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Personal News and/or Shoutouts for Pals

Hey CNFers, The Front Runner is officially out. I like to think I don’t ask for much, but now is the time buy a copy or three and, if you read it, you know the drill, need ratings and reviews. I won’t read them because I don’t want to be driven insane, but that’s the world we live in: ratings and reviews. Your call to action to support the book, me, and ye ol’ CNF Pod. If you’re still on the fence, and why would you be, there’s an excerpt of the book over at Lit Hub. Dig it.

Next two events are July 17 at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle at 7:30 and July 27 at Gratitude Brewing for a live taping of the podcast, 1 p.m.

I also started what’s proving to be a pretty popular venture called Pitch Club. It’s at welcometopitchclub.substack.com and I have a writer audio annotate a pitch. It’s tactical and it’s practical. It’s going to help you get where you want to go.

“If nothing else, it says a lot about chasing a story even when you don’t have an assignment, because Dave had reported this entire thing before he even pitched it to us.” — Jonah Ogles, lead editor of “Conversations with a Hit Man.”

Link to a mostly accurate transcript for Ep. 477¹.

It is that Atavistian time of the month, so there are some spoilers in this conversation, and, boy, do we have a shiner for you. The name of the piece is “Conversations with a Hit Man” and it’s written by David Howard and edited by Jonah Ogles. A former FBI agent traveled to Louisiana to ask a hired killer about a murder that haunted him. Then they started talking about a different case altogether.

This story is wild, and has a lot in common with the movie The Usual Suspects in terms of its structure and reveal. David Howard is a journalist and the author of nonfiction books and magazine stories, but he’ll get a more fleshed out intro when it’s his time to take the stage.

He’s the author of Chasing Phil: The Adventures of Two Undercover Agents with the World’s Most Charming Con Man and Lost Rights: The Misadventures of a Stolen American Relic.

His work has appeared in the Atavist, Popular Mechanics, and Bicycling, among other places.

We talk about:

Nonverbal stuff, so the importance of doing this stuff in person
The Grand puzzle of a piece
Looking for stories to believe in
Keeping his mind as clear as possible when he starts to write
What it was like sitting across from killer
And what the tape recorder frees him up for

Learn more about David at his website and follow him on Instagram @davehoward99.

CNFin’ Snippets

Jonah on having to take the L

“You’ve got to be willing to take some losses when as you’re chasing a story over a long period of time. And maybe one doesn’t pan out, or maybe three don’t pan out, but then one does. It’s a real testament to persevering through all of that.”

Jonah on learning from the L

“The stories that don’t work out, you learn from it.”

David on editing …

“I was a magazine editor for about 13 years, and it was the best thing I could have done for my writing. It made me pull back and think about a story right from the first time you utter a sentence, like, we’re going to write a story about x. And how does that come together? How does that take shape?”

David on getting outside the office …

“Spend a lot of time outside your office, talking to people in person. For me, one, critical component over the years has just been get in front of people, sitting across from someone, being able to look in their eyes, try to understand what they’re made of, and see all the nonverbal stuff happening that tells you so much about what someone may actually really be saying beyond what they’re telling you with their words.”

Dave on taking risks …

“Honestly, [this Atavist story] was one of the biggest gambles I’ve taken in my career. I’ve rolled the dice about a bunch of times on stories and but never quite to this degree in terms of my investment of time.”

Dave on stories to believe in …

“I’m just looking for stories I can believe in, because overwhelmingly, over time, the stories that I’ve had strong instincts about have translated into things that other people have enjoyed reading or hearing about.”

Dave on Otter and notebooks …

“The advent of these digital transcription services have been a powerful thing for me, partly because transcribing was always really painful and time consuming, but more than that, now I just use the notebook to jot down little things I need to remember, non verbal things, what somebody looks like, what the scene looks like. I have my phone out recording, and I feel so much freer to observe the person, look into their eyes. Have a really deep conversation. Whereas before, it’s hard not to have your head down and be scribbling when you’re relying on that purely for note taking purposes.”

Dave on when he writes …

“I start writing at about 5:30 or 6 in the morning. I try to keep my mind as clean as possible. I feel like it’s hard enough to write as it is without getting pinged by texts and emails. And I keep all that stuff closed.”

Dave on re-reading the masters …

“It’s like trying to pull back the curtain a little bit and study the wires a little bit and figure out, ‘Okay, how did he build the scene? How did he propel the story in this way?’ To learn from people who are masters at it is as a really fun thing. And, as you said, energizing. You close the book. You just want to sit down and be like, ‘Alright, I’m gonna go back and revise this draft.’ Or, you know, come up with something even more exciting.”

Parting Shot: My New Year’s Day

So July 1, Canada Day, was my 45th birthday. I got my first ever full body massage, from Maple, at Aveda, a B-certified company, and it was potentially life changing. I don’t know how these massage therapists do it. It is some of the most physically taxing work imaginable, and they have to have their hands all over strangers’ bodies. Some have hair … and feet …

Birthdays are always a good time for personal reflection, gratitude for having made it another trip around the sun, as they say. This my New Year’s Day.

My big goal is to continue to shrink my footprint, to consume less and less. By and large, I’m pretty good at that. But I can always improve. I always feel better pushing against our culture’s desire to make us feel less-than and the only way to fill that hole is with stuff: junk food, booze, stuff on stuff on stuff. So when I see material excess in action, I feel all the more grounded in the pursuit of less and the pursuit of intentionality.

Physically, I’d like to grease my joints so I’m not hunched over in the next few decades. I want to be less brittle in places that put me on the shelf. I want to get back to a 405 deadlift. If I train smart, the cascading effect of that strength goal will help me achieve some other things like a better body composition to appease my crippling body dismorphia, but also my blood pressure, which appears to be trending down to a normalized range. My doctor is all too eager to give me a little dose of a BP med. I’m like, let me handle this. I want to avoid pills.

Cresting into full-on middle age means it’s harder just to not fall apart. There’s wear and tear on the body that easily lays you up and a slowing metabolism means the longer your laid up, the more apt you are to lose fitness and the cycle continues until you’re bent over and hobbling

I want to see the podcast grow to 10,000 downloads a month. Not to make money, not for status, but platform is currency and it means I’m more attractive to publishers that way. It also gives me the capacity to keep platforming writers. I want Pitch Club to get up into the thousands of subscribers. It will always be free. All of my offerings are free. I don’t begrudge writers for trying to make a buck, but it’s my feeling there are deeper pocketed institutions you can siphon money from so you don’t gate-keep emerging voices or aspiring writers. There’s probably a rich parting shot baked into this concept. I’ll put a pin in it.

I want my next book deal in place before the end of 2025.

I want to keep celebrating The Front Runner through the holiday season then put it to rest for a bit, then ramp it up for the paperback release next year.

But like anything, if you don’t write this shit down, it’ll fade and get crushed by the glut of life’s many crushing defeats. We have a government that has wrought so much damage and caused so much pain and it’s only been six months.

Joy is a form of resistance, doing our work is a form of resistance. Caring for each other is a form of resistance. So keep doing your work. It matters. I know saying shit of that nature is a little off brand and out-of-tune coming out of my face mouth, but it feels true to me right now, so stay wild and if you can’t do, interview, see ya!