More Lies for Lily

In More Lies for Lily, Lily Vasquez has shown up to get Jesus away from the assassins and the cops, but that doesn’t mean she’s happy with our luckless Cuban hit man. When in trouble with your girlfriend, lie your way out. Listen in to Chapter 5 of Bigger Than Jesus.

Can’t stand to wait until next week to find out what happens next? Who can blame you? Pick up Bigger Than Jesus (and all the books by Robert Chazz Chute) at this link.

Want to vote for the best entry in The Six Words or Less Contest? Check out all the entries in the comments thread HERE and email your favorite to expartepress AT gmail DOT com.

Support Caleb Medley, the Aurora shooting victim who is still in a coma. He may have brain damage. His right eye is shot out. Caleb’s wife just had a baby and they’ve got a long road of healing and heavy debt ahead. Donate here.

Why Bigger Than Jesus? What’s it really about?

Please click it to grab the gripping, funny crime thriller by Robert Chazz Chute.

As the entries to the Six Words of Less Contest rolled in, I was surprised how several tied in with religious themes. You can vote for your favorite entries by checking the comment thread and emailing your vote at:

 expartepress AT gmail DOT com.

Some people have asked me why I called my crime novel Bigger Than Jesus? I make allusions to things that are, in fact, bigger than my Cuban hit man, both in jokes and in serious themes. The crux of the title is that it’s catchy and memorable, yes, but it complements the main character’s narrative of strife. Jesus (pronounced “Hay-soose”) has a lot of problems that he becomes equal to only by sheer cleverness and luck. Jesus Diaz is much like us in that way.

The theme that you’ll read through all The Hit Man Series is one of escape. Jesus Diaz desperately wants to find love and lost his past. The past just keeps coming after him, and love can be an elusive thing.

It’s my anniversary tomorrow. I married She Who Must be Obeyed fifteen years ago, so we’re going to try to take the day off. The lovely Eden Baylee has supplied a guest blog at ChazzWrites.com wherein we learn what sort of men turn her on and she tells us a little (not enough!) about her erotic fiction (Spring Into Summer). She teases us, so we’ll have to just go buy the book.

A gripping novella of murder and betrayal bundled with suspenseful short stories that will keep you up tonight. These are the foundation stories of the coming Poeticule Bay Series.

The podcast of the next chapter of Bigger Than Jesus won’t be up until Friday since I’m sworn to just write tomorrow and goof off with my queen, otherwise. However, quench your thirst for suspense with The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories. I‘ve switched it to a mere $1.99! Whoo-hoo!

Buy Bigger Than Jesus here.

Bigger Than Jesus: RUN!

You’re going to have some laughs In Bigger Than Jesus, Chapter 4, as Jesus deals with the fallout of murdering Big Denny De Molina. Denny sure got his licks in, what with breaking Jesus’s nose. We also get a glimpse of our favorite hit man’s basic training in the army and meet the lovely Lily Vasquez.

Bigger Than Jesus is a gripping, fast-paced crime thriller by Robert Chazz Chute, podcasted chapter by chapter for free. The print version will be available soon, but in the meantime, or go to my Amazon page for more details and to grab your own Bigger Than Jesus ebook for only $2.99!

Have you entered the Six Words or Less Contest? You could win your name in the next thriller in The Hit Man Series: Higher Than Jesus. The grand prize winner gets the new book for free (ebook and digital) and will win promotion on my podcast for their book, business, podcast, charity, website or dog’s name! Get all the details and enter HERE.

I wrote about Aurora shooting casualty and aspiring stand up comedian Caleb Medley on my ChazzWrites.com blog. Go to SUPPORTCALEB.COM to donate and please spread the word, too! Thanks!

Thanks for listening!

 

Announcing: The Six Words or Less Contest

I’m holding a contest that could get your name in my new thriller.

The follow-up to my crime novel, Bigger Than Jesus is called Higher Than Jesus and it’s coming this fall. 

