Some personal (yet also Reds-related) news
The Big 50 is back, baby!
Has it really been five years since the publication of “The Big 50: The Men and Moments of the Cincinnati Reds”?
When my first book* was published five years ago, it was a dream come true. I’ve been writing about the Reds since 2005, at Cincinnati Magazine, ESPN.com, Redleg Nation (the OG), and various other outlets, and I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to bring a fan’s perspective to Reds coverage at all those outlets. I still enjoy it! But in the back of my mind, I always wanted to write a book about the Reds.
*It’s not just mine. It was co-authored with my friend Chris Garber. Little known fact: Chris wrote all the good chapters. I’m responsible for the rest of them.
I’m still a little amazed that we actually convinced a publisher to put our book on the market. The fact that I have an author page on Amazon* is still pretty cool to me. I hope it’s always cool to me. There are so many great books about the Reds, more than you probably realize, and I’m proud that Chris and I contributed one to that list.**
*If you click that link, you’ll see a second book. Did you know I wrote three chapters for SABR’s book about Crosley Field? It’s a good read!
**In my drafts here at The Riverfront, I have a piece about the books that every Reds fan needs to have in their personal library. Stay tuned. It’ll be in your inbox soon. If you haven’t subscribed, now seems like a good time to do that.
I’m pretty shameless when it comes to self-promotion, so you know The Big 50 will be included in the list of indispensable Reds books. But it won’t be the book you may have purchased five years ago. Because…
The second edition of The Big 50: The Men and Moments That Made the Cincinnati Reds will be published next year!
Okay, maybe that announcement didn’t necessitate an exclamation point, and it certainly didn’t need the bold type. But I’m pretty excited about it anyway. We’re going to add some new chapters (there’s one chapter in particular that I wish we had included in the first edition) and make it a better book, I hope. On the path to publication, I’ll try to keep you all in the loop and maybe provide some behind-the-scenes goodies along the way.
Here’s the thing: I’m completely biased, but I really think the first edition was different than most other books of this type. I’m not trying to tell you that The Big 50 was Ernest Hemingway-level literature. But Chris and I really did try to make it better than any book in the “Big 50” series. We did so much research, and spent so much time trying to figure out how to frame each chapter to make it different. As an example, we leaned hard on the publisher to permit us to include footnotes, because we had so many good ones!
And here’s the best part: the second edition should be available in print indefinitely. I won’t get into the details, but this is the thing that excites me. From the emails I’ve received, I know that a few of you have been frustrated that the book has become scarce recently. Patience, darlin’. It’ll be available soon.
I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words about Cincinnati sports over the years. I’m incredibly grateful that some of you still want to read those words. I wish I could thank each of you individually, and I hope you’ll enjoy the second edition of the book. We’ll try to make it worth your while.
And by the way: Chris and I have been discussing our next book project. Stay tuned…
Some cool new features here at The Riverfront
Once again: I can’t tell you how much I appreciate each and every one of you. I started this newsletter as a way to connect more intimately than is possible elsewhere, even in my Cincinnati Magazine column.* I’m right in your inbox, after all! And I’m constantly amazed that so many of you actually read this nonsense.
*This year is my tenth season covering the Reds for Cincinnati Magazine. That is an insane number to me. How is that possible?
Anyway, I wanted to alert you to a couple of features that I’ve just added here. First of all, Substack has added something called “Sections.” It’s been around for a while, but in the wake of my piece about movies a couple of months ago (You should read it! How else will you know what the top 25 movies of 2022 were?), I’ve decided to add it to The Riverfront. This allows me to put different stories in different, um, sections — there’s a Reds section, a Bengals section, an FC Cincinnati section (coming soon). And there’s one for my ruminations about movies, because I fear that I’m not going to be able to stop writing about film after my last piece.*
*I like movies.
I wanted to mention this, because you can control which of these emails makes its way to your inbox. Just go to your Substack page, where you can choose to click out of any of the sections. If you aren’t interested in my movie reviews or what I have to say about the Bengals, just click out those buttons and you won’t receive those emails! It’s simple. Of course, if you feel like you’re missing out, you can still go read everything, everywhere, all the time at chaddotson.com.
In addition, today I’m announcing a new addition to my Substack publication: The Riverfront subscriber chat.
This is a conversation space in the Substack app that I set up exclusively for my subscribers — kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post short prompts, thoughts, and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion. Because sometimes Twitter is just a cesspool and we need a place to chill, right?
To join the chat, you’ll need to download the Substack app, now available for both iOS and Android. Chats are sent via the app, not email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens.
How to get started
Download the app by clicking this link or the button below. Substack Chat is now available on both iOS and Android.
Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.
That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.
Thanks again for being so loyal and joining me for this ride. I appreciate it more than you know.
You can follow me on Twitter @dotsonc, if you’d like. The Riverfront is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube too. You can also join The Riverfront Family at Patreon.