I just finished reading Writers & Lovers by Lily King. I don’t read a lot of literary fiction. I find that many writers of the genre favor character so much that little actually happens plotwise. Things do happen in this novel. The details are so well-observed and resonant that it’s a pleasure to read.I burned through the story quickly and didn’t want to put it down.
The best description of Writers and Lovers is Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman. King accomplishes what I love about writing. Though much of the book’s exposition is interior, the author puts a movie in your head. There’s much to admire in her writing style and eye for detail.
Writers of a certain literary bent drop ambiguous endings on their victims/readers. King doesn’t do that. This novel has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Best of all, King gives us a self-sabotaging protagonist we can root for. We want her to win, so we follow her journey, hoping things will work out okay. It works because we’re all hoping things will work out okay.
Rereading The Grapes of Wrath after many years, it hits differently now that I’m older. The novel hits so hard, it could have been published yesterday, eerily relevant to our world in the present.
John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was originally published in 1939. That is startling given its empathetic allegory about forced immigration and the dangers of unbridled capitalism. This was written long before laypeople had the vocabulary of “late-stage capitalism.” Certain passages are worth reviewing many times.
I was especially taken with how people are transformed into cogs in a machine. When the bank takes their homes, there’s no one to resist. Responsibility falls like a hammer on the most powerless. Evicted from the land they’d worked for generations, the farmers are ground under the weight of an uncaring bureaucracy.
In another passage, car salesmen take advantage of desperate people. The sole focus is money. In pursuit of profit, the salesmen’s contempt for their hapless customers is ferocious. People are dehumanized. The system only serves itself and a select, faceless few. The victims are oppressed, but they don’t understand that which uses and abuses them.
The Grapes of Wrath reflects problems that are easy to see today. You’ve watched the news. The mercilessness of the American health insurance system is evident. A health insurance company denies 32% of claims and becomes startlingly wealthy. It’s an unusual funeral they give their victims, isn’t it? The afflicted are buried in paperwork first, then they die. Kill someone with a gun, and the press goes mad. Kill ill people with paper, and all we get are shrugs of “Well, it’s legal.”
Most frustrating, I still hear media people and pseudo-intellectuals pretend to be mystified when the public shrugs off the assassination of one CEO. They aren’t discussing why people are so fed up they don’t have the spare energy to care. The media isn’t delving into the why of that stance. They aren’t showcasing any of the many cases where people in need are denied tests and treatments they need to survive. Instead, the public’s lack of empathy has become the story. We have twenty-four-hour news channels, but they make no time for the bigger story.
A bunch of pearl-clutching journalists and commentators need to read The Grapes of Wrath. Maybe they’ll glimpse themselves reflected within those pages.Maybe then they’ll better understand our wrath.
Some readers mistake a fictional character’s opinion for that of the author. Were that true, I’d be in prison by now. My plots are full of characters living on the edge of society…okay, that much is me. Let’s start again: Not every thought a character espouses reflects my values. However, some books strike closer to home than others.
My mission is to entertain. I’m not trying to predict the future. I do extrapolate plenty, and in the last few years, reflecting reality has become more unsettling. Inevitably, my political views slip in where appropriate. No apologies or regrets on that front.
“I don’t try to predict the future.All I want to do is prevent it.”
~ Ray Bradbury
Here are five times my work reflected reality closer than I expected:
In Our Alien Hours, the alien threat rises from ocean. Seen the news lately? Nobody seems to care, but I’m prescient!
In The Night Man, the dad is a drug smuggler, but he’s just trying to get cheap Canadian drugs to Americans who are in need. The protagonist is a wounded veteran with few choices after he is medically discharged.
The genesis of Endemic is a virus that kills billions. Many of the survivors suffer cognitive impairment. Long-COVID (and repeated infection) gives some people brain fog, and since the disease is now endemic, we will continue to see such ill-effects to brain health.