Here’s the challenge: My hit man passes a homeless person in the street and gives him some money. The homeless person wears a black hoodie. I want something catchy and memorable on that hoodie. I thought about making an inside joke and making it a Self-help for Stoners emblem (my first book). I considered using a meme that’s already out there but kind of hipster, like the inside joke from Portal: There is no cake.

But no, I’m calling on the readership! What’s the short, punchy, pithy, memorable phrase that should adorn that black hoodie on the homeless guy on a cold winter’s night in Chicago? It could be funny. It could be pointed and political. Let’s hear it!

Five prizes for the overall winner. Check out the details and leave your witty suggestions in this comment thread at ChazzWrites.com.

Please click it to grab the gripping, funny crime thriller by Robert Chazz Chute.

What do you get for your contribution?

(Yes, there is metaphorical cake!)

The winner gets lots of that cake! There are five prizes. Go to this link for all the details and post your entries in the comments at that link (so all the entries are in one thread.) Thanks and have fun!

What We Can’t Do is Wait

I used to be entranced, like a deer in Time’s headlights, with the idea of “paying dues.”

People in positions of power, older people, and a lot of losers used that phrase a lot. In case you’re wondering, I fell into the category of loser because I believed it. A lot of people denigrate the “kids” in the Occupy Wall Street protests. We’re told twenty-year-olds don’t have fully developed brains and when we’re young we don’t know the ways of the world. Well, fuck that. A bunch of twenty to twenty-five-year-olds were largely responsible for getting Apollo rockets into space. The young may not know the ways of the world, but they have adult responsibilities. Very young people are killing for their nations, going to jail, getting executed and being kept down by the established order. No wonder they’re pissed. (Thankfully, after the young led the charge, many much older people are recognizing they, too, are the 99% and have joined in the cause and lent their experience from the sixties civil rights struggle.)

If you’re young, don’t wait for someone else’s approval to follow your heart’s desire. Take action. If you’re old, please don’t dampen their enthusiasm with caution. (You probably didn’t. A bunch of you went to war.) Being young is risky and it’s the perfect time to risk more, not less. When I was in my twenties, I did a lot of low-level grunt work in newspapers and magazines and books. I once went to a job interview where the publisher told me I wouldn’t get to have an opinion for seven years. He figured it would take that long before I would be worthy to even utter a single opinion. Really. I told him I guessed I’d just go to med school. At least there they let you start saving lives much earlier in the learning process.

I believe in learning. But I believe in learning by doing. For instance, I went to journalism school for four years, but two weeks on the job at a daily newspaper pretty much equalled those four expensive years. University, for me, was not ultimately about getting a marketable skill. It was to enjoy myself for four years while delaying entry into the workforce. And no wonder. Look what awaited me. Grunt jobs where some self-regarding asshole tells you that you don’t get to have an opinion until you’re thirty-three.

Life is short. We don’t have time for delays. We think of Einstein as a much-lauded old man, but he came up with the theory of relativity when he was young and surprisingly sexed up. The brilliant people I know now in their forties were just as bright and ready to contribute in their twenties. Young people change the world while older people often try to keep things the same. (Not all old people, but there’s an easily recognized pattern there.) Instead of being active mentors, many mid-level managers try to dampen youthful energy in the name of systems and organization. Meanwhile, the CEO started the company out of his parents’ garage when he was seventeen and packed full of that same creative enthusiasm for innovation.

Sadly, in my twenties, I wasn’t one of the strong ones. I believed the lies that respected established power and past accomplishment more than new, personal and future accomplishment. I was told to wait and I did. I kept apprenticing while a young Kevin Smith went out and took risks and made movies and a young Neil Gaiman wrote comics.

I’m writing full-time now. I wish I’d started younger. I wish I had a time machine. (I’d also stop myself from buying parachute pants. That was also a terrible mistake.)

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.

The next best time? Today.