Hey, CNFers,

Yet another migration to another email service? What the hell are you doing, B.O.? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve started to become a bit of a crank, like wicked cranky at the literary ecosystem, the social media ecosystem, just an all-around jerk. No matter …

OK but listen though: I’ve been fairly candid about how I don’t exactly trust Substack long term. Who owns the content? What is the plan? It appears to be just another social media company. Substack Notes is just “early” Twitter. And while there’s no real pressure to have readers “upgrade,” I await the day Substack strong arms you into either making sure people pay or you won’t be “recommended,” its algorithm shuffling you further into obscurity until, like Twitter’s/X Verified, you pay to be seen.

That and, thanks to a pal and subscriber to this newsletter, Substack is running into the age-old problem of content moderation vs. free speech, which — cue the sad trombone — means you’ve become the Nazi bar.

I left Mailchimp five-ish months ago because it priced me out. Its updated free plan ended at 500 subscribers (it used to be 2,000). I have 905 at this missive. Beehiiv here is free up until 2,500. At my current rate of growth I will die before I reach that many ragers. Substack is free forever … but if we’ve learned anything, friends, it’s never free.

Nothing will change on your end. It’s still first of the month. But it’s even ragey-er! In the absence of being able to send you paper newsletters (which would be awesome, albeit wicked expensive), a newsletter service that, so far as I can tell, eschews the algorithmic compulsion of tech giants, this is where we’re at.

I plan on blogging more, so you can bookmark brendanomeara.com (hey, hey) on your browser of choice to pop in and see what’s new. I will link up any riffs I do on the blog to the newsletter every month, along with the other things that start here, and, well, you know, go up to 11!

Books!

1. Damon Brown, maybe the Seth Godin of non-traditional entrepreneurs, has a compendium coming out called The Complete Bring Your Worth Collection (Bring Your Worth).

2. Looking forward to reading Patrice Gopo’s Autumn Song: Essays on Absence (University of Nebraska Press).

3. My friend, so many of us called him a friend, the late Philip Gerard, mentor to SO many writers, has a post-humous memoir out called Words & Music: An Album of a Life in Story and Song (Beach Glass Books). It has a forward by his wife Jill Gerard. Philip lived life, man. He squeezed the life out of a day.

4. The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth (Milkweed Editions) by Elizabeth Rush. I feel like a I recommended this already, but I can’t find a reference to it, so here it is again! What do you do when you’re confronted with the moral quandary of wanting to be a mother and weighing that decision with the impact on the climate and the climate your kid will inherit?

The Other Stuff!

5. Jonathan Eig, author of King, said, “We’d turned him into a monument and a national holiday and lost sight of his humanity. So I really wanted to write a more intimate book.” This sentiment animated my desire to write about Prefontaine.

6. Nick Cave on “fighting for the very soul of the world.”

7. Pretty groovy look at how Metallica creates a setlist for their latest mega-tour.

8. Cal Newport, an intellectual rager, and, I’d argue, the guy you’d pick second-to-last for your dodgeball team, posits that we do not need a new Twitter. No, we do not.

9. I love a good soundtrack, like Ben Wyatt. I often listen to instrumental ones for writing (Inception, The Dark Knight, Tenet, The Queen’s Gambit, a playlist of songs from Jiro Dreams of Sushi). Steven Hyden of Uproxx ranked a shit-ton of them and I suspect you will be busy for the next 30 years.

10. Yesterday marked the anniversary of “The Great Potato Toss.” This story is my favorite one I have ever written. It got zero recognition, no nods, no notable selections, no honorable mentions, which I was pretty bummed about (awards are largely — if not entirely — bullshit). To me, it’s really funny and I’m not afraid to sing its praises.

11. Lana Hall’s “We Are All Animals at Night.”

Connecting v. Collecting Dots

I’ve started something kinda exciting at the Patreon page for any tier supporter. Seth Godin says you can collect dots, but it’s better to connect dots. And so I’ve started threads over at Patreon about certain topics encouraging the patrons to talk among themselves, meet and greet, exchange emails, encourage each other. I chime in occasionally, but it’s not about me, it’s about connection among others. So the podcast and this newsletter, all free, act to collect dots, but the Patreon crew is where the connection is happening. I hope you’ll consider it.

Thanks for reading, CNFers, and we’ll be back in a month!

Rage,

b.r.o.