Category: Musings

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Part II: Losing to win

See Part I: The best life advice I ever heard at ChazzWrites.com.

I’ve spoken to several friends lately who have hit roadblocks in their businesses and in their lives. Like you, I’m one of those people working on achieving dreams. I’m not where I need to be yet. However, the solutions to breaking through those roadblocks to success are waiting for us to see them and act, whether it’s turning a hobby into a career or taking charge of aspects of our lives we’ve let slide.

We can climb out of this ditch we’re in and get back on the right road. Here’s my real life example of how I’m doing it, because I’m a loser, baby!

1. Despite excellent reviews, my book sales are in the septic tank. The problem of book sales permeates the industry at the moment, but I can’t control the industry. I can only control how I respond to the market. I only work on what I can control. Everything else is pointless worry. (Plots and plans for world domination await below.)

2. Financially, things are not peachy. (Even less peachy than I thought, in fact.) My tin cup has no coin rattle when I shake it. Business-wise, I need to expand my sphere of influence. Every few minutes, someone retweets a post from ChazzWrites.com, so you’d think I’d be better off than I am. However, I have to make more people aware that Ex Parte Press is a party they want to join. That means more podcast listeners, more hits on my author site. Hey, I’m a player!

3. Physically, I have wrist pain and I have a lot of weight to lose. (More tonnage  than I thought.) I can rehab the wrist pain and take preventive measures. I have a lot of experience fixing injuries. I’ve also done extensive research on weight loss and I have a plan I am executing.

4. Mentally? I’m detoxing (as addicts of all stripes must). I feel lighter. I have clarity and I now know exactly how bad things are. You have to have that assessment before things can get better. Soon, they will.

5. Spiritually, I’m okay because God helps them what helps themselves and I have a plan. I am, despite everything, optimistic. I’ve been a skeptic and I’ve been a cynic. The old me would argue for failure and win. That’s what a loser does.

So let’s get to the plan:

A. I’m taking better care of myself physically. How can anyone hope to grow their business if they can’t grow as people? I’m stepping outside my comfort zone. That’s where the movement  up is waiting.

B. I’m writing more books and have committed to 10,000 words a week. I’ll let you know when I make that word count and when I don’t. With the camera on and our grand intentions declared publicly, we work harder on follow-through.

C. Aside from continuing to podcast, I’m doing more with my author site and blogging about weight loss and my journey back to sexy. Readership over at AllThatChazz.com is already growing since there might be a few people who share my concerns about health and happiness. Maybe. (You caught the sarcasm, right?)

D. Strangers worldwide find The Magic That is Me through the All That Chazz podcast. It’s beginning to morph into something else, with more attitude and, I think, a wider appeal.

E. Measurement. As I’ve often pushed here, that which is not measured cannot be improved, whether it’s tonnage or book sales or hits or new listeners. But measurement is only powerful if paired with:

F. Accountability. I’m really putting myself out there by declaring my intentions for 2013. I’m accountable to readers and listeners as I lose the weight, make the weekly word counts and put out the books. I’ve done several weight loss programs and they all work for a while. No matter the approach, the single common component is that you report to someone, once a week or more, to gauge progress or lack thereof. It’s a strong corrective mechanism to learn from your mistakes. It’s a powerful preventative strategy when you see something  sugary in the grocery store but think, I have to account for that.

I’m accountable to you.

And, as of Jan 6, I’m reporting to you that I weigh 265 pounds and I’m 5’8.5″. 

I won’t get taller, so I have 100 pounds to lose.

It’s okay. This is the part of the movie where the guy is a broke loser. I’m writing my story and this story arc is going to be very impressive.

Just watch me.

~ Robert Chazz Chute is a suspense writer and author of crime novels. A dude in university once told Chazz he suffered “DOGS”— delusions of grandeur. F&*$! that dude! Listen to the latest All That Chazz podcast here. Check out Chazz’s books here.

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I Met Christopher Hitchens in Heaven


Today, in the early morning of my 48th birthday, I dreamt of Christopher Hitchens again. Instead of writing “again”, Hitch would have written “as I sometimes do.” Read and listen to him enough and you start to write and speak in his patterns, as one violin resonates with another. He spoke in complete sentences with a professorial British accent. You could hear every comma, semicolon and period. 

