Apocalyptic Epics and Killer Crime Thrillers by Robert Chazz Chute
Author: rchazzchute
Robert Chazz Chute writes full-time from his blanket fort in Other London. The winner of fifteen writing awards, he pens apocalyptic epics with heart and killer crime thrillers with muscle. A graduate of the University of King's College journalism program, he studied book and magazine publishing at the Banff School of Fine Arts. He has worked as a crime reporter, science journalist, editor, book doctor, speechwriter, and magazine columnist.
Amazon Prime Days start tomorrow and the e-book of Vengeance Is Hers is free from July 8 – 12. Once I have more reviews, I can promote it more effectively, so I appreciate your reviews very much. Cheers!
Here’s why you should get excited
This is not a guide for aspiring vigilantes, but it might inspire you!
Welcome to Poeticule Bay, Maine, a village where justice is scarce, and secrets have deadly consequences. When a gay student is brutally attacked and exiled from his home, the police turn a blind eye. Fueled by rage, Molly Jergins launches a relentless campaign against the school bully and his sinister family.
As Molly’s quest for retaliation spirals into chaos, the lines between hero and villain blur. To hunt monsters, must she become the very thing she despises? In the end, will revenge prove the best success?
Did you know I’m on Substack? I regularly post stories and videos there sharing anecdotes from real life, my reading life, and the writing life.
I have things to say! You can become a paid subscriber if you want to support my work, but that is optional and, honestly, most of what I post is completely free to everyone. Hopefully, you’ll also find it funny/thoughtful/entertaining/whatever-floats-your-neural-boat. Only the sexiest and most intelligent people opt in for my braingasms. Confirm you are sexy and intelligent by joining.
Vengeance is Hers is set in the fictional town of Poeticule Bay, Maine, a community inspired by the author’s Nova Scotia upbringing. The story begins with a morally satisfying act of revenge, but as Molly grows into adulthood and pursues a life in academia, her motivations become more complex and unsettling. This is a noir-tinged character study that spans more than a decade, exploring adult themes and emotional loss. A late twist surprised me, yet it felt exactly right. I read this as a beta reader but received no compensation other than the pleasure of engaging with a smart, gripping novel. I highly recommend it.
(Thank you to ARC reader extraordinaire, Russell! I certainly appreciate it!)
This is not a guide for aspiring vigilantes, but it might inspire you!
Welcome to Poeticule Bay, Maine, a village where justice is scarce, and secrets have deadly consequences. When a gay student is brutally attacked and exiled from his home, the police turn a blind eye. Fueled by rage, Molly Jergins launches a relentless campaign against the school bully and his sinister family.
As Molly’s quest for retaliation spirals into chaos, the lines between hero and villain blur. To hunt monsters, must she become the very thing she despises? In the end, will revenge prove the best success?
The ways we live depend so much on how we feel. I’ve had a massive life change recently, and it’s boosted my writing career, too. I’m sleeping better. I’m also up very early in the morning, eager to start the day. I used to need a crowbar to pry myself out from under those cozy covers. Now, I’m up and at ’em. A healthier Rob is a more productive and happier Rob. This allows me to serve my readers better, too.
What changed?
A couple of months ago, I joined a program called LifestyleRx. It’s sponsored by the Canadian government to improve citizens’ health. It’s geared to people with diabetes and pre-diabetes, though the strategies apply to just about everyone.
It cuts way down on sugar, but they don’t push any one diet. You don’t have to do keto or become a vegan. It’s just sane, science-backed tactics. You’re encouraged to eat healthier, move more, de-stress from the distress, and live a better quality of life. Their mantra is, “Better, not perfect.”
When I took my medical training, the goals were, “Add years to your life and life to your years.” I’m finally doing it, and this feels very sustainable.
For those interested in trying it out, a few more details:
You get extensive, free blood tests (and you take waist, BP, and weight measurements).
Consultation with a physician (who shares the test results with your GP).
Weekly group calls with other patients like you. The doctor and a dietitian are on the call to provide information and guide the discussion.
