Tag: This Plague of Days

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Preparing for a post-pandemic world

As I researched This Plague of Days, I immersed myself in prepper culture. I read a lot about what to do when shit hits the fan. Immunologists warned us we were long overdue for a major pandemic. Many ignored those warnings because it was cheaper and convenient to roll the dice on our safety. Too many times, we have lived as if there are no consequences, as if “it hasn’t happened yet,” meant “it won’t ever happen.” Too much short-term thinking, too little clarity.

We’ve had many warnings and instructions on how to prepare, but I don’t think anyone is ready for the consequences we face. We remain unprepared for the next steps, after this crisis has finally passed. It feels like we’ve been asleep, doesn’t it? We’ve taken so much for granted, confident that things will go on as they have.

Several times I’ve heard people say, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” Unless you’re a nigh-immortal who witnessed the devastation of the Spanish Flu, this is all new territory.

There are new twists. Listening to podcasts from New York, the sound of wailing sirens in the background is a haunting reminder of horrors many are now experiencing. Connected through social media, we can bear witness to those horrors even as we wait behind our walls.

I suspect that if I survive, I’ll spend less, save more, and make more conscious choices. I hope we all refuse to settle for less. We might be more willing to weed out that which does not serve us. We’ll think more about where food comes from, for instance. We should better understand the connections and services that make a civilization run.

This experience will forever change most of us. However, I’m not an optimist. I suspect many people will be so relieved that the pandemic is over that we will rush back to sleep. People in power, eager for our praise and gratitude, will be eager to forget their failures to lead and protect us. We will not prosecute greed and profiteering as we should. Leaders who failed us will attempt to secure their positions, no matter how little they deserve their wealth and power. Short-term thinking will prevail because they’ll tell us we can’t afford long-term solutions.

I hope when we emerge from this crisis, we won’t settle for mundane normality. There is often a great gap between who we think we should be and who we are. Reaching for something better could make for a wonderful tomorrow that would honor today’s sacrifices.

Stay as safe as you can. We are all in this together. Don’t forget that once you feel safe again.

~ Robert Chazz Chute writes apocalyptic epics and killer crime thrillers from his basement bunker.cropped-Photo-Credit-to-David-Redding.jpg

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Physical distance, not social distance

TPOD RED CONTAGION use this one
Coming soon!

She Who Must Be Obeyed (AKA my wife) mentioned that the new move in appropriate terminology is to encourage physical distancing, not social distancing.

With COVID-19 rampaging across Earth, isolating is necessary. However, you need not feel alone. All in this together even if we’re apart, right? Some experts suggest reaching out to three people a day (electronically). Give a call to someone you haven’t spoken to in a while. Check in, especially with the elderly, vulnerable neighbors or family members who are stuck, alone or at risk. Alone doesn’t have to be lonely. Making and maintaining social connections has even been shown to be good for our health. Stress and strife is something we need to tamp down as much as we can.

Don’t know what to say to people going through hard times? Often, all you need do is listen so they feel heard and seen. Other times, you may be able to help people at risk connect to services that can assist them.

Speaking of Reaching Out

Did you know that avid readers of my work have a private Facebook group where I hold forth on the doings of the day? It’s often jokes and occasionally it’s serious. I add excerpts from my work in progress, too.

Example? Here’s a snippet from the This Plague of Days prequel I’m working on now: 

Armed only with the cane, Moira rushed toward the screams. She was still weak, but now that she’d survived the Sutr flu, she was determined to fight whatever came next. She did not spare a moment to tell Kevin Laughlin that she would return to his side. The dying have no time for lies.

For another taste from the group, here’s today’s post (a review of sorts): 

Hey, Monday, you great looming beast full of threats, coffin nails, and bat wings. And hello, friends.

When we ran out of our addictive Tiger King supply, we watched Wild Wild Country on Netflix. Again, I am amazed at the sheer amount of footage narcissists require. If you know someone who records everything, there’s a good chance they killed somebody or they’re about to do something super shady that should land them in a prison cell.

Wild Wild Country has been out for a while. I’d given it a miss, but it is so watchable after you slog through the first episode. It’s about a cult that started out with high hopes. Then god complexes, bigotry, and government corruption get in the way. A utopian vision in rural Oregon slides from peace and love to AK-47s. It’s disappointing and teaches us a lesson we should have learned a long time ago: Don’t trust the feds.

There is so much fascinating nuance in these tales of downward spirals. I don’t watch a lot of true crime. I imagine that if you binge too much of it, it’s difficult to see the good in humanity. I know I often sound like a cynic, but they say every cynic is a disappointed idealist.