I disagreed with him intensely over the idiocy of the Iraq invasion. (Christopher — never Chris — would have said “wisdom”, not idiocy.) For someone so against religion, his unwavering faith in that war still baffles me. His books were researched deeply and well-written. He shone brightest in debate and was always erudite and witty. I miss him. We met again today in a good, safe place.

In the dream, I’m some sort of documentarian but I’m helping him mow a massive lawn. He rides a huge mower and cuts a massive swath with wide blades. I have the same small red lawnmower from Canadian Tire I had when I was a kid. The metaphor for that didn’t strike me until after I awoke. (“I must caution you,” as Hitch would say, that’s a writing metaphor, not a penis metaphor. Hitch was a titan. I write amusing little stories for a tiny audience.)

The setting was a summer cottage, though here, it is always summer. Hitch confessed he enjoyed mowing the expanse on the big tractor so much he often mowed neighbours’ lawns, as well. That’s a joy difficult to imagine for him in real life. That was my first clue I might be dreaming.

He was friendly enough, but he was still Christopher Hitchens — before the cancer took him — so I was cautious with my words and mostly listened for fear of wearing out my welcome. (Hitch would have said, “…for fear of growing stale in his company.”)

He showed me his sanctuary where things were most quiet. I expected a large office with walls of books. Instead, we tiptoed past his sleeping wife so he could show me an incredibly white and clean bathroom off his master bedroom. In one of those Felliniesque details that makes you wonder about the gnashing teeth in the spinning gears of the subconscious, the toilet appeared to be filled with milk. I didn’t say so, but I thought he must have thrown up in that toilet a lot because of the chemotherapy. Reading my mind, he said that chemo and all pain was behind him now.

We sat outside in Adirondack chairs on the freshly cut, green grass and sipped lemonade under a warm sun. Wanting to appear game, I mentioned it was my birthday and told him how strange it was and how little I’d changed. “What’s the evolutionary advantage in not adapting? I haven’t changed much at all. In university, I studied the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history. Seeing so many civilizations rise and fall, it’s impossible for me not to be fatalistic about the fate of our own. Writing books is the closest immortality.”

“How have you changed, really?” he asked. “You must have, some.”

At 24, I was immersed and obsessed with violence and at 48, I’m a crime novelist. In sublimating my rage with humour, I’m creating art instead of bloody noses. I’m happier now. I laugh more and make others laugh. I was afraid all the time then, though I still can’t afford new glasses. 

I became lucid then and I knew I was having a conversation with myself, not Christopher Hitchens. Disappointing. Though neither of us believe in heaven, the melting illusion saddened me more because Hitch after death was more placid than he ever was in life.

“Is fear of mortality what this dream is all about?” he asked.

“I’m still young enough that I fear failure more than death, though the two are inextricably linked.”

“‘Inextricably’, hm? Even though you know I’m not here, you’re still trying to impress me.” He didn’t say it unkindly.

“I’m not awake yet,” I said, though I could feel the real world pulling me away. I fought it, but once begun, that process can’t be stopped.

“I think I just answered my question,” I said. “The adaptive advantage of our minds changing so little and thinking like a young person is that I can still focus on achieving things in the future instead of worrying I’m going to drop dead any minute.”

“Try to stay young until the end. It goes easier that way.”

But that’s me talking to myself and I’m almost back in my bed with weak, gray light filling a cold horizon of snow and ice.

“You should write more,” he said, and toasted me with his glass of pink lemonade.

“I know. Thanks.”

I awoke thinking, time’s running out. I got up right away and wrote this.

And now, back to my books…

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NSFW: Fiction (and video games) are not the problem

Warning: NSFW means Not Safe for Work. There’s lots of swearing in this video amid the points about the safety of video games. If you don’t want to hear Penn Jillette swearing, don’t play this video.

Fantasy. Reality. There is a difference.

(I talk about larger issues around fiction and the assumptions we make about writers from reading their books in this post at ChazzWrites.com.)

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Authors & Publishers: How to Make a Media Kit Part 2

For more writing & publishing advice, you could go nuts and buy Crack the Indie Author Code. Just sayin’.

Part One of this article and points 1 -7 appear at ChazzWrites.com. For a sample media kit, please take a moment to sign up for my newsletter in the link to the right or send your email address to expartepress at gmail dot com and I’ll email the pdfs to you anyway. However, if you mention your website in the newsletter sign-up form, I’ll give your page a plug in the All That Chazz Podcast. I’m easy that way.

