Join us for a special Sunday afternoon author talk and book signing with “Senior Techie” Paul Wilczynski, author of the new book Don’t Move to Asheville: A Ruthlessly Honest Guide That Will Ruin Everywhere Else.
FREE EVENT BUT RSVP IS REQUESTED (please fill out the form below):
ABOUT DON’T MOVE TO ASHEVILLE
Everyone told you to move to Asheville. You’re already thinking about it. You’ve looked at the listings. You’ve watched the reels. You may have told people you’re considering it.
Don’t.
Don’t Move to Asheville: A Ruthlessly Honest Guide That Will Ruin Everywhere Else is the reverse-psychology relocation guide that takes the standard “here’s why you’ll love it” format and turns it inside out.
Nine chapters.
Nine reasons to stay put.
None of them will work.
You’ll learn about the food scene that earned two James Beard Awards and a Michelin Bib Gourmand in a city of 95,000 people. The outdoor access that puts world-class hiking, whitewater, and trout fishing within 30 minutes of downtown. The creative economy that attracted artists, brewers, musicians, and makers who arrived as visitors and couldn’t make themselves leave.
It covers what you actually need to know: the hospital situation, the housing costs, the cost-of-living math, what happened after Hurricane Helene, and whether any of it is still worth it.
Spoiler: It is. Annoyingly.
Written by a reluctant Ashevillian since 2014, this is the honest guide that relocation books are too polite to write: funny, specific, and completely useless as a warning.
Consider yourself warned.
ABOUT PAUL WILCZYNSKI
For most of his working life, Paul Wilczynski was a software developer, which means he spent decades persuading computers to do things they didn't want to do.
He started writing COBOL code in 1973. Along the way he taught computer science at Suffolk University in Boston, owned a website development and hosting company, represented one of the first commercial email services (MCI Mail), and spent 11 years as a software engineer supporting payroll and financial systems for a major supermarket chain.
Eventually he retired, which is when the writing started in earnest. It turns out that 50 years of explaining technology to computers leaves you reasonably well-positioned to explain it to people instead.
TheSeniorTechie.com exists because a lot of technology writing assumes its readers are 25 years old and grew up with a smartphone in each hand. Paul writes for people who didn’t. Practical, direct, no unnecessary jargon.
Paul served on the Buncombe County Board of Adjustment since 2024, as well as being a member and Chair of the City of Asheville’s Board of Adjustment from 2017 to 2023. It’s quasi-judicial work involving zoning, variances, and a surprising amount of patience. It’s not glamorous, but someone has to do it, and Paul has found he’s reasonably good at sitting through long meetings without losing his mind.
Don’t Move to Asheville started as something else entirely and became a book that’s part honest guidebook, part memoir, and part argument that Asheville is one of the few places in America that actually delivers on its reputation.