The option for one-on-one counseling with a dietitian. (This costs, but is often covered by insurance)
A community that shares the journey, plus plenty of healthy recipes and general support.
Weekly accountability (which is crucial for me).
An education program with videos and printouts.
I’m getting a lot out of LifeStyleRx. Besides losing weight, getting stronger, and feeling better, the biggest change is my level of energy. That translates to more creative energy.
If you can’t do LifeStyleRx, there are plenty of other ways to do something similar. I encourage you to do so. It feels wonderful to get out of bed every day with a feeling of purpose and the newfound ability to achieve that purpose.
You know what authors used to do to promote their work before the internet era? They toiled, mostly in obscurity, and if they were lucky, their publisher put them on tour to bookstores. Lucky ink-stained wretches sometimes got on big media (back when media wasn’t social). Some fiction writers even got on TV!
If you want some more joy in your life, watch old YouTube vids of author nonsense. For instance, here’s the great Truman Capote.
Or witness Norman Mailer versus Gore Vidal!
It’s different now.
The last time a fiction author made it on to a major TV spot was Jon Stewart’s interview with Kurt Vonnegut. He was a great sci-fi author, but he only made it to air because (a) he was about to die, (b) he had a lot of brilliant observations, and (c) he’d just published his non-fiction book, A Man Without a Country.
These days, with our fragmented attention and millions of distractions, authors are pretty much screaming into the darkness. We hope to be heard about our fiction, but our voices are muffled under Reality’s onslaught.
So what do we do now?
When the great exodus from X happened, a plethora of other platforms rose up to compete. Bluesky is fairly popular. I’m on there (@robertchazzchute.bsky.social), though I have mixed feelings about its functionality. Thing is, there is no single destination for social media attention.
One commentator suggested a simple solution: Be everywhere. That was well-meaning, but if I were everywhere on social media, when would I have time to write the next book? I can’t be everywhere. I don’t have the bandwidth. Who does?
That said, I need to be available in more places, so I started up on Substack. This move is not about monetization, at least not for a long time. It’s about sharing more, spreading the word to new readers, and curated ubiquity.
I’d probably get more views if I engaged in high drama like Truman and Norman, but I’ll opt for engaging with readers in a more sane way.
Oh, before I go, let’s not forget this scream into the darkness. I just launched Vengeance Is Hers!
This is not a guide for aspiring vigilantes, but it might inspire you!
Welcome to Poeticule Bay, Maine, a village where justice is scarce, and secrets have deadly consequences. When a gay student is brutally attacked and exiled from his home, the police turn a blind eye. Fueled by rage, Molly Jergins launches a relentless campaign against the school bully and his sinister family.
As Molly’s quest for retaliation spirals into chaos, the lines between hero and villain blur. To hunt monsters, must she become the very thing she despises? In the end, will revenge prove the best success?
This is not a guide for aspiring vigilantes, but it might inspire you!
Welcome to Poeticule Bay, Maine, a village where justice is scarce, and secrets have deadly consequences. When a gay student is brutally attacked and exiled from his home, the police turn a blind eye. Fueled by rage, Molly Jergins launches a relentless campaign against the school bully and his sinister family.
As Molly’s quest for retaliation spirals into chaos, the lines between hero and villain blur. To hunt monsters, must she become the very thing she despises? In the end, will revenge prove the best success?
With the state of the world, something else feels more raw and human than ever: our righteous outrage.VIH touches that nerve in happy ways.
It’s been a long time and a long journey since my last novel.
When I published Endemic, Amazon squelched the launch of the novel. I couldn’t promote it, and Amazon could not be reasoned with. I suspect the title alone got it pushed down in the algorithms. Though sabotaged from the start, eventually Endemic got out there.
Then this happened:
Endemic won multiple awards. That made me feel a bit better.
The Amazon experience left a sour taste in my mouth, though. I love that novel and hated to see it sabotaged. It’s an apocalyptic tale with a fascinating character. It’s also about how people change, and how they don’t. Great stuff, but the launch to readers was strangled in the crib.
