All That Chazz: Your Brain Tickle Destination
Apocalyptic Epics and Killer Crime Thrillers by Robert Chazz Chute
People are starving for food and equality across the United States. Jennifer Charles worked in a food bank and puts up posters to call people to demonstrate against her government’s ineptitude and callousness. Her defiance makes her a target.
Listen to this story now, read by the author.
The Face of Victory is a story about how revolutions begin. You’ll find it in my collection, All Empires Fall, Signals from the Apocalypse.
Take a little break from your day (8 mins, 36 seconds) with a reading of a suspenseful short story by Robert Chazz Chute.
First dates are hard. Sarah is about to discover her mistake when she steps into a carnival tent in the Twilight Zone. This is the realm of the fortune teller.
Click the play button to hear the first chapter of Citizen Second Class
America has fallen to fascism. 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 from starvation, 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.
At the end of each book, I have a link to my Facebook fan group. These are kind readers who elect to hear from me reporting in from the blanket fort daily. I make jokes, talk about the writing life, and sometimes opine about the gap between the way things are and how they ought to be. It’s a safe space for those who dig what I do and I truly enjoy it. They do, too. Friends are the family we choose. Interest, fun, and empathy are the glue that holds it together.
In the past few weeks, I’ve posted amusing memes, linked to fresh blog posts, talked about the ongoing fall of civilization, and discussed the challenges of foraging and scavenging in the apocalypse. We also engage with questions like the following:
What’s your blocking policy on social media?
What books would you consider contemporary classics?
What has COVID-19 done that took you by surprise?
Who are the celebrities you’ve met and what were your impressions?
What concerts have you attended that stood out?
In other words, Fans of Robert Chazz Chute is all over the place and I like it that way.
The vibe is hanging out with friends. I’m not leaving my blanket fort for the next two years, so this is pretty much my only social interaction. (She Who Must Be Obeyed, Musical Son and Business Daughter don’t count as social interaction. They’re contractually obligated to listen to my latest bout of hypochondria.)
Today, a little review. Also, with one question, I shall demonstrate that I am incapable of pleasant small talk.
I finished watching the second season of After Life on Netflix. The depiction of the psychotherapist will annoy She Who Must Be Obeyed. I know the character is supposed to be a counterpoint and comic relief, but he’s a sour note struck too often. For dramatic purposes, is psychology ever done right on screen? (I, too, have written short stories featuring Dr. Circe Papua that thankfully don’t reflect the happier reality of the profession.)
On the plus side of After Life, Ricky Gervais makes a strong choice I admired. He knows he’s wallowing in grief for his deceased wife. He says he’s wallowing. Then he wallows. He tells and shows and risks annoying the viewer by actually wallowing. He’s stuck. This is what stuck really looks like.
The other aspect I appreciated was that he resolves to be a better person. To do so, he can’t be who he is. Fiction and non-fiction are packed with aspirational stuff about how to change. (I’ve written about that, too.) The unpopular slant here is that his character discovers the limits of how much he can change. A total revamp is too ambitious.
People can and do change. Can they get a full personality transplant, though? For me, I don’t think I’ve changed all that much since I was in my 20s. As a little kid, I distinctly remember worrying about burning in hell. I was an atheist for a long time, went through a brief religious period, then settled back on atheism.
Is there something fundamental about you that’s changed over the course of your life?
If you’re a writer trying to engage with fans, I’d encourage you to open up and be real. Not everyone will be equally comfortable with honesty and your boundaries of privacy will vary from others. I don’t worry about that overly much. I don’t hide the fact that my political leanings are to the left, for instance. That’s the subtext of some of my fiction, too, so I doubt I will shock or offend many of my hardcore readers. If someone were to be mean, I’d simply eject them, but I haven’t had to do that yet. My readers are a lovely bunch of people. They’re supportive. I love writing books for them. I love the creative outlet of reaching out to the group.
I would also say to fellow writers that posting daily on a platform you don’t enjoy for a fan base that isn’t there wouldn’t make much sense. If you write middle-grade novels, your target audience probably isn’t on Facebook.
Keep in mind that anyone on my fan page is part of my core readership. They know my books. They don’t come to critique. They come because they love the books (and probably stay for the jokes.)
Regular readers who don’t want that much interaction beyond the pages of my whimsy might sign up for my newsletter and leave it at that. I avoid bothering newsletter subscribers often. Certainly, gurus would have me sending emails and setting up sales funnels but I decided a while back that is not for me. It feels too artificial and bothersome for the more casual reader. Unlike the Facebook group, all the newsletter group generally wants to know is when the next book is coming out or if there’s a promotion going on. That’s fine with me, too. I only take volunteers for the Inner Circle. No one is drafted.
