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Pre-order “The Front Runner”

By Brendan O’Meara

Hey, CNFers, what you’re seeing is the beautiful, brilliant book cover of The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine, set to come out by Mariner Books on May 20, 2025, ten days shy of the 50th anniversary of Steve Prefontaine’s death (spoiler alert).

This is the pre-order link: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338

You can use it to pre-order from your favorite online bookseller be it Bookshop.org or … Amazon¹.

We all know that pre-orders help determine to what extent the publisher is willing to invest in their talent². I suspect you’re plenty sick of getting barraged by authors like me begging — and make no mistake, it’s begging — for pre-orders. Not only is it expensive ($32.99) but you have to then wait five months.

Anyway, consider pre-ordering a few copies. If you order five or more for your reading group, I’ll be sure to do some kind of Zoom chat. Email me the receipt and we’ll coordinate a time.

So many people make a book happen. Editors, designers, sales team, media teams. I hope you’ll consider buying it as it supports the entire enterprise, not just the little keyboard troll.

Thank you so much.

Here’s the thing: We can all agree that Amazon sucks ass for authors, but most people buy their books from Amazon. I still buy books (Kindle primarily … I hate clutter) from Amazon. I’m never going to hate on anyone who buys one of my books from Amazon. No sense in shaming any book sale. ↩︎
Here’s the thing: We can all agree that this is ass-backwards. The publisher, seeing a robust pre-order binge then doubles down on the talent. It’s a chalk-eating-weasel (horse racing term) move, betting the house on an even-money favorite. ↩︎

Is That a Paper-Bag Book Cover? Yes, It Is!

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

I was looking Etsy for a vegan slip cover for my Field Notes journals. I wanted something that would protect a volume should I tuck it in a bag or pocket. I found a good one, and it wasn’t that expensive, but then I thought, why don’t I try to make one?

Then I thought back to middle school and high school and how part of our assignments at the start of the school year was to take a paper bag from that week’s grocery run and make book covers.

Episode 451: When Beach Read Meets a System with Lindsay Jill Roth

Friday, Feb. 14, 2025

Promotional support is brought to you by the Power of Narrative Conference, celebrating its 26th year on the last weekend of March 28 and 29. 300-400 journalists from around the world are coming. Keynote speakers Susan Orlean, Connie Schultz, Dan Zak and Connie Chung will deliver the knowledge. Listeners of this podcast can get 15% off your enrollment fee by using the code CNF15. To learn more visit combeyond.bu.edu … and use that CNF15 code.

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When Lindsay Jill Roth (@lindsayjillroth) described her latest book as beach read meets system, that was pretty spot-on. There’s a breezy, conversational tone to Romances & Practicalities: A Love Story (Maybe Yours?) in 250 Questions (William Morrow). It weaves the research and interviews Lindsay did along with her personal story of finding her partner.

Lindsay is an award-winning television producer and writer, with novel under her belt as well, What Pretty Girls Are Made Of (Simon & Schuster). She has worked events like The Grammys, The TONYs, and The Masters.

Episode 450: Ahead of Super Bowl LIX, John Eisenberg Chronicles the Long Journey of the Black Quarterback

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John Eisenberg knew he wanted to write books from a very young age. He has written eleven … his latest being Rocket Men: The Black Quarterbacks Who Revolutionized Pro Football (Basic Books).

It’s an amazing history that tackles (pardon the football pun) the institutionalized/structural racism of the NFL from the perspective of the quarterback position.¹

There was a time when Black men were thought mentally incapable of handling the position, but they were encouraged to change positions to less intellectually demanding positions. Yeah.

Having Run, Having Written

Wednesday, Febrary 5, 2025

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I can’t be sure of how many of these short essays on long running I’ll write.

Each run births an idea or two, a little riff.

I only had a four-mile run the other day, a nice little scamper on Pre’s Trail. I felt bouncy for the first time in a long time. But once I hit Mile 4 (3 down), things got heavy for some reason. An unsettling feeling. For seasoned marathoners, this happens around Mile 20.

