Get ready to fight to the death. You might even have to fight beyond death.
AFTER was constructed to save us. When the medical biotech is weaponized, AFTER becomes an agent of warfare. Infected humans transform into rampaging killers. No one is safe.
Task Force Officer Daniel Harmon has one job: Stop the epidemic before it escapes a military research lab. As the body count rises, he’ll discover a dark conspiracy that will change our fate forever.
They will call this Apocalypse. We call it Revolution. On which side will you fall?
From the author of This Plague of Days comes a fresh zombie trilogy about technology gone horribly awry. It will feel too real.
Everybody’s best writing advice was, “Never kill a dog in your story.” Then along came John Wick, and even that tried-and-true nugget was thrown out the window. To tremendous success, I might add. This reinforces (for the umptimillionth time) that William Goldman was right. “Nobody knows anything.”
Solid writing advice was passed on to me from a film producer:
“If it plays, it plays.”
Some things will work, and some things won’t. When it comes to fiction, often we don’t find out what works best until it’s tested in the marketplace. InThe Night Man, truth be told, I killed off some dogs, but I hedged my bets. I saved a couple who became integral to the story.
But what’s the story?
In The Night Man, Easy Jack is a wounded veteran with a bum knee and a bad dad. When he returns home to Orion, Michigan, he plans to go back to training guard dogs. Unfortunately, he discovers the town has a long memory of his past deeds and his high school sweetheart is in deep trouble. Worse, dirty cops pull him into a billionaire’s bomb plot.
But how do you make the hard turn acceptable to animal lovers?
I love dogs. I get the aversion, but I did a few things in this thriller to make the conflict more palatable.
It’s not gratuitous. I don’t care for gore, so the worst stuff happens out of the hero’s (and the reader’s) view.
It makes sense for the plot. I didn’t throw it in there for shock value alone.
This loss ups the stakes and steels the protagonist’s spine.
There is revenge and redemption to be had following the hero’s loss.
Two treasured dogs survive and are an ongoing presence through the thriller’s twists and turns.
So, you love dogs. I love dogs. Trust me, you’re in good hands when you decide to try The Night Man.
The bad guys have money, power, and a jet packed with explosives. To make his stand, our hero is armed with quick wit and a Smith and Wesson. Easy Jack also has a loyal German Shepherd named Sophie by his side. To combat the shady side of small-town America, this wounded Army Ranger will have to enter the darkness he hoped to leave behind.
From the author of the Hit Man Series comes a killer thriller.The Night Man won first prize in the genre category at the Hollywood Book Festival!
“You’re guaranteed a mighty fine read.” ~ Claude Bouchard, USA Today Bestselling author of the Vigilante Series.
Easy Jack isn’t a bad guy, but to survive, he will have to act like one.
Returning home after serving his country, Ernest “Easy” Jack hoped his family’s reputation had been forgotten. No such luck in Lake Orion. Small towns have long memories. Grudges run deep. Worse, his high school sweetheart is trapped in an abusive marriage. Family bonds, love, and loyalty will be tested when a sociopathic billionaire and a dirty cop conspire to use Easy in a deadly bomb plot.
Amazon Prime Days start tomorrow and the e-book of Vengeance Is Hers is free from July 8 – 12. Once I have more reviews, I can promote it more effectively, so I appreciate your reviews very much. Cheers!
Here’s why you should get excited
This is not a guide for aspiring vigilantes, but it might inspire you!
Welcome to Poeticule Bay, Maine, a village where justice is scarce, and secrets have deadly consequences. When a gay student is brutally attacked and exiled from his home, the police turn a blind eye. Fueled by rage, Molly Jergins launches a relentless campaign against the school bully and his sinister family.
As Molly’s quest for retaliation spirals into chaos, the lines between hero and villain blur. To hunt monsters, must she become the very thing she despises? In the end, will revenge prove the best success?
Did you know I’m on Substack? I regularly post stories and videos there sharing anecdotes from real life, my reading life, and the writing life.
I have things to say! You can become a paid subscriber if you want to support my work, but that is optional and, honestly, most of what I post is completely free to everyone. Hopefully, you’ll also find it funny/thoughtful/entertaining/whatever-floats-your-neural-boat. Only the sexiest and most intelligent people opt in for my braingasms. Confirm you are sexy and intelligent by joining.
Vengeance is Hers is set in the fictional town of Poeticule Bay, Maine, a community inspired by the author’s Nova Scotia upbringing. The story begins with a morally satisfying act of revenge, but as Molly grows into adulthood and pursues a life in academia, her motivations become more complex and unsettling. This is a noir-tinged character study that spans more than a decade, exploring adult themes and emotional loss. A late twist surprised me, yet it felt exactly right. I read this as a beta reader but received no compensation other than the pleasure of engaging with a smart, gripping novel. I highly recommend it.
(Thank you to ARC reader extraordinaire, Russell! I certainly appreciate it!)
This is not a guide for aspiring vigilantes, but it might inspire you!
Welcome to Poeticule Bay, Maine, a village where justice is scarce, and secrets have deadly consequences. When a gay student is brutally attacked and exiled from his home, the police turn a blind eye. Fueled by rage, Molly Jergins launches a relentless campaign against the school bully and his sinister family.
As Molly’s quest for retaliation spirals into chaos, the lines between hero and villain blur. To hunt monsters, must she become the very thing she despises? In the end, will revenge prove the best success?
You know what authors used to do to promote their work before the internet era? They toiled, mostly in obscurity, and if they were lucky, their publisher put them on tour to bookstores. Lucky ink-stained wretches sometimes got on big media (back when media wasn’t social). Some fiction writers even got on TV!
If you want some more joy in your life, watch old YouTube vids of author nonsense. For instance, here’s the great Truman Capote.
Or witness Norman Mailer versus Gore Vidal!
It’s different now.
The last time a fiction author made it on to a major TV spot was Jon Stewart’s interview with Kurt Vonnegut. He was a great sci-fi author, but he only made it to air because (a) he was about to die, (b) he had a lot of brilliant observations, and (c) he’d just published his non-fiction book, A Man Without a Country.
These days, with our fragmented attention and millions of distractions, authors are pretty much screaming into the darkness. We hope to be heard about our fiction, but our voices are muffled under Reality’s onslaught.
So what do we do now?
When the great exodus from X happened, a plethora of other platforms rose up to compete. Bluesky is fairly popular. I’m on there (@robertchazzchute.bsky.social‬), though I have mixed feelings about its functionality. Thing is, there is no single destination for social media attention.
One commentator suggested a simple solution: Be everywhere. That was well-meaning, but if I were everywhere on social media, when would I have time to write the next book? I can’t be everywhere. I don’t have the bandwidth. Who does?
That said, I need to be available in more places, so I started up on Substack. This move is not about monetization, at least not for a long time. It’s about sharing more, spreading the word to new readers, and curated ubiquity.
I’d probably get more views if I engaged in high drama like Truman and Norman, but I’ll opt for engaging with readers in a more sane way.
Oh, before I go, let’s not forget this scream into the darkness. I just launched Vengeance Is Hers!
This is not a guide for aspiring vigilantes, but it might inspire you!
Welcome to Poeticule Bay, Maine, a village where justice is scarce, and secrets have deadly consequences. When a gay student is brutally attacked and exiled from his home, the police turn a blind eye. Fueled by rage, Molly Jergins launches a relentless campaign against the school bully and his sinister family.
As Molly’s quest for retaliation spirals into chaos, the lines between hero and villain blur. To hunt monsters, must she become the very thing she despises? In the end, will revenge prove the best success?
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?
