Forgiveness versus Vengeance is one of the central themes of my next vigilante justice thriller. From Luigi Mangione’s actions to burning Teslas, this is a timely topic. Many turn away from these highly publicized acts of violence with little more than a shrug. There are good reasons for this. In the battle between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, fear wins. Fear is the emotion poorly hidden beneath anger. It’s a neurological response, and schadenfreude is baked into our brain’s wiring.
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” ~ Yoda
Yoda is quotable. It’s a good line (and you heard the Yoda voice, right?) However, I think he’s got it backward (which fits his typical grammar). Fear is a protective mechanism. Wariness of dangers increases our odds of survival. Frustration and fear lead to anger and resistance. The Jedi weren’t a bunch of pacifists. Hence, all the cool lightsaber duels. Those Jedi knights were down and out for quite a while but rose again to fight the Empire. I agree, don’t succumb to evil, but don’t be a chump, either.
For Mere Mortals, Forgiveness Isn’t So Easy.
Sixty-seven percent of people surveyed say they believe in forgiveness. Sounds good and upright, doesn’t it? Dig deeper. Fifty-six percent admit they don’t practice that virtue. I don’t blame them. Most would agree that forgiveness is healthy for the person doing the forgiving. However, no one instructs us how to forgive and forget. Instead., we get guilt-ridden platitudes that deny our humanity and our reality.
To err is human, to forgive divine, but we’re no angels.
I have an excellent memory, so how am I to forget? Frontal lobotomy? And if I forgive you your trespasses, do either of us learn anything? By refusing to forgive, I deny the offender the opportunity to trespass against me again. Sounds to me like carrying grudges is a safer course.
I asked my psychologist if she believes in forgive and forget. (When I say “My psychologist,” I refer to She Who Must Be Obeyed, AKA my wife.) She holds a doctorate in psychology and is the most sane person I know. That’s why I was so surprised when she did not hesitate to answer, “No.”
She acknowledges that forgiveness is difficult. In many cases, it’s an unreasonable expectation set by out-of-touch purists. The good doctor offered hope, though. She suggested, “Maybe the best you can do is to get to a place and time where you just don’t care anymore.”
“Or,” I countered, “write a massive hit thriller that’s packed with clever revenge fantasies to plague your real-life enemies!”
She’s going to start charging me for these sessions, isn’t she?
The writing workshop in Toronto is coming up in a couple of weeks. I am preparing to pitch literary agents for Vengeance Is Hers. Four agents I would consider partnering with are at the workshop. I have three others in mind, as well. Part of the prep work is to have the partial ready for their review. I have a sample ready.
Hot tip:
If you are pitching to agents or just want to give away a sample of your work for a book fair, a signing, or some other such trial by fire, get a QR code. I do have a presentation package for agents, but I won’t be lugging around a manuscript like some early 19th century peasant. I’m a modern ink-stained wretch. Instead, I’ll just give the QR code to link to the partial. If they want more, I’ve provided an email for further inquiries.
What’s New?
I have added menus to this website. Above, you’ll find links to my bio and what reviewers say about my work. The pitch and partial for Vengeance Is Hers is found under For Literary Agents. Of course, if you aren’t a literary agent but want a sneak peek of a badass story about a young woman on a righteous quest for revenge, enjoy a taste of vengeance!
One of the strangest turns in the news came this week when an alarming and easily predicted future became mundane history. Trump posted, “Long live the King.” That wasn’t surprising. However, some of his cult members backed him by celebrating. “Trump is king!” Many of these same folks post 1776 in their social media bios. Knuckleheaded knuckledraggers may know their country’s history. It seems they’ve abandoned the values they claimed they most cherished. Monarchy is back, baby! Get used to it!
Reminds one of the so-called evangelicals who, last year, decided to let go the gentler teachings of Christ. Jesus was “too woke” for our troubled times, apparently. They still call themselves Christian, just meaner and in a roid rage, I guess.
What feeds this nonsense? Bias.
There are many types of cognitive bias that affect us. There is hindsight bias, loss aversion bias, the gambler’s fallacy, and the beastly Dunning-Kruger effect. The D-K effect plus confirmation bias is a lethal combination, dangerous to civilization.Those are the better-known afflictions. I have a couple of favorites that may not be on your radar:
Survivor Bias
Survivor bias goes like this: “We live in a land of opportunity! I make a lot of money, so why can’t everybody else?”
This bias plays into the myth of the self-made individual. It ignores a plethora of historical, systemic, and personal variables. This bias turns the principle of fair financial compensation into a cruel game of keep-away. When interviewed, successful people often extol the virtue of hard work. Only a few self-aware ones say, “I worked hard, but I got incredibly lucky! I made it, but I’m not altogether sure how, but I know I’m an outlier.” It’s much more tempting to believe “I built X and now own a couple of yachts because I’m a genius.”
