As I prepare Citizen Second Class for publication, one of the themes that emerged was: Life’s not fair. It’s up to us to make it that way.Here’s our chance.
Ryder is the grandchild of one of my most cherished readers, a fan who supported my work from early on. This sweet little girl lent her name to a character in Fierce Lessons. She’s eight years old and she’s been diagnosed with cancer. Needless to say, we are in shock. This sucks. Let’s ease some stress and help Ryder kick cancer’s ass.
Whether your love is crime thrillers or doomsday sci-fi, I have something to entertain you.
Sometime Soon Somewhere Close allows you to enter the minds of several criminals in this collection of dark crimes. Some will succeed. Some will fail. They’re all interesting, though I have a special affinity for the tales of revenge. Free now!
Explore several compelling doomsday scenarios in All Empires Fall. How do you think the end of the world will come? Meteor strike? Pandemic? Check out these possibilities, choose your hero, and see if your avatar survives.
Both these books are free for you right now (but the giveaway won’t last long). Grab your ebooks now!
The Night Man is on sale now for just 99¢ (briefly, so hurry.)
Easy thought his war was over. When his father is kidnapped, a dirty cop pulls Easy back into what he does best. Sometimes vengeance is justice.He is the Night Man.
And one more thing you didn’t know:
Bigger Than Jesus is free today and tomorrow.
Jesus Diaz wants to escape New York with stolen mob money and the lovely Lily Vasquez. He’ll be lucky to escape with his life.
The storytelling is unconventional. The pain feels real. The story is unforgettable. The jokes are pretty good.
There is something about a wounded warrior that is appealing in fiction. Anti-heroes who have dark pasts, who know disappointment and failure, are much more interesting to me than the uncomplicated square-jawed hero.
I relate more to failure than anyone who has it too easy. Batman’s billionaire life would fall apart if someone pulled off his mask just once. To me, Superman’s personal stakes aren’t high enough. Superman’s basically a god. Batman is a rich guy who spent years training his body and mind to be the world’s greatest detective (or a fairly psychotic badass, depending on which vintage of the comics you favor.)
We love a main character with a mysterious past
On my very first night away at university, I found myself in Frosh Week activities. It wasn’t my scene but that first night was special because we watched Casablanca. (No, I’m not that old. It was a retro movie night.) Fun fact: The movie’s original title was Everybody Comes to Rick’s.
There’s a great moment in that movie. Someone asks Rick how he came to find himself in Casablanca. Rick replies, “My health. I came for the waters.”
“The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.”
“I was misinformed.”
Isn’t that a great bit of dialogue? And Bogart delivered the lines so laconically, it’s hilarious. My other favorite exchange is:
“You despise me, don’t you?”
“If I gave you any thought, I suppose I would,”
Ha!
Anyway, we find out about Rick’s romance in Paris in a flashback but he’s kind of a blank slate at first. He’s not going to tell you what you don’t need to know. He’s damaged and flawed but somewhere underneath all that baggage, there’s a person trying to do the right thing. That’s why I love Easy Jack in The Night Man.
Ernest “Easy” Jack has been estranged from his father and he’s a pariah in his home town of Orion, Michigan. On a medical discharge from the army, Easy really just wants to be left alone to train German Shepherds and recover. His eyes are sensitive to sunlight. He’s got a bum knee. He’s weary but when he comes home, he finds his war is not over. An ex-girlfriend in trouble shows up. His dad is a smuggler who gets mixed up with a dirty cop’s dirty business. Complications ensue.
Easy could walk away from trouble but trouble keeps finding him. The truth is, Easy can’t bring himself to walk away. Deep down, he’s not a bad guy but he has to deal with a lot of really bad guys. Dealing with evil on its own terms, you might end up doing things that are beyond the law.Easy doesn’t have a lot of money or resources. He’s got a lot of experience, some cleverness, and a German Shepherd. That’s all he brings to battle. Gotta love an underdog paired up with a dog named Sophie.
That’s why I love The Night Man. I hope you will, too.