All runners, no matter the distance, encounter discomfort and you come to expect this, so where do you put it? I knew through pain comes growth, and I knew that by walking or stopping my future self would be unhappy.

I don’t necessarily enjoy running (I do, at times), but I love having run. I don’t necessarily enjoy writing, either, but I love having written.

Present You knows this about Future You, but Present You isn’t concerned with Future You until Future You becomes Present You and it can flip the grammar.

All of this is to say unpleasantness is part of the game — every game — and those who make peace with that, dance with that, tend to have a more satisfying experience.

You Have All You Need

Monday, February 3, 2025

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The joys of running with a notebook and pencil is you get a pretty good cracking idea every 1-2 miles and it behooves you to have a means to write it down.

I’m two weeks into a twelve-week plan (still have to register for the event I want to do at the end of April), and there’s a tendency to look at the gear I have, the clothes I wear, and think I really could use a wrist watch so I can have a hands-free stopwatch? Or maybe one that keeps track of distance and pace?

I quickly snap out of it. I have all I need. I have a hydration backpack that has a pocket for a phone, and phones have stopwatches. I don’t need fancy tech shirts¹, shorts, and shoes (though shoes are naturally a good place to upgrade).

The point is, with running as it is with writing, you have all you need. There’s often a rush to over-complicate things, to purchase that thing that will grease the skids or make you feel less like an imposter.

If you want to write, any writing implement and any piece of paper will do. You don’t need MS Word (unless Mariner Books demands it). Just use Google Docs or whatever free software you have. You don’t need to go on a retreat. You don’t need to attend exorbitantly priced writing conferences². Don’t be seduced by MFA programs to legitimize your pursuit.

I’m about to push my comfort zone into the YouTube Universe and I’m nervous about the gear or software I need. I remind myself. To get started, I have all I need. It was like when I started podcasting in 2013: I didn’t overthink it. I had a landline on speaker phone attached to a tripod by rubber band aimed at my laptop as I recorded the phone call. Now I have a nice set up that sounds way more polished, but I didn’t wait for the perfect set up to start.

It’s a good mantra: in most cases, you have all you need.

I have a couple from back in the day. By and large, I just deal with nipple chafing. TMI? Nah. ↩︎
Though, at some point, you’ll want to to build your community and to be a good literary citizen. ↩︎

Episode 449: Drew Philp Wants to Make Spanakopita Out of Spinach News

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It’s that Atavistian time of the month and this month’s story is heavy and chronicles what is likely, probably, a genocide in Tigray, Ethiopia … the hospital was overrun with victims. The medical staff risked everything to treat the wounded and believe the world ignored a genocide.

Drew Philp (@drewphilp.bsky.social) is the journalist behind “There Will Be No Mercy,” and we talk about how he pitched this as ER only in an Ethiopian hospital as that population endured unthinkable indignities. And this isn’t a historical piece. This happened within the last five years. Yeah. It’s a courageous piece of reporting, but even more courageous of the people at the heart of the story who literally are risking their lives to have this story told.

Episode 448: Evan Ratliff Returns … Or Did He?

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[Downloadable Transcript TK, CNFers]

Very nice to welcome Evan Ratliff (@ev_rat_public) back to the program, the special occasion being his incredible podcast Shell Game, the show where Evan created an AI voice agent in his own image and set it loose on the world.

It raises many questions about the ethics and the utility of the increasingly sophisticated world of voice agents. It won’t be too far into the future where they will be indistinguishable from actual humans.

A running writer’s companion

Listen … I am of fleeting attention. One minute I will say this is the greatest idea/hobby in the history of the world and think I should do it for the rest of my life.

Thirty minutes later say, ah, that was stupid.

So! My latest whim is to train for twelve weeks to run a simple 13.1 miles here in Eugene. The registration fee is $140, which is bonkers gross (and a reason I once flirted a little more than a year ago with an unsanctioned “race” that never came to pass on account of heat and wildfire smoke). The winter is a great time to run in Oregon. It’s chilly, wet, and the air quality is, by and large, pretty damn good.