All That Chazz: Your Brain Tickle Destination

It’s sneak peek time! My new novel, Where the Night Takes Us, releases September 14!
This post includes this thriller’s sales blurb, a reading sample, pre-order links, details on the special release price, and availability.

---

What’s it about, Rob?

Dr. Simon Fethullah’s weapon was his mind. It is also his torment. 

As a forensic psychiatrist working with the FBI, Simon’s testimony helped to convict the Rainy Day Cannibal. After taking a bullet for his trouble, Simon retreats to the wilds of Montana to hide and to heal with his loving wife Carla and Stefano, their massive dog. Simon seeks peace, but murderers have long memories.

When the President’s press secretary is assassinated, a serial killer’s dreams become our nightmares. Though caged, prison walls cannot contain Rainy Day’s ambitions. The madman has a loyal following and a vendetta that demands a terrible price. When threatening postcards find their way to Simon’s door, it’s clear that dangerous people know how to find the good doctor, and they are coming for blood.

Not sure yet? Okay, try the reading sample and see if you’re hooked. The novel opens like this:

Proviso

There is a body buried in the woods behind my house. He lies in the grave he deserves, unmarked and — as far as I know — unmissed. To me, writing is a compulsion. At some point, I will record the details of my crimes. 

If nothing dire happens to my wife or me, no one will ever read these words. 

You’re Not Stephen King

Life is a jumble of variables. Countless twists, turns, and tangents lead us to each moment. It is impossible to pin down any one solitary event as the beginning of things. The chain of events that led me to drink this morning’s bitter coffee from my favorite chipped mug can be traced back eons to the mysteries of the Big Bang. Since the universe exploded into existence, evolution branched in certain ways. Some extinction events occurred, and perhaps miraculously, others did not.  That seemingly random chain of events only becomes a sensible chain of evidence in retrospect. So, picking a beginning at random, I’ll start with the first postcard. It arrived last winter.

With trembling hands, I held a manila envelope, thick and battered from abuse it had suffered in transit. The return address told me this was mail forwarded through my publisher. I stood frozen on the side of the road beside my battered old mailbox and muttered a few choice curses as if words were spells that could keep the bogeyman at bay.

Spring seemed a far-off promise, and a thick blanket of white drifts reached up to my knees. The air was still. Not even the birds sang. It was as if all of nature held its breath, waiting and watching. Snow so quieted the music of the world that I imagined how lonely it must be to be deaf. 

To my right, my neighbor’s long driveway was unplowed. Their farmhouse appeared deserted and lonely. I strained to listen for any hint of human activity, but Mercury County, Montana, was as silent as a tomb. Nonetheless, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was surveilling me to gauge my reaction to the envelope in my hand. I imagined a faceless stranger targeting me through a rifle scope.

“Get a grip, Simon,” I told myself. “Stalkers are rarely serious threats, especially when they announce themselves but still hide behind anonymity. The real ones just come and shoot you in the face in person.”

I used to get mail from my literary agent and Ex Parte Press more frequently. After three books, though, the checks shrank, and the correspondence became less frequent. When my book sales were significant, I was excited to receive any missive from my agent, Caison Willoughby, or Holly Papandreas, an editorial assistant at Ex Parte Press. Since an anonymous stranger began getting to me through my publisher, dread consumed me as I approached my mailbox.

Before I even retired from the FBI, I’d been careful to scrub any online presence that might leak my contact information. Forwarded mail from my publisher was really the only way dangerous strangers could slither into my life. Holly sent me rare fan letters or clips of fresh book reviews. Each year, I received a couple of invitations to literary conferences (flattering, but I’d never go). 

Once in a while, a murder victim’s family or a criminal lawyer would ask me to get involved in a cold case. Pleas for my expertise fed my ego, but I always replied that I was retired. Forensic psychiatrists are at high risk for early burnout. That’s what got me after what happened in Dallas.

In my replies, I made an effort to sound encouraging. Victims’ families don’t need brutal honesty. I told them the professionals assigned to their cases would no doubt keep their dead loved ones top of mind. That wasn’t true, of course.  Officially, law enforcement never gives up on homicides. However, roughly half of all murders in the United States go unsolved. Fresh corpses demand new energy. Old case files moulder like bodies in forgotten graves.

Postcards from the anonymous sender came at long intervals but ruined all my trips to the mailbox. The editorial assistant never saw the postcards she forwarded to me. They all arrived in a sealed envelope marked personal. Each envelope was indistinguishable from the others. The front of the first postcard was a picture of downtown Albuquerque. 

That first missive wasn’t even a threat. The message was just one word:

Apologize!

A vague command scrawled in bright red ink. No explanation. I’d spoken to a lot of unhinged people over the years, and not all of them were incarcerated. Standing in the snow as the cold seeped through my boots that morning, I pondered the message. 

Which maniac demanded my attention? And red ink! Did that imply a debt I owed? Or was it meant to signify blood? Or was I overthinking again?

My wife, Carla, was sanguine about the first postcard. “It’s one thing to go to the bother of putting a postcard in an envelope to pop it in the mail,” she told me. “It’s quite another to actually track you down out here in the woods. Success pulls attention from people who don’t have it. That’s all this is.”