You can pick it up in ebook and paperback on Amazon. Please do and if you dig it, please review it.
I’m working feverishly on my new novel, Citizen Second Class.
We workshopped the title a bit within our Facebook group, Fans of Robert Chazz Chute. Originally, I thought about calling it Citizen: Second-Class. However, search engines can be hampered by punctuation. After consulting the group, I was assured going without was fine, hence the pared-down title.
A good title is important and many variables go into those decisions. I thought about calling Amid Mortal Words something else. The Murder Words or The Murdering Words was catchy. However, it was less on point for the novel’s genre. Amid Mortal Words is apocalyptic sci-fi, not a murder mystery.
Citizen Second Class is about a young woman trying to survive in a dystopian society where the American empire has fallen. Corporations have taken over from politicians. Militia groups have been absorbed into the military. The rich hide in oases and bunkers behind high walls and the rest of us are living a Third World subsistence.
I know that “Third World” is dated. The preferred term now is “developing world.” However, the problem is regression, not progression. The gears that make the republic work are broken and Kismet Beatriz, our young heroine, is trying to find a way to a better life. She may seem meek and unsure at first but underneath? Oh, yeah, you bet she’s badass.
The villains are cool, too. My policy is that no villain thinks they’re really bad. They all think their awful deeds are necessary. Their rationalizations run deep. That’s what makes villains so interesting.
For instance, in This Plague of Days, Season One, the Lady in Red seems a bit over the top, maybe even cartoonish, at first. Many readers were shocked to discover the reasoning and power behind Shiva’s evil plans when they got to Season Three.No apologies. The payoffs were worth the wait.
Exploration ofmotivations and longer arcs make for deeper character development, too. In the Dimension War Series, Tamara Smythe goes from country girl to city girl to demon/alien slayer. Some readers thought she was too naive and too concerned with her dead boyfriend in the first book. They wanted her to be a fully developed adult from page one. You know what? No.
I love how Tam changes into a warrior who finds her way. I write novels, not quick summaries catering to your private and peculiar proclivities, Carl from the Midwest! That’s right, I’m talking to you, Carl, you dick!
Heh.
Great Expectations
This week I sent out a newsletter seeking advance reviewers for Citizen Second Class. For any novel to succeed in today’s marketplace, it really needs a lot of reviews at launch. If the story behind Citizen Second Class intrigues you and you want to find out what happens to America and the world before anyone else, thank you and welcome to the Advance Review Copy Team
Join the ARC group, please email me at expartepress@gmail.com with the subject line: CSC Review Team.
ARC readers will have two to three weeks prior to publication before it’s up on Amazon.If all goes according to plan, the manuscript should be ready sometime in the third week of November, if not before.
And now, back to the blanket fort where I stir the word cauldron and do keyboard alchemy.
I’m thinking about the upcoming Joker movie. Frankly, after Heath Ledger’s performance as Joker, I thought nothing else could compare. However, here comes Joaquin Phoenix and the early Oscar buzz. As a former comics collector, I know the variations of Joker’s origin story. This time the treatment is deadly serious, maybe even ponderous and disturbing. This is not Cesar Romero’s campy Joker. You can’t see Phoenix’s portrayal in theatres yet but there’s already plenty said about it already. (This Huffington Post article, for instance.)
Where do violent incels come from?
Though the director insists the story is not political, some critics worry that Joker’s origin story will inspire incels to violence. With mass shootings in the news, I would argue that naming active shooters and giving them the fame they crave does more to inspire others to pick up a gun. A host of societal ills contributes to the violence that plagues us. These are trying times and it’s tempting to look for an easy scapegoat. Art ain’t it.
Eliminate income inequality, enact and enforce gun laws that make sense, reduce poverty and homelessness, act more instead of reacting, power up mental health initiatives, investigate groups that foster hate. That might help. I could go on and on about the roots of violence. Fiction is not on that list. Fiction is not the problem. Reality is. It’s so easy to point at a work of art and say, “Don’t do that. It could hurt people.” It might. It might also provide an escapist fantasy that does no harm. It might even stir some questions and thought that could be helpful.