In This Plague of Days, paramedical professionals were recruited to make do and join the fight against a pandemic. Long ago, I sat in a meeting about pandemic preparedness. This was part of the plan. I informed those in charge that this was a terrible idea and gave multiple reasons why. I was fired for it. In This Plague of Days, a non-medical person works in a hospital. She and her baby are infected because of that ill-conceived strategy.
Citizen Second Class is unfolding now. The uncaring elite are building bunkers and fortifying their islands, while the lower classes worry about providing for their families.
Then, of course, there’s my upcoming thriller, Vengeance Is Hers.
Given all that’s happening in the news and the many failures of the justice system, I predict there will be an appetite for vigilante justice thrillers.
Coffee and a book or two are great ways to start a Sunday morning. I’ve found my escape from the news, at least for a little while.
I just got these this morning, and I already know Writers and Lovers is a binge-read.
Sunday Morning, back home in Nova Scotia
When we weren’t arguing about whether I should be imprisoned in the car and taken to church, Sunday mornings used to be magical. Sunday mornings meant listening to CBC’s Sunday Morning and Dad cooking up a hunter’s breakfast. The theme music was “English Country Garden,” a very civilized and incongruous opening for a series of radio reports about the state of the world. My clearest memory of the show comes from November 1978. I know the date because it was when I first heard the gritty details of the Jonestown massacre. Many years later on the same program, they read a letter I wrote on air. It was an ode to my beloved journalism prof, Walter Stewart, upon his death.Read the second paragraph under Early Life and Career on his Wikipedia page, and you’ll understand why I loved him.
Sunday morning: today.
This morning, I awoke to news of rebels capturing Damascus and Bashar al-Assad fleeing to parts unknown. I had to shovel the end of the driveway again because the plows came through. That done, I headed out as CBC reported on the abuse of First Nations people by police. As I drove home from the bookstore, the cantankerous and fun Fran Lebowitz was interviewed. “English Country Garden” is long gone, but the journalistic standards remain.
I was once a journalist and columnist. Now, when I get a weekend newspaper, I skim the news and head for the Books section. I wonder if I’ll pay so much attention to politics and world affairs for the next couple of years. I love to be informed, but I write fiction. It occurs to me that many of my happiest times were when I retreated into the safety of books.
Books are Milestones of Nostalgia
One Christmas, when all I wanted was a train set, I was sick. I went to bed with a tall canister of Smarties and read Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming. Later, I would read all the James Bond books. They had so little to do with the movies I loved, but I loved the books no less.
University was me putting off toiling in the workforce for four years. It meant hiding in my dorm and reading In Cold Blood and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Once I graduated, I moved to Toronto to work in publishing. I was selling American Psycho and arguing with my bosses about censorship (Them: for; Me: Against).
I ate up Bright Lights, Big City, and related to the story so hard. On a summer night on the 28th floor of my apartment building in downtown Toronto, I devoured my favorite novel, The Color of Light by William Goldman. When I realized he had fooled me again, right down to the last line, I threw the book across the room, partly in exaltation, partly in admiration.
Chase the Cozy
Losing oneself to a novel, there is a coziness that feels like sitting by a crackling fire as a storm rages, a storm you don’t have to face.If you have the privilege of ignoring the violence and disappointments of current events, even for a little while, cherish it.
I encourage you to check out my books and retreat into fictional worlds for some solace. There are plenty of links to your right.
When I was in university, I loved Crime and Punishment. I loved In Cold Blood. I tolerated Good Guys Don’t Dance. Recently, I found out Spotify offers audiobooks. I was curious to see what classics from dead authors I might devour as I worked out and did the dishes.
Since Crime and Punishment was a hit with me, I decided to commit to Dostoevsky’s much-admired masterpiece, The Idiot. I’m not far into it, but the listening experience has me doubting myself. I read Crime and Punishment in paperback. Listening is much less demanding, and yet I find I don’t have the patience for The Idiot.
