Guest Post from Dan Wuori, Who Wrote the Foreword (and Middleword, and Backword) of The Great Fatsby

12.1.2014 | 12:30 pm

A Note from Fatty: Today’s guest post comes from Dan Wuori, the back-page columnist for Velo Magazine. He also agreed to write the Foreword to my (very) soon-to-be-published The Great Fatsby: The Best of FatCyclist.com, Vol. 2. 

Also, he wrote the Middleword, something I don’t think many books have. I was joking when I asked him to write this, but he seemed willing, so I went with it.  

Finally, I asked him to write a Backword, too. By the time I asked him to write this, I was just seeing if there was anything Dan would say “no” to. Evidently, there is not.

In the interest of full disclosure, however, Dan did have a few demands before he would agree to write these three things in my book:

1. That I ask everyone who reads my blog to follow Dan on Twitter and tell you how great he is. 
   (Hey everyone, follow Dan on Twitter! He’s really great!) 
2. Pay him in 30% in Bitcoin, 30% in Dogecoin, and 30% in one-dollar bills, printed exclusively during years that are divisible by both three and seven. He seemed unaware that this did not come to 100%, and I wasn’t about to tell him.
3. That, should we ever meet in person, I would salute him and greet him by saying, “Hail, Son of Krypton.” 

Also, you should know: Anyone who buys the signed and inscribed copy of The Great Fatsby today, tomorrow, or Wednesday will also get their book signed by Dan. 

And also, from now through Wednesday, you can use the FAT20 code to get 20% off on all your Great Fatsby pre-order purchases. 

Huzzah!

Guest Post from Dan Wuori

When Elden told me he planned to name his next book The Lament of the Purple Snipe, I told him it was quite possibly the worst title I had ever heard. But when he rang to explain that the name was a callback to a blog post about a groin injury (in which “snipe” was actually an anagram for the word “penis”), I had a change of heart – and told him it was definitively the worst.

In the end he named his bookThe Great Fatsby. It is my fervent hope that this is not another of Elden’s “clever” anatomical references..

Alright, that’s not entirely true. He called it The Great Fatsby because I thought it was funny and told him I wouldn’t write the foreword unless he did.

This also wasn’t true.

Maybe no one has ever asked you to write a foreword, but let me tell you it’s like the perfect Ocean’s Eleven-style heist. You do 1/500 ^th of the work and still end up in the Amazon.com search listings as if you’ve actually done something. You’d really have to be an idiot to say no. Still I told Fatty I wanted naming rights to the book, just to see who had the upper hand in this relationship.

I thought for a brief time it was me. But that was before I started writing.

I’ve been reading Elden’s blog for years. We don’t know each other well, but we both love cycling and share a certain sensibility as writers. The difference is that I’m much more content to write a magazine column once a month (over which I labor as if creating a plan to broker peace or rid the world of unsolicited Candy Crush invitations), whereas Elden manages to spew forth three times weekly with nary a proof read.

“I prefer first draft mediocrity,” he once told me.

[Note from Fatty: That is in fact an actual quote, and not out of context, either.]

But the truth is he takes this blog very seriously – and puts in a tremendous amount of time and effort to produce what you read here each week. The problem is, he expects others – namely me — to share his work ethic, which I’ve come to learn the hard way over the past several months as I’ve watched my 1/500^th grow. And grow. And grow.

First there was the foreword. You know, the thing I actually agreed to write. Then he calls to say that he thinks the book needs a middleword. I thought I had the perfect out when I told him that there was no such thing and to leave me alone. But the next thing I knew I was writing a middleword. And a backwards. Suddenly I was feeling less like Danny Ocean and more like that casino owner Andy Garcia played, but whose name I’m just too lazy to Google.

And don’t even get me started on the edits. Even writing for American cycling’s journal of record, I’m not used to the kind of editorial scrutiny this guy exercises.

Can I make it little longer? Can I rework the ending? Can I add some dialogue in French so we can impress Johnny Depp? (Bonjour Johnny! Ca va?) The guy is full of demands.

And now the latest: can I write up a guest post for the blog? Well guess what? I just did.

Who’s the alpha dog now, Fatty?

(SHOP NOW: For a limited time only, if you purchase Dan Wuori’s new book Foreword, you will receive Elden Nelson’s The Great Fatsby for free. Or buy the deluxe version of the foreword for $123.96, use the FAT20 discount code and get the book, jersey, and a t-shirt for free!)