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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.

Saturday, August 16, 6-8 p.m. ET, I’m the featured author for this event. It’s free!

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 you’re going to have a narrative story that works, it helps to have somebody who is irrationally fixated on a goal that allows them to do traditional protagonist operations in a way that that gives you a lot to work with as a writer.” — Matthew Wolfe

OK, it’s that Atavistian time of the month so we’re here to talk about Matthew Wolfe’s “The Talented Mr. Bruseaux: He made his name in Chicago investigating racial violence, solving crimes, and exposing corruption. But American’s first Black private detective was hiding secrets of his own.”

So we’ll be hearing from Matt in due time. It’s not Matt’s first story with the Atavist, and we talk a little about his first story with the Atavist as well.

Matt is a journalist and I believe he wrapped up a PhD in sociology. He’s got a book coming out next year, we we’ll be sure to tout that when the time comes.

Batting leadoff here is none other than lead editor Jonah Ogles. For those who may have missed Seyward Darby, she’ll be back soon. She just came back from maternity leave and I believe she’s working on a narrative podcast. Some of you might be worried. One of you might be worried. NONE of you might be worried.

So Jonah and I talk about the ideal writer to work with and get into how he edited Matt’s piece, Parting Shot about aging dogs, specifically Sister Kevin, so let’s queue up the montage …

OK, so we’ve got Matt here. His first Atavist story was “The Ghosts of Pickering Trail.” His work has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Pop-Up Magazine, the New Republic … hold on maybe I should just read the publications he hasn’t written for. Oh, wait, there are none. Shit. You can find more about Matt at matthewwolfe.net.

Matt likes to lean on TV and screenplays as a means to developing stories. He uses the Dan Harmon Story Circle to help with structure, which is a riff on the classic Joseph Campbell “hero’s journey.” We talk about not being mercenary about stories and leaning into the ones that won’t let go, and one of the more bizarre recommendations you’ll ever hear. Let’s get after it, riff …

CNFin’ Snippets

“I grew up wanting to make movies. I’ve always been a real fan of plot. I read a lot of screenplays. I think with stories, it’s so dependent on structure, and it’s so dependent on putting everything in the right order and organizing information in a way that it carries.” An aspect of writing I’m really drawn to. It’s something a little bit more geometric than certain other parts of it.”

“I’m sure you have this with your work. I mean, where you figure out, in terms of picking a story, the story sort of picks you, it just gets your hooks in you, and then you have to finish it out, or you have to report it, even if it’s financially a terrible idea, there’s no real reason for you to do it. So I suppose that there is a certain amount of obsession embedded into anybody who’s doing this profession right now.”

“Doing a piece where you’re relying on archives is a little bit like dumpster diving. It’s kind of like whatever you find in there is what you’re going to be making that night.”

“I think writing a hagiography about someone can be a praiseworthy endeavor, but I don’t think saints are very interesting characters.”

“With journalism, there’s always a little bit of your nose up against the window looking in.”

“You’re going to have better stories if you go into private investigation work, you’ll at least be able to entertain people at cocktail parties, which is hard to do when you’re when you’re writing press releases.”

“Just taking a screenplay, or just taking a piece that you like, and strip that thing for parts, and trying to figure out, and taking apart and figuring out, all right, why, if I’m delighted by this, what’s the grammar of that delight?”

“I think breaking down that sentence level, or the graf level, or the chapter level, murdering and dissecting the thing you love is really quite important, even if it comes at the risk of of disenchanting it.”

“Doing longform nonfiction right now is a little bit like getting really good at vaudeville in 1976. That’s great. You may not be able to earn a living from it.”

Matt’s Rec

BBC documentary on the Yugoslavian Civil War titled “The Death of Yugoslavia.”

Parting Shot: Senior Dogs

It’s been a bit of a harrowing week. So Kevin is our German shepherd and she’s older, probably 10, 11, or 12, hard to know. She was running around the back yard and she stepped wrong, let out a yelp, and could barely move her left hind. Took her to the vet, turns out she’s got a partial tear of her cruciate ligament.

We thought it might have been a full tear but xrays and such determined it was a partial tear. But the imaging revealed that her spine is horribly arthritic, which is somewhat common in Germans. And suddenly we’re very much aware that we’re getting close to the end. Not in weeks, maybe, but certainly months are no guarantee.

We have a pretty good rehab plan for her. She has to be on carprofen for inflammation of muscles and joints and gabapentin for some nerve-related pain since she’s developed narrow discs, which likely has led to her excessive right shoulder limping.

She’s sleeping on the floor beside me and we have to keep her from jumping on things. She can’t run or do any sharp movements. I got her a Help Em Up harness that has handles for the shoulders and hips so I can lift her hind end up stairs and into the car with ease. We have to really take it slow.

The other morning, the day after she was under anesthesia for her imaging, she was pacing and whining, which made me think maybe she was in great pain and when an older dog is in great pain, you have to start thinking about whether or not it’s time to let them go and cross the rainbow bridge, you have to make that choice and it’s the most awful choice you have to make. Turns out she was just sick from the procedure, so she hasn’t been whiny or that uncomfortable once that moment passed. The meds are making her sleepy, which is good for now because she needs a lot of rest. She hasn’t eaten a full meal in a bit, and that is upsetting, too.

When these critters get old, it becomes day to day, they can degrade SO quickly. That happened with Jack and Smarty. It’s like they were old, slow, but fine, and then in a couple days, DONE, and we were letting them go. I don’t know why we sign up for this pain. I was laying on the floor with Kevin the other day telling to please get better. I’m crying because if she goes and leaves us with the boys, I’ll be so fucking pissed.

The boys got into a fight the other day when a door accidentally swung open. They haven’t had an incident in nearly two years but they picked up right where they left off. Fortunately no cuts or blood, just spittle. We intervened in time. Things have been tense and scary and sad.

That’s the drama. Hard to focus, though, and I’m falling behind on my reading, my writing, this podcast, gotta rally. Gotta rally, so stay wild, CNFers, and if you can’t do, interview, see ya!