The main character in The Night Man is not your typical hero. Easy Jack returns home to Orion, Michigan, wounded and struggling to recover. A former Army Ranger, he has a scorching case of PTSD. His vision is impaired in bright light and his left knee always hurts.
His dad gets mixed up in some shady criminal activities, but Easy’s got nowhere else to go. His history in Orion leaves him cold as a romance with his high school girlfriend heats up. All he wants to do is forget the past and train dogs for K9 units. He’s got Sophie, a loyal German Shepherd, by his side. Good thing, because some very nasty people keep trying to kill Easy. And what’s with the devious billionaire showing up on his doorstep?
The mystery unfolds with many revelations and twists. If you haven’t checked out The Night Man yet, please do. Here’s the universal link to take you to your country’s Amazon store. It’s available in ebook and paperback.
About the Cover
Several of my covers have evolved over time. Sometimes I experiment. I love this powerful cover image, but I did worry that some may interpret the novel’s presentation as horror instead of a suspenseful action thriller. When my editor, the ever-helpful Gari Strawn (of strawnediting.com) wondered out loud about the same issue, I finally got my butt in gear to do something about it. I added the subtitle “A Killer Crime Thriller”. I tweaked the keywords and the book description, too.
Of all my work, I suspect The Night Man might be among the most underrated, not least because, amid all the soulful mayhem, it’s damn funny.
Have a happy Wednesday, merry reading and enjoy!
Under stress, it’s easy to lose focus. Without structure, it’s easy to lose track of time and get things done.*
I hope you’ll find this video will help.
*But remember, if you’re not up to more change right now, that’s okay, too.
In quarantimes, sometimes you stumble on something easy to distract you from the real-world disaster outside your windows. So it is with Netflix’s recent addition of Into The Night. End-of-the-world science fiction is quite a mixed bag. Budgets are rarely up to the scale of a global apocalypse. I enjoyed Into The Night quite a bit. This Belgian production is very watchable, especially if you don’t think about it too hard.
Premise: Jump on a jet and head west to outrun the sun because if sunlight catches you, you’re dead. We don’t know why, it just does, okay? Cue the crazed Italian soldier with insider NATO knowledge taking over a plane with a bunch of people onboard to begin the race against sunlight. The hardy and not-so-hardy group of passengers striving to survive are a diverse group from several countries. A few will struggle for leadership of the band. Not everyone will make it. At least one person will ruin the quest for safety, but justice and injustice will be served.
Pros: This is classic out-the-frying-pan, into-the-fire stuff. Every problem demands a short-term solution that causes another problem and the clock is always ticking. Season One of this series reminded me very much of The Langoliers.
Remember that Stephen King story from Four Past Midnight? Remember the limited TV series where Bronson Pinchot played the weasel you loved to hate? Wasn’t that fun? This is, too.
Into The Night is based on a Polish Novel, The Old Axolotl by Jacek Dukaj. What the six-part series gets right, I’m going to attribute to the author. For instance, yes, when the oxygen masks drop, the air supply doesn’t last long. It’s only meant to buy time so the pilot can get to a lower altitude. Such details, the interpersonal drama, and a glimpse of passengers’ back stories are the quality stuff. Jason George, of Narcos fame, must be the other power behind what’s good about this show.
Cons: There’s not much to complain about unless you’re some snobby film critic who writes for Slate. The audio is in English. Shut off the subtitles because the difference between the dialogue and what’s printed on screen is a bit of a distraction. Sometimes the geography makes no sense. You don’t land in Nova Scotia and head to Alaska over the Pacific. Another hiccup: To bounce around the globe as they do, Canada couldn’t be that much bigger than Lichtenstein. It really isn’t, not by a very long walk.
But really, that’s picking nits and who cares? We’re here for the fights, twists and the reversals. This is fun bubble gum for the eyes. Even with a few flaws in logic, the premise is a great big idea: The sun will kill us! Stay in the dark! Out fly the spin of the Earth and race the dawn! And, holy shit, what now?!
So many apocalyptic movies are done so badly, this is better than most by far. I would say it’s all well-acted, too. Pop the popcorn and enjoy. Each episode of Into the Night will fly by.
~ I’m Robert Chazz Chute. Besides killer crime thrillers, I write apocalyptic fiction. My end-of-the-world books are This Plague of Days (trilogy), AFTER Life (trilogy), Amid Mortal Words, All Empires Fall (anthology), Citizen Second Class, Robot Planet, Wallflower (time travel) and the Ghosts and Demons Series (Haunting Lessons, Death Lessons, Fierce Lessons, and Dream’s Dark Flight).
Please check out all my books at the links down the right side of this blog.