Did Goodfellas get more people to join the mob? If somebody joined the mafia because of that movie, should no one watch Goodfellas ever again? If this were the 1960s, would the same people concern trolling Joker be condemning comic books? That was a thing. People were very sure comics were a threat to civil society. In reality, they inspired many non-readers to read (which has been shown to increase empathy, by the way). I don’t believe fiction is the problem. Systemic failure on many levels is the problem.
This is not to say that movies and books don’t have effects. Fight Club inspired real fight clubs. Top Gun was a Navy recruitment tool. The question is, do we Nerf the world on the chance that some rando will act on his impulses and kill innocents? What’s the cost-benefit analysis there and where should the chill of self-censorship stop?
The journey of the anti-hero is actually much more interesting to me than that of heroes. I often write about bad versus evil because good versus evil often posits a binary world with fewer shades of grey. I’d rather watch Breaking Bad, Dexter (the early seasons) or Better Call Saul than another police procedural. When those procedurals succeed, it’s often because the heroes embrace the darkness. House was a procedural of sorts and his misanthropy was much more interesting than the solutions he arrived at in the last ten minutes of the show.
I’m not glossing over anything. School shootings are a horror. The latest PSA put out by Sandy Hook Promise made me cry. If you haven’t seen it, prepare yourself.
It’s easy to point to the mass shooter in Colorado who dyed his hair like the Joker and say that the movie is where the danger lies. I don’t think so. I think it’s easy to focus an easy target than explore more complex solutions.
A long time ago I worked on a committee that was supposed to promote freedom of expression. Results, from my point of view, were mixed. There were publishers on the committee who were totally against censorship, or thought they were until the subject matter made them uncomfortable. That’s not how anti-censorship works.
What’s to be done?
The truth is, I’m not exactly sure I understand what critics want. Do they desire a ban on Joker movies or movies like it? There may be some who do. Mainly the commentary seems to take a less extreme tack. I suspect they’re being vague because they don’t want to be seen defending censorship. Instead, they’re indicting art. Are filmmakers supposed to be more careful to…what? I don’t know what they want. They won’t admit to whatever their goal is. To make filmmakers more thoughtful? Of anti-heroes?
The implication seems to be that if a mass shooter blames the movie, the movie will be to blame. That stance infantilizes us all and the net effect, if it worked, would be to make fiction less interesting. I don’t think it would improve our lives. Metalheads may retreat into death metal but that doesn’t make them violent. The Lord of the Rings is epic fantasy that has enthralled many. Has it inspired anyone to pick up a sword? If we could make that connection, what would they have us do? And where does it stop? Banning Eminem lyrics? Banning video of Elvis’s magical dancing hips?
My suggestions
Don’t like it? Don’t watch it. Don’t read it. Don’t listen to it. Don’t let your kids watch, read or listen, either.
Don’t like that other people are making art that makes you uncomfortable? It’s never been easier to become a filmmaker, an author or an artist. Make your stuff. Counter the wave and cancel it out with a wave of your own.
Will someone watch Joker and be inspired to inflict violence on others? If they have the weapons, possibly. I’d focus on denying those people the means to act on their sickness first. Failing that, I guess the question is, is art worth the risk? Worry about who is answering that question for you. You might not have much entertainment to enjoy if some outliers were to have their way.
Four final thoughts
Support and enjoy art you love. Ignore the rest so you don’t give it oxygen. (When I saw the first Joker trailer, I was not enthused. Those think pieces on Joker make me want to see it more, not less.)
Don’t infantilize us all in the hopes of avoiding unlikely violence.
Focus on solving risk factors that are far more likely to lead to carnage.
If you want to have a discussion about making more movies that aren’t sequels to pre-existing franchises, I’m all for that discussion. There are many intellectual properties out there that are fresh and shiny which get pushed aside. Original stories that are less homogenous are more of a financial risk. If you want more interesting and original cinema, patronize more independent films and art cinemas. Voting with your dollar gets the message to the people who give new film ventures a chance.