Lots of people work hard and are never adequately compensated. If success were so easily replicable, more people would attain it. For instance, if you’re a nepobaby who won the genetic lottery, the path to stardom is paved with pillows. Nobody who catches those breaks talks about that. When asked the secret to their success, I’ve heard actors say, “I know my lines and I show up on time.” Learning a script can be difficult, but showing up on time? You mean like every other employee on the planet? That’s blind privilege talking, you handsome dunce. That’s survivor bias.
Survivor bias doesn’t come up first as one of the more lethal societal ills, but it is dangerous. It feeds a delusion that’s used as a cudgel on the oppressed and unfortunate. If the poor deserve to be poor, you only care if you’re poor. Not much room for kindness and mercy there, huh? Survivor bias makes its believer a terrible person and everyone else worse off.
Normalcy Bias
An author friend messaged me to ask, since I write apocalyptic novels, does our current political situation feel like I’m living in one of my books? I’ve written about the many ways empires fall. My back catalog includes zombies, vampires, AI domination, killer robots, alien invasion, meteors, climate crises, disease, nuclear conflagration, mass poverty, and famine. Lots of fun to explore in fiction, right? What’s unfolding now, though? I couldn’t write it because so much of it sounds outlandish, too dumb, and replete with hissy fits. Nuclear stockpile inspectors and warhead assembly experts getting fired en masse sounds too silly, doesn’t it?That happened. Then somebody said, “Oopsy! Get them back! Where are their email addresses? What do you mean you deleted their email addresses?”
The doomsday clock is now 89 seconds to midnight. The world is teetering toward all your worst nightmares. Still, we carry on, believing that cooler heads will prevail. That, my friends, is normalcy bias.
The courts decided they couldn’t allow a presidential candidate to go to jail for even one day for his crimes. He should have been confined for contempt and endangering officers of the court, at the very least. Didn’t happen. Couldn’t happen. That was normalcy bias at its dark and dirty work. You’ve always been told no one is above the law. Obviously not so.
The objection always comes to changing circumstances: “X can’t happen because it’s never happened before. It would be unprecedented!”
This is a recurring theme in my fiction (and my answer to this complaint):
Everything is unprecedented until it’s not.
Normalcy bias keeps you dangerously comfortable. It assures you that the health insurance you have relied on will always be there for you. Why? Because it always has been. To lose it would be unprecedented! (See above.)
Normalcy bias kept endangered people from fleeing Germany before World War II broke out. Normalcy bias assures people that all their investments are safe until the stock market collapses. Normalcy bias made Canadians, Mexicans, and all NATO allies feel that the United States government would be their friend. The news reveals the truth: People have friends. Governments have interests.
Human behavior, mental illness, and neurobiology are interests I try to monetize by writing novels with flawed characters. Sometimes, they suffer mental health issues like mine (anxiety, for one instance). Other times, they use their knowledge to manipulate others. It’s fun in fiction. When cognitive biases dominate our media intake and the political sphere, ignorant people transform into monsters and innocent people suffer and die. Our biases make us more vulnerable to personal and systemic failure. Ignorance can be cured easily, but stupid is much more complicated.
Biases kill.
(On the other hand, when I meet with literary agents in April, I’ll pull from my bag of tricks in the pitch meetings to sell my next book, but that’s another post. Villainous laughter: Mwah-ha-ha-ha!) In the meantime, have you read All Empires Fall yet?
If you want a happy ending, it depends on where you stop the story.
– Orson Welles
Once upon a time, several years ago, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were lolling on the couch discussing happily-ever-afters (or HEA, if you’re a savvy reader).
Writers are often told to write what they know. If that were too solid a rule, too much excellent science fiction would vanish from existence. I say, write what you care about, and great things will follow. Similarly, it’s not my aim to provide a HEA every time so much as give readers a satisfying ending.
“So maybe I’ll cry, maybe I won’t?” my wife asked.
“You may turn the last page shuddering in tears of joy and recognition,” I replied in an arch English accent (because that’s my villainous voice). “Even if the resolution turns into a Pyrrhic victory, I dole out some hope. It’s not a downer ending I’m looking for, just a real one.”
“So bittersweet, dripping with verisimilitude?” SWMBO asked.
“Yeah, but not too much.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because fiction should be an entertaining escape. Real life is too harsh. In real life, our endings are all too tragic and full of fear. Take this moment,” I said. “You and me are on the couch, and the kids sleeping peacefully in bed. This will all end in tears, but right now is our happily ever after.”
Her eyes widened.