The ponderous character descriptions do not end. The exposition falls flat. Was I more patient in the ’80s? Have I changed that much, or is it the text? Maybe I’ll have to reread Crime and Punishment to test my mettle.Am I the idiot now?
A recommendation
Meanwhile, I just began Matt Haig’s The Life Impossible. The Midnight Library was good. I find myself charmed by this story of an elderly woman solving a mystery in Ibiza. You know how a certain turn of phrase can catch you? That’s what happened to me with The Life Impossible. To paraphrase, “The woman spoke with a voice so cool, her words might have just been pulled from a refrigerator.”
Nice. I wish I’d written that.
To my question: What book do you read and reread that holds up years later? I welcome your recommendations.
I’ve learned most about writing fiction from reading fiction, especially that of William Goldman. More than likely, you know his screenplays, most famously The Princess Bride. His novels are sublime and are now largely ignored as people favor the film medium. That guy sure knew how to delight with unexpected yet inevitable surprises.
For influences, I also have to name-check Stephen King for his dialogue and character work and Blake Crouch for pacing.
But this post isn’t about brilliant writing.I want to hear from you.
This post is about what else readers want, what you want.
It is startling how much work a publisher and author can put into promoting their books and still fail to move the needle. Our focus is pulled in many directions. The attention economy is fragmented. Marketing gurus insist an author newsletter is paramount, but very few people seem to read them. I’ve got a bunch of old subscriptions to newsletters sitting in my inbox. I will never get to them. Their appeal feels dated now.
What can I give you besides a great story and hours and hours of inexpensive entertainment?
A revered teacher once said, “You know what people want? Everything yesterday, through the mail, for free.” That’s a high bar to meet for a micro-business, but there are free promotions. To launch the book, some readers will pick up freebies (hopefully to read, love, and review).I’ll apply for a Bookbub promotion and set up various giveaways to prime the algorithms and get reviews.
Audiobooks. That’s on my radar, and I do have a home studio. So far, I’ve only used the blanket fort for podcast interviews. However, I feel Endemic and Vengeance Is Hers need a female narrator, not my voice. It’s an expensive proposition with no guarantee of remuneration, but of course, that’s true of any enterprise. It’s a question of making the budget work while calculating the risks.
Merch. I’ve got T-shirts and bookmarks in the works. This is not usually a major factor, but I plan to sell a lot of my books in person in 2025, so extras are a sweet idea.
Special editions. Because I’m shipping from Canada and most of my readers are American, I haven’t seriously explored this before. However, with in-person selling, I see the value in making some of my books extra special. For select hardcovers, I plan to add ribbon bookmarks and painted book edges.
Social proof. When seeking validation, authors always think of reviews first, and they aren’t wrong. The more reviews a book gets, the more it pushes the online stores’ algorithms. Readers read reviews to make buying decisions. Mass mailings to Booktubers and Booktok folks can be prohibitively expensive. There’s still Bookfunnel for free review copies, but unless the reviewer can hold up your book on social media, it’s less impactful.
Awards. Some authors question their value, but it’s one more subtle way to reassure readers they are in good hands. I’ve won fifteen awards for my writing. Does that help? It doesn’t hurt to quote a third party’s enthusiasm when hyping a book. (Not all awards are created equal, but that’s a different post.)
Engagement. One of the joys of my life comes daily as I talk with readers who have become fans and friends. I post on social media, but the core group is Fans of Robert Chazz Chute on Facebook.As I worked to recover from two hip replacements last year, I got a lot of love, sympathy, and support there. That went far beyond what I could do for them as fans of my work.
Writing a novel is difficult. Finding readers is much harder.
It’s easy to overspend on marketing that goes nowhere. You can write a great book, but too often, it gets lost in the deluge. There are a hundred variables outside of the writer’s control. Hundreds of marketing companies and PR firms promise the world. Marketing gurus say they possess the special sauce or magic secret. None of them admit that luck and timing play a huge role in what ranks. My dad was successful in business, and he often said something I hated. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” I hated it most because (a) I’m an introvert pretending to be an extrovert, and (b) I suspect he was right. For instance, it seems the hosts of Slate podcasts will interview authors as long as the guest is a sister, mentor, someone they went to school with, or mentee.Incessant logrolling is strong with the elite, and I’m not in that club.
