In my upcoming novel, our protagonist is Dr. Simon Fethullah, a forensic psychiatrist who worked for the FBI. Shot on the job, he retires to the wilds of Montana with his wife Carla and his faithful dog, Stefano.
Simon helped put the Rainy Day Cannibal away, but the serial killer has disciples. Though behind prison walls, the killer’s reach can still find Simon. Add in a dead presidential press secretary and a kidnapped girl. Now you’ve got Where The Night Takes Us, a rocking psychological thriller that plays with the blurred limits of time and memory. (The query is on submission to agents.)
A Brief Excerpt from my Next Crime Thriller
To deal with what his wife calls his post-apocalyptic stress disorder, Simon takes his therapist’s advice. After a dark realization, he makes the following notes on his phone.
How to Slow Time’s March and Live Longer and Better
1. Eat healthier and in reasonable portions.
2. Move more and lift weights.
3. Prove Denise wrong by enjoying rural life.
4. Play with my dog more.
5. Watch less social media and talk to Carla more.
6. Be more social. (Be real. I won’t do that.)
7. Read more books. Maybe write another book.
8. Do not shoot self in head.
9. Shoot someone else in the head when they come for us.
In my neighborhood, there is a cursed place. Today, that location is a new sushi restaurant. Before that? A Burger Factory. Before that? A forgotten string of failures. A new renter arrives with fresh ideas and colossal hope. After a year or two, another restaurateur takes up the challenge and shoulders the curse. Why anyone invests all their life savings in a restaurant is a mystery to most. To anyone who does not share the dream of making unappreciated food for an oblivious public, it is madness.
I would never invest in a restaurant, but I understand the passion for the risk.
Some clods don’t think writing a book is “real work.” They devalue the effort and call it a hobby. Some even want it all for free. It’s just typing, after all, right? Hell, in weak and depressed moments, I’ve called it an expensive hobby! When a reviewer says, “I don’t understand why this book isn’t a bestseller,” all I can say is, “Me, neither, man.”
And how many people really have the time, energy, and attention span to read anymore? Is this really a job or a fairly pointless compulsion? What kind of fool wasted months or years to compose a novel?
Here, I raise my hand. I’m that kind of fool. I don’t know if my next book will be a smash hit, but I enter into every story with that same hope. It’s madness, really.
A peek into how my workday began
After only a few hours of sleep, I think I woke up around 3:30 a.m. I lay in bed with wild thoughts about Where The Night Takes Us. The manuscript needed an extra kick to get the grand seduction going. It’s a dance to draw readers in, and the steps were not quite right yet. I deleted a chapter yesterday to speed up the pacing. I added something crucial to the beginning yesterday, too. Satisfaction eluded me. What else would make the recipe sweeter?
Gave up on sleep at 4 a.m.
The nagging sense that I’d lose some sugar made me crawl out of bed and to my laptop. More words, particular and well-chosen, had to get written before I could lose the thread. I had to sew some seams and make the presentation more appetizing. Perfection is always out of reach, but at least I can make it more right.
Officially, Where The Night Takes Us will be my thirtieth novel. I’ve been here before. The energy behind the compulsion to get it published is always the same. Years ago, a novelist’s house caught fire. He braved the flames to reenter the burning building to save his manuscript. I get it, but it’s madness, isn’t it?
Anyway, I caught the words before they could slip away. If this is a curse, I must enjoy it. When the manuscript is fully baked and out of the oven, I hope you’ll enjoy my madness.
It is now 5:15 a.m., and my brain is buzzing. I may as well stay up and keep cooking. Somewhere out there, I have to believe hungry readers are waiting for my next concoction.
I got to the grocery store early for more yogurt because I found a fake cheesecake recipe you’ll want to eat every day, all day (below).
Crossword (Done! I abhor cross words, but I love crosswords.)
Read more of The Children of Men. Damn, this is a good book.
Study French.
Workout at home today (kettlebell, mobility, balance, bodyweight exercises, stationary bike, boxing, & lots of squats).
I am working through the third draft polish of Where The Night Takes Us. (Greatest challenge: timeline logistics.)
Now, to that fake cheesecake that’s going to blow your mind:
1 cup plain high-protein yogurt
1 egg
1 tablespoon cornstarch
splash of lemon and/or lemon zest
Optional: sweetener
Mix it up, slam it in a ramekin, bake at 350 for 12 minutes, review Vengeance Is Hers and/or join the review team for Where The Night Takes Us, and enjoy!
Optional: top with berries.
You’re going to love it.
If you like 1984, The Burning Library, It Can Happen Here, or A Different Drummer…
Fishing boats that could never make it to the United States from Venezuela are blown up. The killers don’t even know who they killed. Outlandish claims are used to justify colonialism and tyranny. Old allies are threatened while old enemies are embraced. People who seemed smart are working toward a future that values AI over human beings. Dumb and bigoted monsters spew hate-filled sophistry. Christian identity is placed above actual Christian values. Journalists who don’t ask follow-up questions become abused stenographers. Upholding the law is only for the lowly. Judgment is left to future historians instead of the courts. Dangerous users are protected by the powerful, and the helpless have no voice. A buffoonish conman with dementia has the nuclear codes.
This is not a complete list.
Q: What will 2026 bring?
Ar: More of the same.
Q: What can we do?
A: Hold on.
The same hate that brought the haters together will tear them apart. Their incompetence is the root of their failure. As the former cult members are betrayed by their champion’s false promises, they will peel off. Whistleblowers will find their breath. Former true believers will discover they have a spine after all. Eventually, many who voted for him will pretend they’ve never heard the name. When he comes up, they’ll look away and try to shift the conversation to anything else.