“This is it, baby,” I said.“Our happy ending! Are you happy?”
My next novel, Vengeance Is Hers. is packed with ways to wreak vengeance upon your many, many enemies!May righteous vengeance be yours! But wait there’s more (and caveats)!
As previously stated (see previous blog post), I have a problem with forgive and forget. Forgiveness is nice in theory, and it’s good for you, of course. Without contrition from the offender, however, I fear this high-minded principle turns people pleasers into doormats.
As for forgetting? What? Like a lobotomy? I have an excellent memory, and I know what you did!
The novel kicks off with a disclaimer for all my well-researched mayhem: This is not an instruction manual.
All acts of vengeance detailed herein were performed by fictional trained sociopaths.
I was pleased to be informed today that the Hollywood Book Festival chose four of my books for awards and recognition! Endemic took first place in the science fiction category (just as it had at the New York Book Festival) while the This Plague of Days Omnibus won runner-up. The Night Man placed first in the genre category and Amid Mortal Words received honorable mention in sci-fi.
Writers work long hours in solitude and obscurity. Novelists toil away at keyboards making shit up, often not knowing where we’re going and doubting what we’re doing. Reviews and fan letters fuel our fervor. Recognition of our work by book contests gives a rare and wonderful boost.
We celebrated the wins with a feast of Chinese food. The shrimp har gow and sweet butter coconut buns were delicious.
Never ask a writer which is the best book they’ve written. That’s like demanding they choose their favorite child. It’s mean. However, gun to my head, here are my personal top five (and why):
The global pandemic begins with a killer flu that brings down civilization as we know it. You’re shown how our systems collapse in a very real-world scenario. (This is also my most popular series.)
It’s a slow burn as the virus continues to evolve. New species rise and things get weird. The supernatural toys with the survivors of the cull and our champion, Jaimie Spencer, is a radical departure from the usual heroes in the genre. He’s a selective mute on the spectrum whose special interest in dictionaries and Latin proverbs.
As battles between Good and Evil go, this is genre-bending. TPOD is complex and expansive. No red shirts!
Everyone who reads this prodigal son story loves it (but many haven’t read it). On a medical discharge from the Army, Ernest “Easy” Jack returns home to rural Michigan to train German Shepherds with his father. His high school sweetheart needs help. His dad’s on the shady side of a conspiracy involving dirty cops and a murderous real estate mogul.
The Night Man‘s plot is packed with action, but it’s Easy’s complex issues with war wounds, PTSD, and a checkered family history with his hometown which makes the story work on every level. If suspenseful thrillers are your thing, please do read this next.
This makes my top five now because, though it’s set in a near-future dystopia, the story feels too relevant to what’s going on in the United States today. Kismet Beatriz comes from a military family but her nation has forgotten them. Democracy has collapsed and the hyper-wealthy (AKA the Select Few) have turned the Atlanta into a fortress.
Against a backdrop of food shortages, unemployment, secret police, and massive income disparity, Kismet must journey to New Atlanta. All she wants to do is feed her family, but fate has bigger plans for her.
Despite the grim premise, Citizen Second Class has funny and hopeful notes. The book I’m writing now is in the same world, earlier in the timeline. The next novel is darker, more like Crime and Punishment set at the end of the world. I’m often cynical and paranoid. Given the events of 2020, I wasn’t cynical and paranoid enough.
Man, this was fun to write, and it’s fun to read! A powerful book falls into the hands of an Air Force officer. Passages from the book can punish the guilty and work wonders for the innocent. This one book could set the world right. It might also condemn humanity to destruction.
This is twisty and fun, but readers often find it thought-provoking. If you’ve ever dreamed of being king or queen for a day, Amid Mortal Words is your next binge read.
Readers often identify me as a zombie writer, but I only have two zombie trilogies. This Plague of Days was the first. After TPOD, I thought I’d done everything I could do in the genre that would feel fresh. Then along came AFTER, and I received new inspiration.
Artificial Facilitation Therapy for Enhanced Response was supposed to be a medical miracle based in nanotechnology. Weaponized, we get zombies.
The twist: The AI infecting our brains is evolving and wants to understand and improve humans. The action is non-stop, but underneath it all the infected are still conscious humans, horrified at what they are forced to do.
This Plague of Days is a supernatural horror epic. AFTER Life is the journey where science fiction curves right as humanity goes awry. It ends up in a fascinating place at the end of the trilogy. Love it! I hope you will, too.
~ I am Robert Chazz Chute. I write killer crime thrillers and suspenseful apocalyptic epics. My faves might not be identical to yours and that’s okay. I’m proud of all my work.
Also, I must add that I love my children equally and that fact drives them both crazy.
