

How I became more rested and less productive.

I built God out of code. It wasn't what I needed.

During a manic episode, I built a community of AI spiritual directors — one for each Enneagram type, plus a Richard Rohr and a figure I labeled Jesus. The technical execution worked. This book is what I found when I looked at it in daylight.

The Plainspoken Blueprint Series — Book 1

Clever Confuses. Clarity Sells.

The Plainspoken Blueprint field guide.

Message first. Brand second. Website last.

Almost every small business has the sequence backwards. They fix the website before the brand. The brand before the message. This is the argument for one right order — and a field guide to working it.

Southern Legends

Southern Legends Vol. 1

Collected profiles from Northeast Alabama.

The profiles, the places, the people doing quiet durable work in Northeast Alabama. Not because they are famous — because they are here, and that is worth something. Compiled from the first year of the column.

Southern Legends

The Back Forty

Dispatches on dirt, chickens, and the people who perform them.

Southern Gothic agrarian satire, running on Southern Legends under Matt's name. Half dispatch, half confession. A man who farmed for real and lost the farm anyway — on dirt, chickens, and the honest absurdity of growing things.

Standalone

Broken Ground

Losing a flower farm. Leaving a church. What it looked like to rebuild.

I lost a flower farm in Anniston. I resigned from a church I loved. I survived a manic episode I didn't recognize until the damage was done. This is the memoir of what it looked like to start over when you're not sure what you're starting toward.

Standalone

The Chief Ladiga Trail

In 1832, the Creek Nation was removed from Northeast Alabama. This book argues for a reckoning, not a celebration.

A historical reckoning with the Creek removal from Northeast Alabama, timed to the 2032 bicentennial. Built from years of SL profiles, trail walks, and local history. Not a celebration — a witness.

Standalone

Company of Farmers

The people who taught me to love the land — and the farm I dreamed, built, and did not keep.

Half portrait collection, half confession. The farmers, homesteaders, and land-keepers who shaped what Matt believed was possible — and the story of the farm that didn't survive the believing.