If you dig what I do, this is your invitation to join our happy little group of readers.

My whimsy + nice people = happy nonsense.

Find us at Fans of Robert Chazz Chute today.

Cheers!

~ Chazz

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The Most Chilling Aspect of this Crisis

I just heard a report from New York detailing how hospitals are already slammed. They thought the peak would come in two weeks. It’s hitting harder and sooner than expected. We’re all in for it, aren’t we? Yes, I share your creeping anxiety. I going to give you some real talk because I am not a shiny, happy person today. This is urgent and it’s past time to get real.

I’ve gone back and forth, bingeing bad news one day and trying to avoid information overload the next. Of course, it’s not really information that’s overwhelming. It’s our emotions that can rise beyond reason. COVID-19 is coming and hell’s coming with it. If you doubt me, ask China and Italy. They tried to warn us, but many people did not take them seriously. To get this under control, we must be proactive and take serious measures: isolation and confinement for extended periods.

Given my health history, I feel like I have a target on my lungs. My amygdala is packed full of dread. When even the most reasonable experts lay a heavy on you that sounds like the worst of worst-case scenarios, a trip forward in time to when the vaccine exists feels in order. I’m working on a time machine. It’s hard to do much with assorted screwdrivers, a hammer, a box of nails and precious little understanding of quantum physics.

I’ve written a lot about the apocalypse. Though I never intended to depict the future accurately, I think I got This Plague of Days right in some crucial ways. The apocalypse, contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, is not fun. It’s not easy. Chances are excellent that you don’t have a castle with endless supplies of food, guns, and ammo. If you went a little crazy, the closest you’ve come is to have a nigh-infinite supply of toilet paper. As I predicted, “the apocalypse seemed to come slowly at first. Then it was everywhere, all at once.”

Medical personnel do not have enough masks. The call has been sent: If you can sew, make us masks! If you have a 3D printer, we need face shields! There aren’t enough medicines, medical supplies and ventilators to go around.

Because of the lack of preparedness, we do not have enough PPE (personal protective equipment). We will send doctors and nurses into situations where they cannot protect themselves. These are extraordinary people, but they are also ordinary mortals with families and dreams. Many will become infected and go into quarantine. That will deplete our forces combatting the virus.

Worse, we may even reach a point where hospital staff declares, “If you can’t protect us, we shouldn’t be here.” That’s the most chilling possibility. I heard it for the first time today and I thought, I’m surprised I haven’t heard that before. Should it come to that, those doctors and nurses who elect to retreat will not be wrong. It is not for any of us to determine the depth of someone else’s sacrifice.

I used to be a health care practitioner. My regulatory body came up with a stupid emergency plan after SARS hit Toronto. The powers that be stood up on their hind legs and said that in signing up to be a healthcare practitioner, I automatically got drafted to first-responder status. No one told me that they’d be sending around a truck to take us to work in hospitals. I just wanted to get off the corporate ladder to rehab strained necks and torn shoulders. Even if I were to accept their stupid premise, my family didn’t sign up for this. Glad I retired and left that field of battle. 

However, like it or not, on some level we are all in this war against the virus. If you are non-essential personnel, please self-isolate. You’ve heard it all before, yet there are still selfish people who remain defiant and dumb. They are putting many lives at risk. My life is at risk. It so incredibly frustrating to watch so many unforced errors take us down.

I would attempt to end this piece on a hopeful note, but that is not how I’m feeling this evening. I will have a different message tomorrow. All I have for you now is, please, self-isolate. If you are in quarantine, I know it sucks but please stay there. Do not be casual about this pandemic just because COVID-19 hasn’t hit you personally yet. In some way, it soon will.

Tomorrow, I’ll give you reason to hope. Tonight, I want us all to stew a little in the juices of personal responsibility. We all have a part to play in this war. Some are bound to fight on the front lines. For the rest of us, our duty is to help each other, self-isolate and stay out of the way of the many dedicated professionals who, as I write this, are trying to save the world. 

 

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The Labor Day Sale

I’m running a 99¢ sale on the first book in my epic zombie apocalypse trilogy This Plague of Days. Sale ends September 2.

“This is like reading World War Z…hooks you from the beginning and you can’t stop reading!” ~ Armand Rosamilia, Author of the Dying Days zombie series

One autistic boy + elements of The Stand + 28 Days Later = A haunting protagonist versus the Running Dead

As the virus spreads and civilization falls, one mute boy on the spectrum must protect his family. To save them, he’ll have to save the world.