“It’s true that attention attracts resentful crazies,” I conceded. “Before Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon, he considered killing Stephen King. Did you know there was a stalker who broke into King’s home in Maine and threatened to blow up the place?”

Carla said softly, “You’re one of the good guys, but you’re not Stephen King, darling.”

She was right, of course. As a writer, my success was modest. I’d emailed my best friend and old partner, Agent Denise Absing, that my first book had sold enough to get a second printing. In her inimitable way, Denise brought me down to Earth. When I picked up the phone, she began with, “Hey, Can Opener! Got a question for ya!”

“I’m bracing for impact,” I replied.

“Can you still squeeze your head through doorways? I wouldn’t get too big a melon if I were you. Your book’s awfully long.”

“Maybe my customers are stacking them up against walls for insulation?” I suggested.

“That makes more sense. No one reads anymore, Si! That’s what makes this second print run of yours an even greater achievement!”

“And a complete mystery to you?” I prodded.

“I mean, I’ll get around to reading it, but I have to. As a friend, it’s an obligation.”

“It’s so gratifying to hear that I’ve assigned you homework. Can’t fool me, though. You’ll read it cover to cover to see how many times your name gets mentioned.”

“Actually, I was hoping there’s an index.” 

Denise’s laugh sounded something like the barking of a seal combined with a new driver grinding gears. When she was done roasting me, she added, “I’m assuming that any mention of my name is paired with laudatory phrases. ‘Mercurial wisdom’ would be good.”

“You surprise me, Denise. I didn’t know you could read.”

My friend’s teasing aside, after publishing my first book, I thought I’d made it. Serial Killers I Have Known spent two weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers list (#10, but still), a laudatory review in Publishers Weekly, and a nice mention in an article in The Atlantic.

Starting out, my expectations for a second career in creative non-fiction were high. Once, when a barber asked what I did for a living, he got excited. “Would I have read anything you’ve published?” 

Flattered, but also self-aware enough to be self-deprecating, I answered, “If you’re incredibly well-read, maybe?”

“What’s your name? You famous?”

“Simon Fethullah,” I said, “but I’m only famous in small circles.”

The barber’s excitement proved brief. “Never heard of you.”

“I’m crushed,” I said. “This is why I prefer barbers who don’t speak my language.” I left him a large tip for reasons I can’t now fathom and never returned to that barbershop.

To me, succeeding as a writer meant I could finally have the solitude I craved. I fantasized about the happy life of a hermit. Once every year or two, I’d venture out into the real world. I’d fulfill my contractual obligations at a book launch followed by a bunch of bookstore signings across the country. I held on to those delusions of grandeur right through to the release of the third book, Monsters in Human Masks.

My first hint that things were going sour was that Ex Parte Press had no budget for a book tour. Prodding them for book marketing plans, the editorial board replied rarely, slowly, and tentatively. My editor, Amira Coldstaad, said, “We’ll see,” a lot.

Confirmation of my failure came when my editor refused to take my calls. She pawned me off on Holly Papandreas. The editorial assistant was kind, quick to answer my calls and emails, and utterly useless in aiding my cause. In the end, all she did for me was forward the damnable mail from the anonymous sender.

The second stage of my downward spiral came when a crazed woman shot me in Dallas. I survived but got a hip replacement for my trouble. Depressed, my spiral downward continued at greater speed. A medical leave turned into my retirement.

Perhaps you read about the shooting? The Huffington Post ran with the headline, “Forensic Psychiatrist Shot in Courtroom Melee!” USA Today went with, “The Rainy Day Cannibal Gets His Revenge!” Tucker Carlson took my near-death experience as an opportunity to reinforce the idea that the nation was falling apart. His commentary was trite and he mispronounced my name, but otherwise I wasn’t in a mood to disagree.

What Carla referred to as my “JFK moment” occasioned a brief resurgence of interest in my work. Getting shot in Dallas and admiring Marilyn Monroe were all I had in common with the assassinated president. That was more than enough overlap for me. I’d rather have kept our commonalities to our interest in Marilyn in Some Like It Hot.

Winston Churchill once said something about how there was nothing more exhilarating than getting shot at. That is so, as long as they miss. At the time, we assumed Roderick Shane’s sister was aiming for the prosecutor. Missed him, got me.

Only the Rainy Day Cannibal knew how vast and deep his plots were to become. Long after I quit the FBI and he was behind bars, Roderick Shane’s machinations set the United States on fire.

Please note: If you pre-order now, you’ll receive the debut novel in the Fear-death Experiences Series for only 99 cents. (This special discount for pre-orders will only stand for a limited time. After a week, the e-book price will rise to $4.99.

Best practice: Lock in your discount price now with the pre-order.

Where the Night Takes Us will be exclusive to Amazon for three months as an e-book and in paperback. The hardcover will be released on November 1. After three months, distribution will go wide to all sales platforms.

~ I’m Robert Chazz Chute. I write crime thrillers with muscle and apocalyptic epics with heart. Best known for This Plague of Days, I’ve won fifteen awards for my writing. The sequel to Where the Night Takes Us is When the Night Finds Us, and it is in production. Please subscribe for updates, and happy reading!

Can’t wait and want a summer beach read now? I got you. Here’s another novel with a faithful dog as a sidekick.