The Year Ahead: How to Deal

Endemic is live on Amazon!

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:

  1. Guard your peace from those who would rob you of it.
  2. The usual: Sleep, eat well, and exercise.
  3. Put your phone down more often.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Binge-watching Modern Family will ease your mind and bring you comfort.
  7. If childhood was a better time for you, revel in nostalgia. I watched an episode of Barney Miller last night.
  8. Read fiction. It will pull you out of the forest fire that is your existence, at least for a while.
  9. Gather with the like-minded and enter the bar back to back, heads on a swivel.
  10. 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.

Literary Titan Reviews Endemic!

Endemic by Robert Chazz Chute follows Ovid Fairweather as she tries to navigate a world ravaged by a disease that turns people essentially braindead. As with any collapse of society, a power vacuum develops, and various individuals group together to seize that power….Can Ovid find a way to survive in a world that aims to take whatever she has left? And can she do it while reconciling with her troubled past?


Ovid endures a great deal in her past and present life. The author does a fantastic job incorporating her past experiences into the main plot points, thus keeping readers guessing and gasping as they read. I would be happy to read more from this setting, and its characters in the future, so here’s hoping there’s a sequel on the way soon.

Endemic is a suspenseful and thrilling science fiction novel with a dystopian twist. Readers will be drawn into the world that at times is almost too real and plausible and left with an eerie feeling of could this happen to me.

To read the full review at Literary Titan, click here.

Literary Titan's review of Endemic


I WANT TO READ ENDEMIC NOW!

The Voice in My Head

For reasons foreign and domestic, last year was my time off from publishing. However, I didn’t stop writing completely. My focus now is bringing Ovid Fairweather to the world stage. Who’s that, you ask? Ovid was an introverted, somewhat neurotic book editor in New York, in therapy but feeling stuck. In the rat race of life, she’d crashed against the wall. Then the virus came and kept on coming. As an evolving virus decimates New York, Ovid finds herself in Hell’s Kitchen on a collision course with a small group of privileged survivors determined to control everyone else. Hounded by regrets and quietly seething with anger, she’s certain she has no future. To deal with dictators, Ovid Fairweather is going to have to learn how to get tough, and quickly.

She’s among the unlikeliest of heroines, but if you know my work, you know I love unlikely protagonists. From This Plague of Days and The Dimension War to The Night Man and the Jesus Diaz series, no matter the genre, none of my main characters are what they seem at first glance. They aren’t born heroes. They stumble, fall, get up, and grow into their roles. If you loved Jaimie Spencer, the mute kid on the spectrum in This Plague of Days, you’ll love Ovid. As a book editor, she shares his obsession with words, but the angle on this new book is a little different. Ovid has a voice in her head that chains her to the regrets and pains of the past.

Like Ovid, the voice in my head is unkind. Many writers have an inner critic that thwarts their progress. The voice in my head swears a lot and constantly reminds me of every mistake, every insult, every time anyone underestimated me. That’s what I share with Ms. Fairweather: an eidetic memory for pain. For me, it’s an albatross. For Ovid, that voice might prove to be the source of her power. I’m working on the novel now. It’s called Endemic and it should be ready in a couple of months.

In the meantime, I have a book recommendation for you. An author friend of mine writes a blog I love called Skeptophilia. Today (Jan 26, 2020) Gordon Bonnet penned a piece that hit me between the eyes and scalded my brainpan. The Cost of Regret is a blog post about the science of the road not taken.

Gordon gives you a view of the mindscape: That voice in your head obsessed with regrets and alternative paths? That’s called counterfactual curiosity, and there’s a paper on that in the journal Psychological Science. If you could know what would have happened had you made different choices, are you sure you’d want to know? Even better, there’s a new book about that voice in our heads. Chatter, by Ethan Kross, analyzes the inner voice, but also delves into how to manage it, quiet it, or even harness it to better ends. I can’t wait to read it! (Thanks for the recommendation, Gordon!)

If you purchase Chatter through the link on Skeptophilia.com, you’ll also support a very worthy voice of reason in a chaotic world. Don’t forget to subscribe to Skeptophilia while you’re there.

Gordon Bonnet has written 17 books. Check out his fiction on his Amazon page here.

How to Be Smarter Than People Smarter Than You

And here’s one more:

Planning to win, you’ll find this useful.http://mybook.to/DoTheThing

Buy the book Do the Thing to do the things.

“Great stress relief advice from someone who’s been there All sorts of great stress relief advice culled from many disparate sources and delivered in a friendly, honest, personal and relatable voice. Something here for everyone.

“A pot-pourri of tips, tricks, and strategies for combating all manner of stress and strain in your life. Chute draws from a wide array of social, psychological, technological, and religious fields to help the reader both understand and manage the daily struggle of modern life”