I believe (but I’m not a belieber)

NSFW podcast of peril: Deathmatch with a nurse, combat in the ER, condemning Bush and Cheney, swearing in church, and Higher Than Jesus! I’m full of shenanigans in this, the 75th episode of the All That Chazz podcast. Frowned upon by the Amish. However, this program is approved by 96.2% of cool people, people who actually enjoy being entertained and 12.6% of cats. (Sorry, grumpy cats. We’ll work harder.)

FYI: SCROLL DOWN FOR DETAILS ABOUT MY CONTEST ON VINE. You could win

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

an autographed copy of Bigger Than Jesus if you’re closest to the number of posts it takes for me to get to the end of “Another Day at the Office”, a short story from Self-help for Stoners.

Self Help for Stoners JPEGAt the top of the show: Vengeance is mine! HaHAhahahahahaha!

At 0:45 What I believe. (Mostly, sorta. This gets fun.)

At 3:49 Author versus bad nurse. She wins. I promise vengeance. (I get so mad and scared I create a new website DecisionToChange.com.) Get healthy with me at DecisionToChange.com.

10:28 Double Jeopardy, a reading from my crime novel Higher Than Jesus

At 22:24 An invitation to: AllThatChazz.com, Higher+than+Jesus+Front+1029ChazzWrites.com, ThisPlagueofDays.com, onlysixseconds.wordpress.com, CoolPeoplePodcast.com, and DecisionToChange.com.

Music today was “All This” by Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech.com. 

Podcast art by sponsor Kit Foster of KitFosterDesign.com.

Like the show? Please leave your compliments in an iTunes review. Or donate. Or buy a book. (See all the links to all the books at AllThatChazz.com, including the link to Higher Than Jesus if you can’t stand my reading of my funny crime novel.)

The Gambler

Jesus is under the gun again and praying isn’t working. Maybe more deception will help. It usually staves off disaster, at least temporarily. However, Marv seems awfully intent on killing him.

For more on books of suspense by Robert Chazz Chute, go to AllThatChazz.com.

Today’s sponsor is the amazing graphic designer, Kit Foster of KitFosterDesign.com.

Tools of the Trade: Things go awry

The podcast name has changed from Self-help for Stoners to All That Chazz. All will be explained. Meanwhile, assassins wait for Jesus in Tools of the Trade. Jesus has to get into a locked apartment and the tension stretches out to comedy because, as usual, things go awry for our favorite Cuban hit man.

Big secret: In the next episode of the podcast, something great and unprecedented is coming. Since I’m all about suspense, be sure to tune in for Episode 50 in just a few days.

Check out all the links for more suspense and to jump to the end of the crime novel, Bigger Than Jesus, by Robert Chazz Chute (available in ebook and paperback.) Make all your Amazon.com purchases through AllThatChazz.com to support the podcast. Thanks!

Author reading: The Bugman of Surfside Beach

Somebody’s going to die. Brace yourself. Jesus hasn’t drowned, but he’ll soon wish he had. He does get rescued, but there are more surprises in store in this episode of Bigger Than Jesus by Robert Chazz Chute.

Want to be a producer for the show? Your donations get mentions for your business and help support the production of the podcast. Do your Amazon shopping through AllThatChazz.com and that helps cover the bandwidth. If you’ve got no money (and who does?) you can leave a happy review on iTunes to help others find the show. Cheers!

Okay, that’s it. No more whoring and begging until the next episode! 

A Double Shot of Suspense

Did Han shoot first? This week Jesus comes under fire from Jimmy Lima, underboss of New York’s Spanish mob, The Machine. A game of bad versus evil turns from cherry pie to gunfire in two (count ’em, two!) chapters of Bigger Than Jesus by Robert Chazz Chute. Listen for my stereotypically Canadian pronunciation of “about”.

Grab it on Amazon, and if you shop on Amazon for anything, please do so through AllThatChazz.com and they throw me a few crumbs to support the podcast and Ex Parte Press. Thank you!

Thought for the Day: Creation

We don’t know if we were created by a god or a cosmic programmer. It’s possible we’re all merely a fluke of the universe or a subtle joke.

But we know we were forged in starlight.