Note the sincere face as I ask this.
I didn’t write this post to whine. I’m asking you, as a reader, what do you value? Endemic won multiple awards. This Plague of Days is a best-selling zombie apocalypse novel. Citizen Second Class is trenchant and relevant to our times. My crime fiction (The Hit Man Series and The Night Man) is both knuckly and funny. Besides offering compelling novels with surprising twists, heart, and action, what grabs your attention?
My team and I are working hard to make Vengeance Is Hers a great story. What else can I do to become one of your favorite authors?
I recently watched Things to Come, a movie from 1936 based on the work of HG Wells. It’s not a great film, but the subtext feels prophetic. The world of the 1930s devolves into a decades-long war that destroys civilization. Warlords take over. Scientific progress is lost. When a movement rises to bring a troubled hellscape back to modernity, those in power resist change. The good guys — in this case, an army of scientists — win. They improve on what came before the apocalypse and build a utopia. However, a hundred years later, angry mobs rise up to bring scientific progress to a halt.
At every tick of history’s clock, some people will try to hold back the hands of time. No matter how good the future might be, they want to return to a time when they thought things were better, perhaps simpler. The worst part is they want to choose for you, not just themselves. I’d prefer to order off the menu myself, thanks. Leave me and that bright, hopeful future alone.
HG Wells never watched a political debate on TikTok at 3 a.m., but he saw the anti-intellectualism coming. That’s been going on for a long time, of course, but the US election year will ramp up the nonsense, and plenty. We have a rough road ahead in 2024. I won’t list all the frets, but you’ve seen the news. You know what piles on the stress. We call it doomscrolling now, but we used to call it “watching the news,” or “being aware of current events.” You’re going to hear a lot more arguing. Don’t expect well-mannered debates on the road to truth, just stubborn parroting of propaganda impenetrable to facts. Motivated reasoning is not reasonable.
You’ll also get exposed to some happy, slappy messages about how everything’s fine or will be. When crises go on too long, misery becomes normalized. The worst is when you point out an injustice and some clod mutters, “That’s nothing new.” Yeah, ya lazy dick! We should have fixed it by now, huh? But we haven’t. I fear we won’t fix much of anything.
Whatever your cause, there’s a good chance some experts are working on it. Just as surely, a bunch of idiots are maintaining the status quo or wrecking the DeLorean’s transmission by throwing Time into reverse.
So, what to do? You’re going to go to bed each night, heave a heavy sigh, and say in a thick Southern accent, “Mama’s had a day.” I say that to my wife each night because we’re going to have to hold on to our sense of humor through it all. I don’t have a solution to the climate crisis, threats of war, or a (legal) way to convince flat earthers they’re wrong. Maybe afflict the comfortable and write letters to whoever’s in charge of the circus? In your off-time, rest and recover.
Here’s my rest and recovery protocol:
Guard your peace from those who would rob you of it.
The usual: Sleep, eat well, and exercise.
Put your phone down more often.
Avoid trying to reason with unreasonable folks. Helping anyone out of ignorance is noble, but fuckwits will just waste your precious time, and time is life.
Watch Stanley Tucci in Searching for Italy. This will reinforce your belief in the hope of a common humanity that is kind, curious, and appreciative.
Binge-watching Modern Family will ease your mind and bring you comfort.
If childhood was a better time for you, revel in nostalgia. I watched an episode of Barney Miller last night.
Read fiction. It will pull you out of the forest fire that is your existence, at least for a while.
Gather with the like-minded and enter the bar back to back, heads on a swivel.
Laugh at determined fools. When reason fails, laughter is often the more effective weapon.
Finally, and most importantly:
Read my fiction. Mama’s had a day, and I need money.
