First off, many thanks for all the congratulations that flooded in for Endemic winning its category at the New York Book Festival. I treasured every note and email. I also discovered how often my posts and tweets are utterly ignored. Folks I hadn’t heard from in years popped up to say hi! That was nice. This is also your friendly reminder that I’m a scintillating delight all the time, not just when I win a literary award. (wink!)
Second, I have a fresh interview about Endemic over at Literary Titan. It’s about the demands of writing relatable apocalyptic fiction in the middle of a pandemic. There I was in my blanket fort, masked up and hypervigilant, washing groceries, and as paranoid as a squirrel on cocaine. What to do? What to do? Write the drama and trauma, of course!
An actual viral apocalypse was on like Donkey Kong. Bodies were filling freezer trucks outside my local hospital. In hindsight, it might have been cheerier to try a different genre. Sweet romance might have been easier to sell when readers were looking for a cheerier escape. However, the themes of Endemic run deep. Although I wrote a fictionalized bio of my criminal exploits in New York (Brooklyn in the Mean Time), it is Endemic that claims the prize of being my most personal book.
I wrote Endemic because I had to.
Read the full interview here: https://literarytitan.com/2022/07/31/the-real-demands-of-the-end-of-the-world/
Writing Retreat
This week, I’m outside my comfort zone, away from the blanket fort, and working on an epic fantasy. Strictly speaking, this is a new genre to me. However, there are so many commonalities with the apocalyptic and dystopian genres that it’s definitely adjacent. The writing is coming easily. I have always enjoyed creating worlds, especially those with philosophical or theological complexity. Amid the action and chaos, there is the reaction to action and chaos. That’s where the tears and laughter can really flow.
As I sit in this cozy cottage (our first vacation in many years), I’m grateful my wife insisted we get away. For a while, someone else can worry about the broken clothes dryer and that funny noise the air conditioner makes. This week is just for us, and of course, filling up the blank page with suspenseful stories full of swords and mayhem.
Each day, I write little daily updates about the work and my reading and writing life in my fan group. If you’d like to join my inner circle of people who dig what I do, join my Facebook group here:
Fans of Robert Chazz Chute
(Jokes and memes abound.)
Facebook Takeover tonight!
Makes it sound like I’m storming Zuckerberg’s mansion with a bunch of ninja commandos, doesn’t it? It’s 5% less awesome than that. For one night only, I’m taking over a FB group dedicated to science fiction and fantasy. I’ll be at Destiny’s Lighters from 5:30 pm to 10 PM EST tonight, Saturday, July 16.
Here’s the group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/lytonians/
Want to come see what I think is wrong with a bunch of apocalyptic fiction? Or what’s right? I’ll even tell you who cares. To get in, all you need is an invite and I give those out freely.
My Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/robert.c.chute/. Let me know you want in and I’ll make it happen.
Have a great day. See you tonight.
Literary Titan Reviews Endemic!
Endemic by Robert Chazz Chute follows Ovid Fairweather as she tries to navigate a world ravaged by a disease that turns people essentially braindead. As with any collapse of society, a power vacuum develops, and various individuals group together to seize that power….Can Ovid find a way to survive in a world that aims to take whatever she has left? And can she do it while reconciling with her troubled past?
Ovid endures a great deal in her past and present life. The author does a fantastic job incorporating her past experiences into the main plot points, thus keeping readers guessing and gasping as they read. I would be happy to read more from this setting, and its characters in the future, so here’s hoping there’s a sequel on the way soon.
Endemic is a suspenseful and thrilling science fiction novel with a dystopian twist. Readers will be drawn into the world that at times is almost too real and plausible and left with an eerie feeling of could this happen to me.
To read the full review at Literary Titan, click here.
I WANT TO READ ENDEMIC NOW!
Our Alien Hours is here!
While Endemic climbs the charts and gathers more and more happy reviews, my newest anthology just launched. Our Alien Hours is now available on Amazon!
The alien invasion of Earth has begun.
The Mortchallin watched us for decades, waiting for their time to strike. A global electromagnetic pulse like no human has ever seen marks their beginning and our end. In this anthology of seven connected stories, you will experience the invasion from the point of view of ordinary people facing fate.
When the alien conquistadors arrive, our actions in the face of death and danger reveal everything about what it means to be human.
Available now in ebook, paperback, and hardcover.
Robert Chazz Chute is the award-winning author of This Plague of Days, AFTER Life, Amid Mortal Words, and Endemic. With the publication of Our Alien Hours, he adds new short stories to his readers’ armory of apocalyptic binge-reads. If you enjoy this one, try the first in this anthology series, Our Zombie Hours.
Guess which apocalypse will kill you
There is an apocalypse coming no one talks about. Try to guess which end of the world scenario I’m not writing about before you get to the end of this post. My books will help you with the process of elimination.
- Endemic (coming soon) is a nerdy and neurotic person combatting sociopaths while trying to survive a viral apocalypse.
- Citizen Second Class is about poverty and starvation amid a climate catastrophe and greed.
- AFTER Life is about artificial intelligence weaponizing medical technology to take over the world.
- This Plague of Days is a zombie apocalypse (and other species evolving to take over the world).
- The Night Man is about PTSD, societal failure, family drama, war, poverty, and regret.
- Wallflower is a time travel novel about second chances after a lot of bad decisions.
- The Dimension War Series is a coming-of-age story amid a war story.
- Amid Mortal Words is about the loss of control and taking chances on a better future.
- Brooklyn in the Mean Time is about vengeance, absolution, and redemption.
- Robot Planet is about technological revolution and failure versus the human spirit.
- The Hit Man Series is about violence, vengeance, and escape amid a broken America.
- All Empires Fall is an anthology of five end-of-the-world stories and the common denominator is dealing with other people while everything falls apart.
Have you guessed the missing apocalypse yet?
Climate wars are a big deal, but I touched on that in Citizen Second Class. We could talk about the Misinformation War or new civil war scenarios, but Endemic has that covered. I dealt with extinction by killer asteroid in All Empires Fall. If you guessed the nuclear threat, Amid Mortal Words has that, too. You might have guessed the looming threat of antibiotic resistance. But, no, I’m thinking of something utterly devastating to the future of humanity. It’s close and almost no one ever talks about even beginning to deal with this extinction-level event.
The apocalypse that haunts me is this: In 60 years, Earth will have insufficient viable topsoil to grow 95% of all crops.
Read that last sentence again and ponder its significance. My kids will be alive for this. Coffee, bananas, and almonds will disappear first. Then everything else.
Sixty years and we aren’t dealing with the threat. There are no massive contingency plans. Unless helpful aliens are waiting to swoop in, no one is coming to rescue us. We’ll probably run out of soil before we run out of usable water, but it feels like it’s all a race to the end, doesn’t it?
So…call me Mr. Sunshine and read my books now, while you still can.
What happens when a pandemic never ends? Find out in Endemic.
Neurotic and nerdy, former book editor Ovid Fairweather is trapped in New York as everything falls apart.
All her life, she’s been a nail. To survive the viral apocalypse, she’ll have to become a hammer.
It’s not safe out there! Get in the Circle quick!
“Exhaustion seeped into my marrow but I could not sleep. Time passed but not enough that I could grow bored of my dread.” ~ from Citizen Second Class
Citizen Second Class is available for pre-order now.
Deliver it to your kindle Christmas Day so you don’t have to look your relatives in the eye.