Now, on to more fun yet crucial points about creating a killer media kit: 

8. Some people think email is easier to delete so they send boxes to media outlets. Stick with email. You’ll never hear from a bunch of the journalists you approach. Printing out a fancy press kit and trying something UPS-delivered with a red ribbon on it is not worth the expense. Better to hit them up for editorial coverage several times through the year and do it cheaply instead of betting it all on one killer package that has to hit now to pay off. Save some of your chips for the next roll. Seriously, please save your money. A document that arrives in the mail is just as easy to dump in the garbage can beside the desk. If the package is perfumed in any way, you just went from quirky and interesting to creepy stalker.

9. Unless you’ve cured cancer and have been keeping it a secret from the world’s medical community until now, don’t pay for a huge media release from a press release propagator. I tried it and, besides jumping through their annoying hoops, it had all the amusing charm of throwing money out the window of a moving car. It was expensive, had no measurable impact and their sales team kept calling until I got mean.

10. Keep the press release short and to the point. More than one page is a strain and a mistake. If you’ve got too much to share it will get lost so use it in your catalogue page. Bullet points are awesome if you can fit your content to your pitch. A solid FAQ page with lots of white space is an alluring alternative. Don’t send a video on CD. There’s a good chance the production values will be too low and they’ll also be afraid that if they watch it, they’ll die in seven days. (Give them a Youtube link instead if you feel your video is that strong.)

11. Provide some detail in your author bio that establishes you as an expert: Awards won, relevant job experience, books written or other media in which you’ve appeared. Keep it short (or go longer if it tells a story. Rags to riches is good. Plucky, spunky and coming up will probably have to do.) You have an advantage over all the other press releases your target will receive today: Every reporter wants to publish  a book, too, so they want to meet you and find out how you cheated, lied and took enough drugs to get this stupidly quixotic. 

12. Think visually and use images: Luckily, this is where your killer book covers come in. To make sure the attachments got opened so they could see and appreciate all my awesome covers, I used this ad designed by Kit Foster of KitFosterDesign.com at the bottom of my cover letter: 

13. Provide your name, contact numbers, email address and websites. It’s a really good idea to remember this point so they can contact you for the interview unless you are wicked clairvoyant. 

14. When they interview you, be positive and chipper and helpful. It’s not in the bag until it’s in print or on air, so pretend you’re an extrovert. Later you can go back to being miserable in private. I am.

15. Hit multiple news outlets over time. It’s unlikely one media event will sell a lot of books. You could get a bit of a bump depending on the venue, but awareness takes time. Sales usually require repeated encounters as you permeate the world’s consciousness. Don’t bet everything on one roll of the dice and keep your expectations low to very conservative. Success always pleasantly surprises me.

16. Someone will be unhappy about your apparent success, however deceptive appearances may be. Ignore them. Several someones may contact you to write their book idea (as happened to me after a much-publicized contest win.) Run away screaming at full speed with your hands over your head. Change phone numbers, and country of residence if they persist.

17. Remember that you don’t do this for the fame and riches. It’s all about the writing and the orgies with the Roman toga theme. Get back to the keyboard and TO-GA! TO-GA! TO-GA!

~ Robert Chazz Chute is the author of a bunch of cool, helpful and suspenseful books that you can buy here. How suspiciously convenient.

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1 cool video, 1 true story, 2 books of non-fiction & 5 books of fun lies

Video by Kit Foster of Kit Foster Design.com

Click to get Higher Than Jesus free from Nov. 19 to Nov. 23, 2012!

True Story: I ran into a guy in the grocery store today I used to serve in my old job, the one before I started whisking people away to strange worlds. The last time I saw him, as he walked out the door, he said, “By the way, I won’t be buying your books.”

THUD! WHAT?!

“But Self-help for Stoners is humor and suspense!” I protested. Now I’ve written a lot more books and they’re still not for the humor-impaired or the prissy!

(Sorry, E, but you hurt my feelings…well…you hurt my feeling.)

Please click here for all my books and enjoy!

Higher Than Jesus  ~ My clever hit man fails miserably at group therapy, gets laid and tries to escape his addictions with his soul intact.

Bigger Than Jesus ~ My funny, luckless hit man tries to escape the mob he betrayed with stolen mob money and the love of his life. 

Sex, Death & Mind Control ~ Powerfully persuasive people are out to get you. Read this one with the lights on.