One day, we’ll look back and ask, “Why didn’t we have to wait for them to implode? Why didn’t the courts stop him? Why didn’t everyone laugh in his face? Where were you when the veil fell from everyone’s eyes? Why were you so quiet?”
About Me
I write fiction. I don’t like bullies. I trust science and distrust authority. I try to keep my worries to the things I can control. I escape into fiction by reading it and writing it.
About You
If you don’t agree, you won’t like my work, and we definitely should not be friends. Until you have your road to Damascus moment, that’s the way it is.
If you are a reader who feels as I do, we should be friends, and you’re going to love my books.
~ I am Robert Chazz Chute, the winner of fifteen writing awards. I pen crime stories, psychological thrillers, and apocalyptic epics, and I remain defiant.
Chute’s thought-provoking crime thriller tells the story of Molly Jergins, a bright, restless teenager who grows up in the small town of Poeticule Bay, Maine, a tight-knit, picturesque village floundering and long dominated by a single powerful family. When Keith Faun, the town’s hockey star and the son of its most influential businessman, brutally assaults a younger boy and escapes punishment, Molly finds herself consumed with revenge fantasies. Her petty pranks soon escalate into a campaign to drive the Fauns out of town: she sabotages their family business and publicly damages their credibility, with each act calculated to chip away not only at their sense of untouchability but also the broader community that enables it.
At its core, this novel is an exploration of the insular dynamics unique to small towns—blind loyalty to old families, unthinking hostility toward outsiders, and reflexive protection afforded to their golden boys. What stands out most are not the creative revenge sequences but the way cruelty is normalized: a principal who dismisses violence, a sheriff more concerned with reelection than law enforcement, neighbors who carry on like it’s business as usual. Here, Chute (author of Endemic) pushes readers to consider whether such institutions can really be trusted with justice—or if it falls to individuals to enforce it.
This ethical dilemma is embodied most clearly in Molly herself. While she obviously cares about fairness, her obsessive tendencies leave readers questioning whether she is driven by justice or simply by her power to deliver it. The story’s pace sometimes falters under the sheer number of revenge plots, with these convoluted sequences limiting Molly’s character development—but she remains a complex, morally gray protagonist who readers will want to follow, if only to see how far she will go. Overall, those who are drawn to dark small-town noir will enjoy the clarity with which this gripping tale examines power and complicity.
Takeaway: Dark small-town thriller examining the blurred line between justice and obsession.
Everybody relax. This announcement is not about measles. I’m talking about my multiple award-winning novel Endemic, Within Each of Us, A Power and a Curse. Despite Amazon sabotaging the release of Endemic, it went on to win first place in the genre category of the North Street Book Prize.
Now, I’m doing something different.
This dystopian novel has been exclusive to Amazon since its publication. No more! I recently published it widely (hat tip to Draft2Digital for facilitating that release). After getting such a nice review from Publishers Weekly, I decided that I needed to expand my readership and also get into more libraries.
The list is interesting.
There are so many book sales platforms out there, and a bunch I’d never heard of! Aside from the familiar ones like Barnes & Noble, Overdrive, Kobo, Apple Books, Smashwords, and Baker & Taylor, Endemic is also available on Everand, Odilo, Borrow Box, Vivlio, Tolino, Cloud Library, Gardners, Palace, and Fable.
Selling entertainment sounds like it shouldn’t be hard, but book marketing is hard. Having a book on sale everywhere in some ways adds to that difficulty. On the other hand, Amazon already betrayed me with this book from the start, so I want to give it another chance with new readers.
I’ve experimented with going wide in the past and always came back to Amazon because they knew how to sell books. My faith in their system has since faded, and it’s time to expand my reach to new venues and tactics. I’ve written a lot of apocalyptic epics and killer crime thrillers. To reach new readers around the world, I’m committed to keeping Endemic widely available beyond Amazon and will publish more of my novels widely in the near future.
If you’re curious about Endemic, it’s about an introverted neurodivergent book editor turned urban survivalist gardener caught in the midst of a disaster. Hounded by marauders, bullied by her father, and haunted by her dead therapist, Ovid Fairweather has to make her way in a fallen New York City. She was a nail. She will become a hammer.
That’s Endemic by me, Robert Chazz Chute, and now it’s available on Amazon, but now, it’s also available just about everywhere else!
You can get the ebook, paperback, or hardcover. If you dig it, please leave a review. I’m new to all these platforms, so naturally I’ve got no reviews on them yet.
Last week, She Who Must Be Obeyed toured southern France with Business Daughter on a celebration trip. Meanwhile, I had a stay-at-home writing retreat. (I often started each day flailing at my keyboard with gusto at a local cafe, but same, same.) I also perfected a yogurt cheesecake that would blow your mind.
Besides the cheesecake, steaming the carpets, and cleaning the house, I made substantial progress with my next novel. I’ve been reading a lot of forensic psychology to enhance the plot, plot twists, and verisimilitude. More on that in the future.
During my retreat, I took a break from my Vocab Menace video series. I enjoy these quick little video essays so much, I figured it was time for another VM roundup!*
*Note the rare use of that exclamation point to underline my sincere excitement.
Today’s video:
Here’s the latest group of videos from my Substack, also available on my YouTube channel. (Scroll down the blog for an earlier list of Vocab Menace video essays.)
If you’ve enjoyed my latest release, Vengeance Is Hers, please consider reviewing it on Goodreads and Amazon. That vigilante justice needs more love and attention. Thanks again.