Universal Amazon link: author.to/RobertChazzChute

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My Top Ten List of Books

Yes, if you look closely you’ll see my autographed photo of Kevin Smith.

Please note: What follows is a post from my Facebook Fan Page. If you’ve read my books and dig what I do, you could join us for daily updates, peeks behind the curtain, excerpts from my work in progress and assorted fun bits of nonsense from Ex Parte Press.

I have revised 20,000 words of Bright Lights, Big Deal. I have 93,000 to go. I’ll probably end up cutting a lot of that down. For every book I write, I keep an ODDS file. In this file, I put all my deleted passages, the boring bits, the inappropriate bits and stuff that doesn’t work or serve the story.

I wrote Bright Lights, Big Deal a very long time ago, before This Plague of Days. It’s been interesting to see what I did then and how I’d do things differently now. The differences are fairly subtle most of the time. The later, genre stuff is more action-oriented. I’d say my main sin from back in the day is that my prose was too Canadian. By that I mean there was too much emphasis on character rather than plot movement. I like it when a lot of stuff is happening and character is revealed in reaction to the action.

Same thing happened with This Plague of Days. Originally, it was a plague novel but it was not a zombie novel. I wrote the first book with no zombie content. It was more about society falling apart and how the disaster affected one family. As I wrote and revised and wrote and revised, I added more action because (shrug and smile): too Canadian. (I wanted to write something commercial with the literary aspect in the background.)

There isn’t much Canlit I really like. I have a Robertson Davies reference in Amid Mortal Words. I liked Atwood’s Oryx and Crake but couldn’t get through The Handmaid’s Tale. The Canadian sci-fi I read was Spider Robinson, Robert J Sawyer, and William Gibson.

The writing I love is mostly from American writers: Heinlein, Truman Capote, Stephen King, and William Goldman. (I went through a Norman Mailer phase in university but got past it.)

Who are the authors you most admire? What books are on your must-read or must-read-again list?

My top ten list is:

1. The Color of Light by William Goldman.
2. The Stand by Stephen King.
3. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (loved all the movies, too, but especially the version with Phillip Seymore Hoffman.)
4. Boys and Girls Together by William Goldman.
5. The Princess Bride (Goldman again for the win.)
6. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth.
7. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.
8. The Hot Zone by Richard Preston (the only book that ever truly scared me)
9. The Tommyknockers by Stephen King (wild card choice a lot of fans wouldn’t put in their top ten but I loved it and learned a couple of writing tricks from it, too.)
10. Stephen King On Writing, more for the biography than the writing advice. I’ve read it once and listened to it twice.

I’m looking at favorite books I didn’t write, of course. Choosing favorites from my backlist is like asking me to choose a fave child.

~ I am Robert Chazz Chute, a writer from Other London. I pen killer crime thrillers and apocalyptic epics. Want a binge read? Click the links to the right. Want to join us on the Facebook Fan Page? Here’s the link to Fans of Robert Chazz Chute.

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Story Tensions

You ever have one of those dreams where you have to do something but something else keeps getting in the way? Maybe you’re running from a monster but you’re waist-deep in mud? Something like that happened to me last night. I hosted a party at a remote farm. The setting was perfect for a sorority party massacre a la bunches of bad ’70s slasher B-movies. As the last car was leaving, I called to the woman in the landrover, “Can I get a ride back to civilization?” She nodded but waved for me to hurry. That’s when it turned into a nightmare as the last-minute tasks were loaded up. If I didn’t finish locking up quick I would lose my ride.

As I recall, the list of scenarios was something like:


1. Check the barn for lit lanterns.
2. Check the house to make sure the water was turned off.
3. Solve the Mystery of the Old Mill with the Hardy Boys.
4. Confront a huge monster lurking in the cattle stalls.
5. Wash and dry the dishes and put them away.
6. Deal with a snake in the basement.

The tasks went on and on and, always in the background, the pressure built. I was going to lose my ride and be stuck on this Hell Farm of Eternal Night. The woman waiting in the landrover really amped up the tension and put a clock on the plot. It’s conflict and tension among believable characters that get the story engine chugging.

Anyway, all that nonsense got me thinking about the underlying themes and worries beneath the main action in my books. What’s the big fret our heroes and heroines have to deal with when other missions and side-missions are done?

