Every writer eventually finds the subject they know from the inside out. For Live Oak author Jolene MacFadden, that subject is a community most Floridians drive past without ever noticing: the several hundred people who live inside Florida’s state parks year round, trading their labor for a campsite.
She was one of them. Between 2013 and 2020, MacFadden completed twelve volunteer workamping assignments across Florida public lands, first alongside family and later on her own. In 2014 she published the Insider’s Guide to Campground Hosting in Florida Parks. More than a decade later, with the hour requirements rewritten, the pass thresholds changed, and the whole application process moved online, she has gone back and done the work again.
Meet Jolene MacFadden
Jolene MacFadden is the founder of the North Florida Writers Tour and the owner of Southern Dragon Publishing Services in Live Oak, where she has provided digital marketing consultation to more than 100 authors. She hosts Jolene’s Book and Writers Talk, now in its fifth season and past 74 episodes, and serves as Social Media Coordinator for both the Sunshine State Book Festival in Gainesville and the Literary Indulgence Festival in Jacksonville. She moderates the monthly Writers Marketing Coalition through the Writers Alliance of Gainesville.
She is also a graduate researcher at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, where she is completing a Master’s in Social Media with an expected graduation of Spring 2027. Her research examines information asymmetry among solo women travelers over 50, the population she writes for and belongs to. That research feeds directly into the Solo Sojourn Project, the publishing and technology venture behind her recent nonfiction, and into the Solo Sojourn Trail app now in development.
Her fiction runs in a different direction entirely. MacFadden writes steampunk mystery romance under the pen name L.J. Green, is currently revising the first book in the Adventures of Janie and Diane series, and contributed a historical romance to Rainy Days, the First Coast Romance Writers anthology. A practical marketing handbook for authors, Build Your Author Brand: A Practical Marketing Guide for Your Publishing Journey, is in final edits.
The Latest Release: Workamping in Florida State Parks, The 2026 Starter Kit
Released in August 2026, the Starter Kit is a working manual for anyone considering a volunteer host position on Florida state park land, and it opens with a distinction most applicants never hear: there are two doors, not one. Campground Host and Park Resident are separate jobs with different physical demands, and the available openings do not divide evenly between them.
From there the guide covers the verified 2026 rules on required hours, stay limits, and pass thresholds, every one of which has shifted since the 2014 edition. There is a physical demand scale running from Light to Demanding, with a summer modifier, so a reader can honestly match a position to what her body will tolerate in Florida heat. There is hurricane readiness and what a self-contained rig genuinely needs in this state. There are twenty questions to ask a volunteer coordinator before committing, and an “Is It Worth It” calculation worked through three real examples, including how the senior discount actually pencils out once nightly utility fees and taxes are added back in.
The second half is reference material that does not exist anywhere else in one place: a county index of park units and known host provision, all 175 park units listed by district, the 13 host locations that fall between the two main lists, and a 46-site day-use directory of positions that run no public campground, which is precisely why they appear in no campground directory anywhere. Seven pages of fillable worksheets with 353 live form fields round it out, including a sixteen-week hours log and an application tracker.
What the book does not do is claim current openings. Openings change weekly, the state volunteer portal is the only authority on that, and MacFadden names it as such throughout. Every figure traces to a dated, named source, and where a number is a 2014 baseline that has not been re-verified, the page says so plainly. That is unusually careful sourcing for a niche guide, and it is the habit of a working researcher rather than a content marketer.
34 pages plus 7 pages of fillable worksheets. Verified as of August 2, 2026. Volume 1 of the Workamping in Florida series, with a full guide covering all ten Florida land-managing agencies in preparation.
Get Workamping in Florida State Parks: The 2026 Starter Kit
More from the Solo Sojourn Project
Four additional titles are available, and four of the five are free downloads.
Beyond the Grey Digital Divide: Mobile Technology, Digital Self-Efficacy and Solo Women Travelers Aged 50 and Older. An academic conceptual framework paper arguing that information asymmetry, for a woman traveling alone, is a safety problem rather than an inconvenience. APA format with a full reference list. Free download.
Solo Women Travelers Over 50 in the United States: A Demographic Analysis of RV Travel and Workamping. The numbers behind a $214 billion market that almost nobody designs for, including the harder finding that what gets written up as minimalism is, for a meaningful share of these women, a response to housing costs and age discrimination. Free download.
The Florida Women Camper’s Guide to RV Apps: 2025 Comparison. Eleven apps tested against fifty Florida locations, then thirty phone calls to verify. Roughly 31% of the contact information was wrong, and zero of the eleven apps offered a solo woman safety filter. Free download.
The Solo Woman’s Florida Camping Survival Guide: Safety, Wildlife, Accessibility and Confidence for Women 50+. Florida-specific emergency preparedness, 2024 to 2025 crime data, the wildlife that actually matters here, and accessibility features across Florida State Parks. Free download.
Browse the full catalog at the Solo Sojourn Project store.
Get in Touch With the Author
Author Website: jolenesbooksandmore.com
Solo Sojourn Project: solosojournproject.com
Southern Dragon Publishing Services: southerndragonpublishing.com
Facebook: Jolene’s Books and More
Instagram: @jolenesbooksandmore
TikTok: @jolenesbooksandmore
Pinterest: jolenemacinjax
YouTube: Jolene’s Books and More
LinkedIn: Jolene MacFadden
Goodreads: Jolene MacFadden
Amazon Author Page: Jolene MacFadden
Solo Sojourn Project also posts at Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok.
Be Our Next Featured North Florida Author
This is the first in a new weekly series. Every Wednesday, the North Florida Writers Tour will feature a published author living or working in our 22-county coverage area, with a spotlight on their most recent release. There is no charge, there never has been, and there never will be. We built this magazine because marketing is hard for most people and genuinely painful for introverted writers, and because a rising tide lifts every boat in the harbor.
If you have published a book, if you live or work anywhere in North Florida, and if you would like a turn in the chair, we would like to hear from you. Tell us who you are and what you have written using our online application form. You can also download the interview form in Word or as a printable PDF, fill it in at your own pace, and email it back to us.
Know a North Florida author who belongs in this series? Send us their name. We are building the list a week at a time.
A Note from our Editor
We would encourage any North Florida Writers who would like to submit a Guest Post on our online magazine or be a featured author on the North Florida Writers Tour website then please get in touch using their CONTACT US form. Our other Online Magazine called “Webs and Blogs for Writers” does featured articles on authors not in our area CLICK HERE TO READ. For those who wish to be a guest on Jolene’s Book and Writer’s Talk podcast visit the Southern Dragon Publishing Information page.
