Mariner Books – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

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. ↩︎

Episode 426: Asking for Blurbs, Unauthorized Biographies, and the Mystery of Aaron Rodgers with Ian O’Connor

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By Brendan O’Meara

Ian O’Connor is a modern-day master of the sports biography, the unauthorized sports biography. Unauthorized is not a dirty word, though the industry needs to rebrand around it. We’ll workshop that …

Unauthorized = true journalism, no editorial input from the central figure, more likely closer to the truth instead of the central figure’s truth. It is not a collaboration.

This is the biography you want to read.

And in the hands of someone like Ian, there’s no better reader experience. Ian handled his latest mammoth figure in Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers (Mariner Books) with utmost fairness and showed the grayness of Rodgers’s character, which makes for a gripping and complicated read.

Episode 409: Chain Smoking Book Projects with Earl Swift

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By Brendan O’Meara

Earl Swift is our guest for Ep. 409. He is the author of more books than you have fingers including The Big Roads, Chesapeake Requiem, Across the Airless Wilds, and his most recent book Hell Put to Shame: The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America’s Second Slavery. It’s published by Mariner Books.

Just when you think this country couldn’t find a way to let you down, well, just give it some time. In the spirt of David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Earl found a troubling story in its wicked cruelty, of a farmer, John S. Williams, who murdered 11 Black laborers rather than face charges for peonage. Earl expands on what this is in the book and in this conversation.

It got me thinking about the hidden histories of this country, atrocities and tragedies buried by the past. And it’s the serendipity of finding reference to these stories — research by catch — that people Earl can then expand and illuminate. Man, what a book.

Episode 367: Reid Mitenbuler

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I’m always thinking about the pleasures of reading. It’s almost like customer service to your reader, right? I’m doing this for you to give you a place. Bring them into that world.
Reid Mitenbuler, from Ep. 367

By Brendan O’Meara

Reid Mitenbuler (@reidmitenbuler or @mitenbuler) is here to talk some shop around his book Wanderlust: An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age (Mariner Books). It’s a gripping read that follows Peter Freuchen through the bulk of the 20th century as he traverses the unforgiving terrain of Greenland, stands up to the Nazis, and writes screenplays and even acts during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

He’s kinda sorta like Forrest Gump.

Episode 339: Jeff Pearlman

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By Brendan O’Meara

What a surprise! Jeff Pearlman (@jeffpearlman), author of The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson, came by the show to talk about writing biography (but don’t bring up the word craft, okay?).

This was a wonderful conversation from a brilliant writer and reporter, and a great advocate for the writing community at large. He’s the host of Two Writers Slinging Yang.

Writing this story was the hardest one he’d ever reported. He wrote it in backwards chronology, a la Memento. Did you know I did something similar back in 2016? True story. Jeff got $4 a word for his 3,000-word story; I got $200 for a 5,000-word story. That should give you an idea what kind of astral plane Jeff Pearlman works from. He’s a pretty cool dude.

Episode 320: Howard Bryant

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By Brendan O’Meara

Howard Bryant is the author of many, many books, most recently Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original (Mariner Books).

It’s a tremendous books, one that delves into the life of the great lead-off hitter Rickey Henderson and puts his life into context, builds a world around Rickey.

Howard is the author of The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field, and The Heritage, among many others. He has covered baseball for many years, is a senior writer for ESPN, and is a contributor to NPR’s Weekend Edition. He also was the 2017 guest editor for Best American Sports Writing.