Someone is trying to pull me into their psycho-drama. This is a person committed to the illusion of their victimhood. Every problem is a catastrophe and a conflict. Every slight, real or imagined, is a mortal wound. A mistake is their excuse to try to own you forever.
Worse, they are trying to make a victim of me.
I will not get sucked in. Whatever the problem, I can solve it. Whatever the challenge, I will meet it. And I will remember who I am.
Each day is full of milestones, big and small. If our milestones consist solely of breakfast and lunch and dinner, we are merely marking time and not using it. Negative people create their own hell and I will not live there. Do-nothing people risk nothing and stay nothing and they demand you be nothing, too.
That’s not for me.
I will use this day. I will rise above my enemies. I will rise so far above them, they will look up. They’ll want to be my friends.
I am very good to my friends. I am very bad to those who choose to stay my enemies.
This is the podcast that asks, “How are you going to kill a thing like Lurch?” Brace yourself for a rant against today’s journalists by a journalist from yesterday. Then, an author reading from Higher Than Jesus by Robert Chazz Chute.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“That question has baffled experts.”
Episode 83 of the All That Chazz Podcast gets medieval, but first we begin with a rant against the media and the truth about New Jersey governor Chris Christie that no one would say (until now.) It has to do with fat and truth and fatheads standing under expensive haircuts.
In this chapter, From Dusk Till Dawn, funny and luckless Cuban hit man, Jesus Diaz, must find his love, Willow Clemont, before a couple of white supremacist terrorists kill her. My love of Tarantino is real. Most of the book’s chapters are from movies, old and new, noir and not noir. Enjoy.
This podcast is sponsored by the most excellent graphic designer, Kit Foster of KitFosterDesign.com. My opinions aren’t necessarily his, so don’t blame him. Just use his awesome services for book covers, web banners and advertising.
To donate to the podcast or buy a book, please go to Amazon through the affiliate links at www.AllThatChazz.com. Thanks for listening!
Back with a vengeance, I talk about how an energy vampire sapped my creativity and hurt my widdle baby feelings. I worked through it, got back on track and now things are going pretty dang swimmingly. If you want to give the therapy talk a miss, go to about 32 minutes in for the author reading.
Yes, at last and finally, a new reading from Higher Than Jesus, my crime novel. The chapter is Some Like It Hot. Go to AllThatChazz.com if you’d like to read the book for yourself. From AllThatChazz.com, you can get it from Amazon as an ebook or a paperback. Nifty! You can also donate to the podcast using the little yellow button at AllThatChazz.com and go to CoolPeoplePodcast.com for my interviews with actors, authors, directors, musicians and more. It’s an audio buffet.
Today’s sponsor is KitFosterDesign.com. Kit Foster is my graphic designer. Check out all his portfolio. He doesn’t just do awesome digital and print covers. He can also design beautiful artwork for your podcast, web banners and advertising. He works with all sorts and he’s the nicest guy in the world. Very reasonable prices, too. Tell him Chazz sent you.
Sorry about the hiatus,folks! Aside from the energy vampire, I also am having some trouble adjusting to running two business at the same time. Life is struggle but I’ll get my time management straightened out. Expect a new podcast soon.
To find out more about me and my horror serial, This Plague of Days, check out www.ThisPlagueOfDays.com. If you’re a writer, go to www.ChazzWrites.com.
Fresh year. Clean slate. New attitudes. New you. How about it?
I’ve been away a while. Had some health problems. Had some issues. However, I didn’t (couldn’t) wait until the New Year to start making major changes. It turns out, the key to change was deciding to.
When that failed, I decided to again. That choice isn’t made once each New Year’s Eve. It has to be made each morning, each hour and each minute.
We do what we do and dream of what we want to do, but we will never know why. What motivates us to choose this over that? These are secrets we keep from ourselves. Hidden among many skeins of branches amid forests of neurons, the answers are locked away. Why did you choose this man or that woman, that ambition and this life? Did you really choose at all, or did invisible forces choose for you?
The answers to these questions is a mystery and sometimes (often?) a misery.
On dark nights we peer at the stars and wonder about what life on which planets might be born and living and dying beyond the reach of our senses, long ago and far away.
But we are just as much a mystery to ourselves. Our minds hold secrets and hide memories the brain will never yield. The gears of the subconscious spin and work, autonomous (up to something?) pushing and pulling us, this way and that. We say things we don’t mean and we don’t know why. We drive, zombies on automatic, and awake at our destination hoping the last three traffic lights were green as we sailed through, oblivious and unharmed.
We are not awake.
We do not see all there is.
Even as I write this? My heart rate, the secrets of my blood and what makes me write at all? All unknown to me.
I am still asleep, dreaming of waking. It’s hopeless.
We are never truly awake. I don’t even know which world is better. In moments when I swim closer to the lens that lets in light, I see things. More is revealed to me. I understand more. I am more interested in the world then, but less happy.
This is a dream. When that reality becomes too harsh, I escape to my bed, into a deeper dream within the dream. Each morning fool myself into thinking I am awake.
Maybe death could be merciful like that.
We die, but in the fog at the end, we do not notice our passing. We continue, dreaming that we are living. I don’t believe that, but I love the symmetry and grace of it. We could die and it wouldn’t matter because, no matter how absurd, dreams make sense and we continue dreaming, warm and insulated from the worst the world can offer.
Don’t let me die. Let me keep on dreaming I am alive. Just like tonight.
That wouldn’t be so bad.
~ Robert Chazz Chute is waiting for blood test results and thinking about mortality.
This will get uncomfortable. You might as well laugh.
I’ve been unwell, but each morning when I wake up, I think about This Plague of Days and what comes next. I think about the holes in the plot I must plug and the nice people I have to kill (some even in fiction.) Armies of humans, zombies and vampires will gather to fight for the future and some characters we’ve come to know well are not going to live to see it. Fear not. I’ll balance out the bleak, the outrageous and the hopeful…somehow.
Writing a serial this big is not easy. It’s not digging frozen ditches in December difficult, but it has its challenges. That’s why I appreciate your kind reviews and emails so much. You nurture me. You keep me going. I can hardly wait to hit you with Season 3 of This Plague of Days. I just read another five-star review of TPOD! Wow! I’m so happy about how things are working out.
I had planned to write another book first, but Jaimie Spencer kept coming to me in my dreams and telling me to let the last of the trilogy unfold and get to it. I’m not even kidding. The boffo conclusion of This Plague of Days is a persistent itch that only writing can scratch. And so, yes, be assured I’m working on it. Not as fast as either of us would prefer, I suppose, but each week I steal a few more hours to chisel at the block of granite. The story is emerging in surprising ways.
All runners stumble
This week I allowed a vampire (an energy vampire) to sap me of creativity. I lost sleep and time and got sick. I allowed the vampire into my brain when he had not earned that privilege nor was he invited. If you have even a little success, occasionally you’ll become the target of a stalker or get a rude message from people with ulterior motives. An email dripping with condescension threw me off my stride. Lesson learned. I’ll hit the spam button faster next time.
And so I come back to what’s important: creating great experiences for me and my readers. I love to play with words. I love to tell stories. I thank every single reader who digs what I do and lets me know they get it. This Plague of Days is our party and, honestly, letting go of the guest of honor, Jaimie Spencer, will be hard to do.
For me, leaving Jaimie and the Spencers behind to write other books is going to be like leaving The Last Cafe…and that statement will be explained in Season 3 of This Plague of Days.