Here’s my list:

1. This Plague of Days: How’s a mute kid on the spectrum going to save the world from a global pandemic of zombies?

2. AFTER Life: What’s a SWAT officer and a nanotech research scientist to do when they tap into the collective consciousness of a zombie uprising about to invade the United States?

3. Brooklyn in the Mean Time: How is such a flawed protagonist going to solve the mystery of his father’s criminal past?

4. Bigger Than Jesus: How does a hitman get out of the mob and overcome his past?

5. Higher Than Jesus: How does a hitman get past his addictions to save the girl?

6. Hollywood Jesus: Can a hitman go legit? How does he become a hero when everyone, including the FBI, is after him?

7. Wallflower: How does a failed comedian go back in time to save the world?

8. Haunting Lessons: Why is it that a young woman can see ghosts and what does a secret society of assassins have to do with it?

9. Death Lessons: The woman who sees ghosts must return to her home town find a secret weapon to deal with unearthly forces? What’s the weapon?

10. Fierce Lessons: How does a secret society of assassins deal with incursions from another dimension?

11. Dream’s Dark Flight: Why are people around the world dying in their sleep in bizarre ways? How can an NSA analyst, a doctor and a physiotherapist stop the killings from an isolation tank at Berkeley?

12. The Night Man: When a wounded warrior returns home searching for a life of peace, how can he untangle himself from dirty cops, bomb plots and the criminality of his own family?

13. Robot Planet: When the last few humans combat a robot uprising powered by the Next Intelligence, how can they win against such a powerful enemy?

14. All Empires Fall, Self-help for Stoners and Murders Among Dead Trees: How can a writer sell anthologies? Sure, there are several award-winning stories in the mix but literary anthologies aren’t huge sellers. (Self-help for Stoners is really kind of a novelty bathroom book that sells some paperbacks in the run-up to Christmas each year, so there’s that.)

15. Amid Mortal Words: If you had a book that could eliminate all the people who make the world a more dangerous place, would you? How many dead innocents would be acceptable to you?

~ I’m Robert Chazz Chute. In that dream I mentioned at the top? I missed my ride. Alas. I spend my waking hours writing apocalyptic epics, killer crime thrillers, and assorted science fiction and horror. Please click on the links to the right to pick up your next binge read. Cheers!

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Is this the end of the Apocalypse?

Since Dec. 21, Bird Box has been viewed by over 45 million Netflix accounts (as I write this). Judging by some of the reviews I expected a movie with more gore. Perhaps because of that expectation, I was pleasantly surprised by how suspenseful it was. I also don’t expect to see a lot more properties like it anytime soon.

They did several things right with Bird Box. The key to a great monster movie is not to show the monster until you absolutely have to. They hit that target better than any horror movie I can recall. Also, the acting is great. John Malkovich and Sandra Bullock are only two actors but they make up a dozen reasons the movie did well. Though I predicted how the story would end, I thought it ended well enough.

The movie had some of the creepiness and imagination I enjoyed in last year’s Annihilation. However, don’t expect Bird Box to kick off a powerful uptick in apocalyptic movies. Unforgiven is a great movie, too, but it did not herald the return of a bunch of Westerns.

Bird Box was fun and profitable, but it’s a blip. Don’t expect another huge franchise to emerge from it. Here’s why:

The apocalyptic genre is in trouble

Bird Box is a successful movie, certainly. (Good on you, Netflix!) I could easily see this being made into an ongoing series like The Walking Dead. Unfortunately, that would probably beat the idea to death. There’s a trend afoot: people might enjoy a taste of horror like Bird Box or The Haunting of Hill House or Stranger Things. However, they don’t want too much of it.

In recent months I’ve been made aware that the appetite for apocalyptic stories is dwindling. A fellow author who has been very successful in this genre is going back to the day job. I have several apocalyptic/dystopian epics* and I’ve seen sales decay over the past year. This Plague of Days is my most successful series but most of my IPs are taking me on a wander outside the apocalyptic genre as I hunt for my next hit.

Why is this happening?