The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories ~ Poeticule Bay, Maine: A town so small, it feels like you’re trapped in a coffin. 

Self-help for Stoners ~ Self-help made out of suspense to make you laugh out loud.

Crack the Indie Author Code ~ Get inspired and stay on track to write your book.

Write Your Book: Aspire to Inspire ~ More publishing strategies to write that book you’re dreaming about.

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Election postmortem: And here we are

It’s the day after the US election and it’s all over but the crying and the hoping. Yes, I’m using the H word again: Hope. Many of my American friends say there’s no difference  between Obama and Romney, so the election didn’t really matter. They aren’t exactly wrong. It was sad to see a debate on foreign policy that made no mention of climate change, Wikileaks, or Bradley Manning. But there are differences between Democrats and Republicans and I’m hoping the Republicans don’t learn the wrong lesson and follow Charles Krauthammer’s terrible advice that Mitt Romney lost because he wasn’t conservative enough.

The Republicans espoused less government but their agenda was to control the lives of women more (as in page 14 of their position paper: If you’re raped, you must have the baby, but if the only way you can have a baby is through in vitro fertilization, you can’t.) If you know or care about an American woman, the Republican party in its current form wasn’t a good choice. The American people agreed with that assessment and voted for more Obama and less fear-mongering yesterday.

The Republican party denies global warming and climate science and they’d make Supreme Court appointments to reflect their fact-challenged positions. Teachers, firefighters and soldiers, according to the Right, are expensive inconveniences (unless, of course, you’re pandering to them in a speech or it’s convenient to you.) Republicans blocked bills that would help injured and afflicted 911 first responders and programs to help veterans. Firefighters don’t vote on whether your life is worth saving before they turn on the lights and sirens to rush to your aid. If they did, they’d be…well, I guess they’d be Paul Ryan.

Like most Canadians, I’m relieved at last night’s election results. Romney’s long list of gaffes, his secrecy over his tax returns and his lack of a core (a “windsock of a man”, as Bill Maher put it) should have disqualified him from running for the White House. The cynical pick of Paul Ryan — a wink to reassure the extreme right that Romney was crazy enough — smacked of McCain’s pick of Palin in 2008. Romney and Ryan tried to bluff their way into leadership with a tax plan they wouldn’t reveal and fetching, insincere  smiles and P90X work out pictures. Will the Republican party change, eschew the Southern Strategy and broaden its appeal to a wider, more diverse base?

I hope so. The Republican party would be better for the change because one of the many strengths of America is a two-party system, compassion and reason. What the Republicans once were, they have to get back to. A good start would be to rebuke Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, Dick Morris, Anne Coulter and most of the people who work at FOX. Those voices try to act like they’re helping, but they’re only helping themselves and hurting the country by giving a voice to the most hateful and cynical rhetoric. They hurt Republican’s chance of being elected in the future. Race politics are out because the demographics aren’t so pale anymore.

In 2008, the Republicans made the denial of a second term to Obama their “first priority.” Serving their country’s best interests by endorsing plans that had once been Republican ideas? It’s hard to say how far down their list of priorities their country was. Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor and Reince Priebus sneered at Mr. Obama, tried to obstruct his policies and turned their backs on his attempts at compromise. They tried to delegitimize a democratically elected president at every turn. At the RNC, the party faithful applauded the idea that they were the “owners” of America instead of its citizens. They applauded fierce pride but were silent on equality, diversity and caring. They tried to con the electorate into policies that would destroy the middle class by telling the working poor they were all “soon to be” wealthy, too.

Shortly after President Obama’s first election, we were told it was now a “post-racial America.” The opposite was true. His election radicalized the haters. The hateful rhetoric got louder and not just from the extremists on the right. The so-called “moderates” catered to the Tea Party extreme instead of rebuking them. What John McCain feared at the end of his 2008 campaign came true and the party was hijacked by the extremists. Mitt Romney stood by Donald Trump, took his endorsement and his donations and never once challenged Trump’s calls to expose the Other. When Rush Limbaugh called a woman a slut, all Romney could say was, “I wouldn’t have used those words.” Romney didn’t simply  lack a heart. He needed a spine transplant.

Trump deleted some of his outrageous tweets from last night. Republicans need to lose him, too, if they hope to retake the White House. This is the 21st century, and the country needs two parties good and strong enough to face the future together.

When the President of the United States reaches across the aisle, he can’t reach farther than halfway. Raise your hand.