Sit and DIE!

I just joined a Facebook group for writers encouraging each other to get daily exercise and be healthier. It’s been on my mind a lot, especially after all the studies about how people who sit for several hours a day are at greater risk of getting killed by ninjas. Okay, I didn’t read those studies too carefully, but the upshot was, sit and DIE!

We write from the heart for hours on end. It’s bad for our hearts. We have to eat healthier than the average bear (more blueberries and salmon, less garbage in our pic-a-nic baskets.) I have a treadmill desk and I try to alternate that with the chair, though there are a lot of things I do that make the treadmill desk less conducive to my best work. Walking while working is fine for surfing, not so good for composition.

Today I ate a kale shake (à la Joe Rogan’s recipe), ate egg whites and a few blueberries and opted for almond milk instead of coffee. Tonight, more exercise. It’s all part of the deal when you write for a living. You have to exercise more to live, and perhaps become immortal beyond the page.

The next instalment of the Hit Man Series is in the works

I saw a preliminary draft of the cover to Higher Than Jesus today. Wow. It’s going to be great. My graphic designer, Kit Foster of KitFosterDesign.com, is a genius who read my mind on a couple of points about the cover. Playing art director is fun and Kit manages to cover up any trace of annoyance so maybe he really is that enthusiastic! He really is on a quest to make it perfect.

A couple of my notes from my email were:

The model is a “hooker hot” 7 and we need an “innocent-hot” 10, with peroxide blonde hair and bright red lipstick to catch the red in the title text. And is there such a thing as metallic red? I’m thinking of the kind of red that rich morons who buy really fast cars favor at midlife. Can we do that color?

There were many more demands about sexing up the cover. Oh, I’m terrible. Look for Higher Than Jesus in September. Get Bigger Than Jesus by clicking the cover below. The paperback is coming soon.

TO HEAR A SAMPLE CHAPTER, CLICK HERE!    

Please click it to grab the gripping, funny crime thriller by Robert Chazz Chute.

The economics of art

THIS IS A REPOST FROM MY WRITING BLOG, CHAZZWRITES.COM. IT PROVED SO POPULAR I THOUGHT I’D REPOST IT HERE FOR PEOPLE WHO FOLLOW THIS BLOG ALONE. ~ CHAZZ

A forum post out of the cyber-ether really irritated me,

and not just because the person who posted was biased against self-publishing.

She was horribly misinformed and self-centered.

Her complaint is about “all these self-published authors begging for likes on their Facebook pages” and that apparently angered her by…okay, I’m not sure how that could bother her so much. Cluttering up her world, I guess. The strength  of venom I detected is usually found in a rattler’s fangs. Anyway, let’s flesh out the ugly misconception in her deluded subtext:

1. It’s not just indie authors. All authors with a Facebook page ask for “likes”. The more important likes are the like and buy buttons of our Amazon pages, but we all want to be liked. Most traditionally published authors understand that their publisher’s publicists are already stretched too thin, are often less effective than publicity that comes directly from authors and what resources that are channelled toward their books tend to be minuscule and fleeting.

2. It’s not begging. It’s asking politely and you often get something in exchange, like free entertainment, free education (like this post) and books that are much cheaper than what you’d pay a traditional publisher. All my books are currently priced at $2.99. That’s couch change — an impulse buy — for professionally published books. For less than the cost of one Starbucks coffee you get hours of entertainment I am happy to provide. I am an artist, not a beggar.

I’m not asking for loose change in exchange for nothing. I’m offering you a chance at relaxed Sunday afternoon with a book when it’s too hot to go outside; a cozy read on a winter’s night when you can’t sleep; suspense that won’t let you go to sleep;  a euphoric discovery that will delight you and might even change you. Yeah, you betcha that’s a bargain. If you refuse, no hard feelings.

3. Providing you with information or the opportunity to help out is not spam. It’s a question you don’t even have to answer. Get over yourself or turn off your Internet connection and take a break. I’m sorry the world isn’t catering to you. It’s not catering to me, either, but I suspect I hate fewer people than you do. I’d define spam as bombarding people with ads that provide no value, are out to scam you and a steady stream of blaring that gives you no opportunity to opt out. (i.e. You don’t get to complain if you decide for yourself you’re going to read it.)

4. Ignoring  the request takes nothing from you. Simply ignoring a request takes the bare minimum of tolerance. This person must be a nightmare in real life. How would she handle a real problem?

5. Why all the animus toward authors? Helping out costs nothing and I don’t think authors have any bad feelings toward those who don’t bother to “like” their books on Amazonclick “Agree with these tags” button on Amazon (it’s toward the bottom of each sales page) and “like” their Facebook page. (Thanks for helping to spread the word. And if you didn’t, no hard feelings.)

6. Ads are only irritating if you aren’t interested. On the computer, I click away. If assailed by the TV, I ignore it, fast forward, check my email or get up from the couch and get a glass of water. Indie authors (well, everyone) deserve more compassion than the complainer was willing to bestow. Sadly because the complainer might even love our work if she gave it a chance.

7. Despite my frustrated tone here, I know authors are not entitled to sales any more than Wal-mart or Toyota “deserves” your sales. We don’t even “deserve” your attention. That’s the myth of the entitled author I hear so much about. I honestly haven’t met many authors who suffer that delusion.

We get it. It’s a book. To most, “just” a book. We write them and lots of people don’t care. A lot of people don’t even read! Still, we stand behind our work and hope to find our audience. We hope our audience finds us. If I’m speaking to a crowd, I’m not speaking to everyone and I know it. Please be patient and polite while I direct my audience toward my books. I promise I won’t take long doing it and I’ll be as entertaining and quick as I can as I ask these things. You can always opt out.

Whether you’re indie or traditionally published, the promotion for your book really is up to you, your tribe, your followers and your readers. Publishers do very little for most authors. Stephen King gets a big promotional budget. That’s right. The authors who need the promotion least get the biggest boost because it’s a simple business decision: the publisher banks on the biggest title. Big publisher or small, these are the evaluations we all have to make.

I make that same evaluation every week. I have two very new titles just released in June. One is a short story

Get Bigger Than Jesus

collection bundled with a novella, The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories. The other is my crime thriller, Bigger Than Jesusthe first in a series. Which do I spend my limited resources promoting? Obviously, the crime thriller.

No short story collection will sell as well as a thriller. In all likelihood, my short story collections’ sales (there are three collections in all) will come after readers decide they like my flavor by discovering the novel. Some of the stories include characters and references that cross books, so there’s cross-pollination going on, too.  The short story collections are great, but they’re harder to sell (though they will be a valuable long term sales avenue.)

Yes, we have to interact and connect and make connections and help others to be heard.

Endure a little promotion amid all that for art’s sake.

Everybody’s trying to make a living

and civility is the grease to the gears of civilization.

I quit my day job: I write, therefore I might be.

Welcome to AllThatChazz.com. Last November 1, I quit my job to write full-time. I published two (great!) short story collections, a (powerful!) novella and a bunch of (surprising!) short stories. Soon, the novels will arrive. Brace yourself. I write twisty and twisted stories with gut punch endings, humour and intriguing strangeness.

This, friends, is a race. Will I run out of money before the books catch on? Will the inertia of my mid-life crisis run out of steam? Will I give up dreaming? Hell, no! I’m betting on me to write well. I’m betting on you to discover me.

Please check out my books or I shoot the hostage! I am the hostage and by “shoot the hostage” I mean I’ll eat a whole failure cake and become a mime who’s hunted for sport. Mimes! The Most Dangerous Game!

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