The wax and wane of trends in consumer tastes has always been opaque to me but I think I’m beginning to get it. There are several possibilities why this is happening to apocalyptic narratives now. Here are a few:

  • Most books in the genre are too repetitive. I’ve noticed that even among the positive reviews of This Plague of Days, some reviewers mention that they love it because it defies expectations of the genre. The tropes are there but it’s not the same story over and over (I’m looking at you, Walking Dead.) Readers get tired of a steady diet of the same thing, even if they liked the taste in the beginning.
  • Speaking of The Walking Dead, times are tough and, until recently, TWD didn’t offer much hope. The relentlessly grim and humorless tone is probably why viewership of the series has lessened. Times are tough right now and a real climate change apocalypse is here and/or coming (depending on where you live). With all the bad news, people want something to cheer them up or allow them to forget real-world dangers. Instead of confirming their suspicions that most of humanity sucks and deserves a grisly fate, readers want a different kind of escapism.
  • Zombie and apocalyptic horror don’t necessarily have a huge fan base. It’s historically a vocal and devoted following but it’s not as big as we might hope. If it were as big as I’d like, there’d be as many zompoc movies as there are mystery/suspense movies with titles with “Girl” in the title. (Note: Those aren’t girls. They’re women. Catch up!)
  • The popularity of genres has always waxed and waned naturally and it goes in cycles. Some of those cycles are long and others are short. There’s even a strange hypothesis out there that zombie and vampire stories are more or less popular depending on whether the Republicans or the Democrats control the US government. Hardboiled, as a genre, hit its peak with Mickey Spillane. Elmore Leonard kept the coma patient on life support with Chili Palmer. Westerns used to be huge but they really haven’t recovered from John Wayne’s death. In my lifetime, the vampire genre has been declared dead repeatedly. That alarm is always false. Vampires always come back. That might be the next trend. I’m counting on it, actually. I have a big vampire book in the works.

If you’re a zombie fan, what can you do?

  • Give fuel to what you love. If you dig apocalyptic fiction, keep on buying it, reviewing it and tell your friends. The fanbase for any genre never completely goes away but if you want more of what you love, you have to double down and support your love. 
  • Give new writers a chance and if they delight you, please do spread the word.
  • If you’re a creator, be excellent and also dare to be a little different. The joke in the horror writing community is that there are no horror writers anymore. They’re all called science fiction writers now. Consider crossing and mixing genres to find new readers. (For instance, the engine that fuels my latest zombie apocalypse (AFTER Life) is nanotechnology. So yes, it’s a sci-fi zombie trilogy.

What’s next?

That’s kind of the point: No one really knows. As my writing idol, William Goldman famously said, “Nobody knows anything…… Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”

But what’s my educated guess?

My next book that is apocalypse-adjacent will be a big stand-alone book about a vampire cult. Meanwhile, I have two crime thrillers coming out in the next month. (Watch for The Night Man, releasing next week!)

I know there are writers trying to find underserved markets in which they enjoy writing. When writer Chris Fox wrote Writing to Market, he enthused about the need for more stories that take place in space. He is successful writing his own books that way. Using his research methods, he determined a niche where readers had a big appetite but not enough books.

Rather than follow his advice and do research to find their own unique niche, a lot of writers only sort of followed Chris’s advice. They wrote a ton of books in the genre that was his example. Boom! Space marines and covers featuring spaceship ass everywhere!

Some writers dream of making a big play and doing something new, forging ahead and breaking trail. They point to JK Rowling’s astonishing success with the Harry Potter books. It is indeed an amazing series. The next few years after Rowling hit it big, tons of knock-offs appeared that tried to follow the magic kid trend. Many mimics, but no duplicates. I actually have no objection to that. All those hungry Harry Potter fans naturally found something more to feed their new addiction to apprentice sorcerers. Nothing wrong with that as long as the attempt is not cynical. There is still joy and profit in smaller niches if those readers can be reached, their brains tickled and their hearts touched.

As for me, I have a lot of books in my editorial pipeline at Ex Parte Press. Are they written to market? I can only say that they are what I want to write. Will any of them hit big? No one knows and the market will decide. Hitting singles is much more common than hitting home runs, but I’m at bat and I take a lot of swings. This is not a three-strikes-and-you’re-out situation. This is a keep-swinging-for-the-fences situation.

Is this the end of the Apocalypse? I don’t think so but I’m not betting as big on it as I did in 2012. I don’t know where all the zombie readers went and what they’re enjoying as I write this. However, books are forever. Genres do come and go but they never fade away entirely. These are lean times for the genre but we’ll still be here when a wider readership decides their new tastes have become old and stale. We’ll be here when they’re ready to come back. In the meantime, we write and write and write.

*I’m Robert Chazz Chute, suspense writer and maker of fine salmon sandwiches. My apocalyptic epics are This Plague of Days, Robot Planet, The Dimension War Series and AFTER Life. You can find all my books through the affiliate links to the right or click here for the universal book link. Thanks for reading and please do subscribe to my newsletter for more.