November/December Events

• Monday, November 10, Whirled Pies, Eugene, OR, 6:30 p.m. Whereby I deliver my world-famous talk on unauthorized biography and my annotated reading. Q&A and book signing to follow.

• Monday, December 1, New York Running Club, 7 p.m. over Zoom (I’ll have the link by the next Rager)

• If you want to purchase copies of The Front Runner directly from me, reply to this newsletter and I will invoice you through PayPal or something and I’ll sign and personalize the book and mail it to you. It’s the holiday season. United States only.

Issue 6 of Pitch Club with Tracy Slater

So you broke up with your agent? Now what?

My good pal Leah Sottile said of Pitch Club, “Honestly, Brendan O’Meara is providing a full master class on being a successful freelancer for free, and we should all be paying him for it. Pitch Club is brilliant.”

The Riff

So the author-subsidized book tour took me through Idaho from about Oct. 2 through the 8. It cost, all told, about $1,000 out of pocket. That’s food, that’s lodging, that’s fossil fuels, cocaine … jk, jk, jk … 

Due to weather, I slept in the back of my Crosstrek on Night 1, which was … suboptimal. I had a shitty air mattress and I can’t say that was one of my best moves. [At AWP Boston in 2013 (?) I slept in my car in a parking garage, which was … suboptimal.] I should have opened up the iKamper X-Cover 3.0 atop my car and dealt with the moisture management later the next day. 

My next nights in Ketchum were in an RV park and it didn’t rain, but it was cold AF. One night, it dropped to 27 degrees, but with all the windows closed in my tent and my winter sleeping bag, it was comfortable. My neighbors in the RV site beside me saw me the next day and wondered if I had lost consciousness. Nope, that was the beer’s work.

And holy shit, dig this: So I had about 60 books in the back seat of my 2020 Subaru Crosstrek. I told my neighbor at the RV park that I was in Idaho doing book events. He asked me what I wrote, I told him. Turns out this guy had run in Prefontaine Classics and played Emiel Puttemans in Without Limits, the Prefontaine movie starring Billy Crudup. Puttemans was the Belgian runner who I believe finished fifth in the 1972 5k where Pre finished fourth.

Wild.

The guy was like I’ll be sure to buy your book and you know what I did? Go ahead … guess … I’ll wait …

…

…

…

I went into my car and grabbed …. My fucking business card and said check out this website to buy a copy.

I HAD 60 FUCKING BOOKS IN THE BACKSEAT! I COULD HAVE SIGNED, STAMPED, AND SOLD HIM ONE OR THREE! RIGHT THERE. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME? Coffee is for closers …

I pulled out of my RV spot and realized that it would be weird to circle back and say, “Oh, hey, BTW, I have a bookstore in this car … stupid fuck … me … not Emiel Puttemans …

And thankfully I had a best bud in Kim H. Cross, who let me crash in her guest room for three nights in Boise. It was the first time Kim and I met in person, which is kinda bonkers, but that’s the kinda intimacy and bond The Creative Nonfiction Podcast has afforded me where I feel a deep kinship with a good chunk of the people who have come on the show.

I owe so much to Kim. The Front Runner doesn’t happen without her. Literally, she made the introduction to my current agent which led to The Front Runner … She orchestrated this entire Idaho book swing, four events total, two in Ketchum and two in Boise.

And her community came out in droves for the kicker at the Oldspeak book bar, which was an electric event in one of the coolest new bookstores in the country. I believe they sold all copies of The Front Runner. Ain’t nobody wanna get stuck with stock.

But what I miss most about my time in Boise was having a co-working pal in Kim. I was there for nearly three full days, which is a lot, and after she unilaterally kicked my ass on the mountain bike trails, we spent our mornings and afternoons working on our work. I was doing some proofreading work, podcast work, etc, and she was up in her office working on travel arrangements, and writing and reporting, and she’d come down for a snack, and we’d shoot the shit, then she’d go back upstairs to work and I’d keep doing my thing. 

I don’t know what to say except that as freelancers we’re so often holed up and alone. We’re such weird, feral cats that we’re unhirable (I’m 0-for-this decade in job applications), so it was like having an office mate and we’d chat on a coffee break, or a protein shake break, then maybe we’d go for a bike ride, and it was really cool because we’re in the same lane of narrative nonfiction. 