That sounds important. Are you taking up the responsibility of your high office? Are you acting how something made of starlight should act?

Now is your time. Use that energy well. Don’t waste it.

When you are kind, you create harmony. When you form relationships or make something to enjoy (a friendship, a meal, a book, a living and a life) you create yourself.

Today, aspire to inspire. 

Begin. 

Manifesto: The Value of Writing and Reading

Within every book secrets are revealed, but there are deeper treasures buried beneath what you see. The book is a solid thing you can hold. The story is a  sparking, fleeting experience daring you to give chase and to catch fire.

A story is a progression through possibilities, a dense connection of ideas that ignites new electrical connections in your brain, tripping switches, releasing dopamine, letting tears slip and laughter burst. You create worlds with the author, meeting the writer’s mind amid the small words to share great visions. You are not simply decoding the language on the page. In reading, you open hidden portals to new variables: Data, information, knowledge, wisdom, lies, truth, lies that tell the truth, experience and, ultimately, choice.

Books offer novelty, chance, escape, distraction, transcendence, freedom and stimulation like no other art. Books are a uniquely cooperative, requiring a deft  weaver, yes, but also an audience willing to be gentle. Readers are dance partners. Lose yourself in the movement. Let go of counting one-two-three, one-two three. Instead, look in your dance partner’s eyes and embrace them. Enjoy the dance. Hold tight. Hold so tight you let go.

Promise: You will be transported through space, whirled in time and transformed with emotion, but you will always waking in your own bed, deposited where you began and a little regretful you aren’t in Oz anymore. It’s okay. When you come back, you aren’t you anymore. You never walk through the same door twice and remain unchanged.

For those doors you choose to open? Walk through, tread lightly and learn how to live from people who have never lived. Meet and be among characters with whom you would never dare to speak. You will witness terrible examples of how to interact in reality (…whatever that is. Imagination is a much clearer path.)  Through the heroes and heroines you meet, you will know pain and loss, sacrifice and triumph. Stories are the matrix of our desires, fears  and dreams. Books are simulations and wise guides, asking you to  draw your own conclusions.

Your mind evolved with your bare feet in the cold dirt, haunches aching, as you basked in the heat of the campfire. Amid the smell of burning meat, you listened to soaring legends about the milky pearls shining and reaching down from the black infinite. You listened to tales of the hunt and, in telling your own stories of bravery, searching and loss, reached up to touch the infinite. We tell stories to illuminate the darkness.

The careful words we pull to ourselves in the form of books are comforts in a world where, elsewhere, words are casual weapons. In the patient future, you will lie upon an overstuffed couch under a cozy blanket by your fireplace, listening to a storm’s rage and, gratefully, you will disappear into a book. Stories are journeys through mythology, revisited for the depth of our common visceral experience, touched on repeatedly to remind ourselves we are thinking, reaching, grasping animals.

The most valuable treasures slip in when you are sleeping in the reader’s trance. Meditate on theme. A book yields more than what you read. A book is a still lake on a warm summer day: Watch the rippling wind write on its surface; spot fish darting beneath in cool water; see your reflection; stretch your awareness up to the ponderous turn of clouds; lift yourself beyond, back to the infinite. Think. Reach. Grasp. 

Books are valuable because they reach into your mind and become part of who you are. Our books are ourselves. The mind does not distinguish between reality and fantasy. You know this is true of dreams, your fears and what you read. I am a writer, giving you the bones of the structure of a world. You fill in the rest, seeing my broad brushstrokes in minute detail.

Your mind is a magnificent camera that runs on black-and-white words. Your camera does not simply  record my words. You are much more important than that. Your camera co-creates in color. No two writers write the same story. A secret: No two readers draw the same word pictures from one writer. Reading is creation, too.

Books are more special than we recognize because they are no longer rare. Were novels new, they would not possess mere novelty. They would be seen as powerful. Books release staggering magic from within you, a fire once lit that must be fed.

I am a whisper in your mind. Thank you for letting me in. Amplify my words and make their thunder shake the everyday world away. Hold my book in your hands, enter the story and feel electricity’s hum. I am lightning on the horizon of your consciousness. Through this curious magic, I will meet you there. I will become you.

This is the only divinity I know.