The Riff

Dude,

What can be said? Things have been kinda bonkers, but then kinda not bonkers, we’ll call it medium bonkers, and the book panics are back as a I gear up for the next one, and speaking of back (as in lumbar) … my body is in outright decay, almost like it’s making a sport of how fast it can break down.

Which is to say the book “tour” is limping along.

I spent $400 to drive up to Seattle for a book event that was attended by five (3 amazing, 2 weirdos) people, which is objectively a bummer but more so when you put in a lot of effort to promote it, to invite people. But, man, seeing five people in a room made for 100 is embarrassing, but you give the five people the same energy and experience as you would for 200 people.

And that’s what we did!

Was in conversation with this wonderful writer:

Met this guy:

Also met, in person, Sam Jefferies, as well, author of Legacy on Ice. Honestly, I think I was the only one who felt weird about the attendance.

It’s funny-sad: The more famous you are, the more juice institutions put behind the famous people. They’re the ones who actually don’t need it. But, I suspect, when a marketing director has to answer to the president about where their dollars and cents went, they can point to the money spent on a famous person and show definitive results. You promote a jabroni (looks around, raises hand) and it lands flat, that might call into question your competency and your subsequent employment.

No matter!

I drove to Olympia after the event, licking my wounds, and camped out. No hotels for jabronis. This campsite cost me $30 and put me an hour closer to home.

Honestly, I’m taking it all in stride.

It’s all good.

Practicing this whole notion of non-attachment. Going with the flow of the fucking universe, lol.

I remember my editor saying that things were going to be crazy for me around book launch. It definitely wasn’t. Just kinda floating along.

We’re all just molecules.

Moved my molecules to Gratitude Brewing for a live recording of my podcast with ME as the guest. Above you see Ruby McConnell introducing me and Daniel Littlewood. Ruby said it was a great event because, “You got two teenagers to put down their phones.” I do it for the kids.

Then through a bit of last-minute scrambling, the details of which I won’t burden you with, I got to throw out one of four ceremonial first pitches at a Eugene Emeralds minor league baseball game. They had organized a pre-game .05K race as a gag. I was down on the field and the Ems’ emcee, Andrew, asked if I’d like to throw out a first pitch. I said, well, shit, yes, please and thank you. I hadn’t thrown a ball in years, so I couldn’t be surprised that I short-hopped the catcher and threw the ball into the right-handed batters box.

I mean … I GOT TO THROW A PITCH AT A PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL GAME! HOW COOL IS THAT?!

I raffled off a copy of The Front Runner. I do it for the people.

Some people are all about the hustle. I’m not exactly sitting idly by, but I’m also not saturating the market with appearances, or posting to social media every fifteen minutes. I’m putting my trust in the work, that it’ll spread. If I can help it, I will, but I’m not going to be a helicopter parent for The Front Runner. The book has sold 2,800 copies. That number makes me want to take the T to Bummerville. I think everyone’s raising an eyebrow as to how low that figure is. That can’t be meeting expectations. Maybe it is?

If you wanna sell a lot of books, be a Peloton instructor.

As you know, this newsletter starts here and goes up to 11!

Pitch Club with Kim H. Cross

Issue 3 of Pitch Club is live with Kim H. Cross … I’m telling you … Pitch Club is gonna be a thing. If you teach journalism, you need to have your students subscribe. It will forever be free. Subscribing is a kind of currency, platform currency that I can leverage to book contracts. And that’s how I get paid.

The Books

1. Fireproof: Memoir of a Chef by Curtis Duffy with Jeremy Wagner. I’m part way through this and it’s pretty solid. Duffy’s life was pretty messed up, and I like a good restaurant book.

2. Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton. Pitch-perfect profanity, pretty damn funny book. I needed a good, entertaining read. Well, I listened to the audiobook, which was great.

3. Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization by Bill McKibben. Because I’m not sad enough …

4. Water, Mirror, Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America by Jeff Chang, because a big, fat, juicy bio on Bruce Lee sounds amazing.

The Other Stuff

5. There are few writers who are drop-everything-and-read-now. Hanif Abdurraqib is one of those writers. Here’s an essay from Lit Hub.

6. Things are getting bleak when the scholars of authoritarianism are fleeing.

7. How to spot fake AI photos, a great TED Talk, and super ragey.

8. How the best golfer in the world teaches us about fulfillment. Lots of parallels to publishing a book, this “thing” we think will complete us. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. It never will. That’s arrival fallacy, which Yi Shun Lai talked to me about, but also appears in the piece I shared.

9. Let us now praise paper calendars.

10. What’s this? The audio magazine is back? Bringing back the theme “codes.”

11. Activation is not a secret.

That should wrap it up. If you want other ways to support me or the podcast you can consider leaving ratings and reviews for The Front Runner and/or the podcast. There’s also Patreon, which can earn you face time with me to talk some things out. That’s at patreon.com/cnfpod.

As always, keep writing, keep reporting, keep researching, keep raging, and stay wild, friend.

b.r.o