Then came the tribulations:
Pain, pain, two hip replacements, pain, and a long recovery.
For six weeks after each surgery, I was prohibited from even crossing my legs or bending over. I had to relearn how to walk and rebuild my broken neural connections. My wife laughed and cried as she struggled to get my compression stockings on me. (If you know, you know the struggle.)
Stuck in bed and working on rehab, I binge watched Justified. I loved that fun distraction, but I was also ingesting the rhythms of interesting dialogue.
That show was set in Kentucky, and VIH is set in Maine. Very different, of course, but I started to hear how my characters might express themselves uniquely. So much of this book draws on my childhood in rural Nova Scotia. There, I felt there was a threat of violence much of the time.
I began to pull from my dad’s litany of odd expressions, too:
“That boy’s got the world by the ass on a downhill drag.” (Good fortune.)
“That smell would drive a dog off a gut wagon.” (Bad odor.)
“You’re young and fulla blue piss…” (A prelude to telling someone to do a chore.)
Characters arose from people I knew. I had material from real life, so I kept pecking away at this big story about a heroine versus a school bully in Poeticule Bay, Maine. (Fans of This Plague of Days will recognize that name.)
My protagonist from VIH, Molly Jergins, began to speak to me.
I resonated with Ovid Fairweather, the protagonist from Endemic. We share some of the same sensitivities. Molly spoke to me in a more visceral way. She was sick to death of bad people getting away with doing bad things. She’s not above good people doing bad things to bad people. We both fantasized about vengeance and the many clever ways we might achieve righteous vengeance. (I think about revenge. A lot. Don’t you? Is it just me? Nah.…)
I wrote and rewrote more as my recovery progressed. I just had eye surgery last week, and I’m happy to say that, as a cyborg, I’m much better than I was. Ironically, with more artificial parts, I feel human again. With the state of the world, something else feels more raw and human than ever: our righteous outrage. VIH touches that nerve in happy ways.
Vengeance Is Hers is not an instruction book for vigilantes, but it will give you vicarious thrills. It will make you giggle at the revenge, big and small, you could visit upon those who have wronged you.
But the feelings go deeper than that.
Beyond the action, Vengeance Is Hers is a story of the bond between a father and a daughter. Dark family secrets and deeply held resentments rise to the surface. The psychological effects of bullying and abuse delve into the mindsets of both the bullied and the abused. The twists, reversals, and betrayals will keep you guessing to the last page.
Vengeance Is Hers is a big book, too!
Molly’s self-destructive addiction to righting wrongs unfolds over a twelve-year span. It’s 448 pages of beach read that will keep you turning pages to discover the fate of characters you’ll grow to love, hate, and laugh about.
This was so much fun to write. With Vengeance Is Hers, I put a movie in your head that I hope you’ll want to read again and again. Enjoy, and thank you for being a reader!
The rich have retreated behind the walls of the fortress they call New Atlanta. They won’t give up their power easily. Oppression and starvation gave birth to the Resistance, but every rebellion needs a champion.
Desperate to save her grandmother, Kismet Beatriz must make the journey to infiltrate the stronghold of the Select Few.
From the author of This Plague of Days comes a near-future thriller built for fans of Nineteen Eighty-four and The Handmaid’s Tale.
Endemic won the prestigious North Street Book Prize in genre fiction, the Literary Titan Award, and first place in science fiction at both the New York Book Festival and the Hollywood Book Festival.
Ovid Fairweather is a neurodivergent book editor in New York when a deadly plague sweeps the United States. Bullied by her father, haunted by her dead therapist, and hunted by marauders, Ovid must find courage amid the chaos to become the person she was always meant to be.
She was a nail. She will become a hammer.
I am Robert Chazz Chute, and I hate police states.
Being against fascism shouldn’t be a controversial choice, but our world has changed. If you’re looking for anti-fascist news, check out #worldtok on TikTokor read HuffPost.
If you’re looking for inspiration, read Citizen Second Class and Endemic.
Whether you defy, flee, or resist, I’m on your side.