When I got home I was kind of in a funk because it’s not unlike when you come back from a conference and you’re buzzing from being around “your people,” but then you soon settle into your well-work grooves of home (the chores, my God, the chores), the buzz wears off, and you mourn being around people who fundamentally “get you.”

Plus, Kim did so much for me and wants the best for me even when I feel I don’t deserve it, so all I can say was that it was a special time and I’m deeply grateful and lucky to have people like Kim, like Ruby McConnell, like my sugar mama, all who see something in me that I unilaterally am blind to. Why? That’s for therapy … but there’s also the creeping specter of the clock. I’m 45 and these self-limiting beliefs have perhaps wasted a good 10 years of potential growth … likely more. Definitely more.

And that growth isn’t just for me. Leveling myself up, the podcast up, it has the effect of an undertow, a rip tide, where I can drag more people out into deeper waters, out of safe harbor and into the places that scare us, that challenge us to fully realize our potential. 

I’ve said this before, but I live in fear of future regrets and I have visions of me on my deathbed lamenting why I wasted so much time and energy on bullshit. Like, I won’t be upset if I die having written five books and not twelve, so long as I gave it my all. But I will have regrets if I drag my feet and decide not to go all in for fear of failure, or for want of comfort: Netflix and chilling without the chilling, drinking myself into a nail biting stupors every fifth day, not going to that conference, living vicariously through avatars of accomplishment on TV and social media. 

I already mourn for having wasted my 30s. And, yeah, maybe you can say that set the table for what’s happening now, or what’s going to happen, but I think I hid in plain sight. Instead of working on what mattered, I took menial jobs for minimum wage that robbed me of my purported vision and visions. Even my early 40s, being sucked into the vortex of a pandemic felt somewhat wasted and maybe I need to throw some grace at that situation.

I’m sure there are many of us who can feel the weight of future regrets, not to mention the ones that we’re saddled with from our pasts. Go on, text that crush, start a podcast, start a YouTube channel, fail spectacularly, try something new, try to have fun, give yourself credit, forgive a past version of yourself, take a nap, run that race, swim the Channel.

As you know, this rager starts here and goes up to 11.

The Books

1. Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research by Melanie D. G. Kaplan. The late Dr. Jane Goodall said it was, “Remarkable,” so, you know, skip this book if you’re a bozo.

2. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. I don’t read many novels, but a pal bought this for me and I’m so glad I took the time to put this by my bedside.

3. Joyride: A Memoir by Susan Orlean. The book is something of a victory lap of sorts. I want to talk to someone about this. I have thoughts, but I need to talk it out.

4. Range of Motion by Brian Trapp. A comic novel, and if you liked Jonathan Evison’s The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving you will likely love this.

The Other Stuff

5. Marc Maron is officially done with WTF. I never outright copied Maron (though some people likely think I do), but as I began to hear so many of my grievances of a career in writing echoed through his arc in comedy, I felt a greater connection to him. So much so that I have had to curb a lot of what I say and think so it doesn’t sound like I’m copying him … even though I’m not. That’s the thing: Even if you’ve been doing something for a long time and then somebody way more famous does the same thing, people assume you’re just copying the famous guy. Here’s his final podcast newsletter. I hope he continues sending out a weekly missive. [So far he hasn’t.]

6. A cool mobile writing setup.

7. The genius of “Enter Sandman,” for drum nerds, for Metallica nerds.

8. Leah Sottile has another season of Hush. Go dig it.

9. Have you heard of Raddle? It’s a fun word game. (h/t to Field Notes’s newsletter)

10. Screw finding your passion.

11. The struggle to be organized is real.

ICYMI: October on CNF Pod

Masha Hamilton Asks Is the Writing Worth Rearranging Your Calendar For?

Co-Writing a Memoir, Becoming a Publisher, and Finding the Passion with Jeremy X. Wagner

On Being Merciless with Peter Rubin of Longreads

Jeff Pearlman Finds the Little Guys

The Seduction of Art Thievery with Jack Rodolico

Coda

I hope you dug this issue of RATA. To support what it is I do, you can buy copies of The Front Runner, subscribe to Pitch Club, and/or leave kind reviews for the podcast on Apple Podcast and/or leave kind reviews for The Front Runner on Amazon and Goodreads. My understanding is the book is well received, and well reviewed, though I still refuse to look. Can always use more.

If you have a few bucks burning a hole in your pocket, you may check out Patreon.com/cnfpod.

Otherwise, rage on ragin’ on,

b.r.o.