Chazz Comes Undone (+ a free ebook)

A free ebook for you! The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories (2nd Edition) is available free from Nov. 14 to Nov. 18. In this podcast, Chazz hits the wall hard. Mm, actually, it’s more of a bug hits windshield situation. (Check out the tags I’ve put on this post. Yeah, it’s like that.)

This podcast is sponsored by Kit Foster of KitFosterDesign.com. Check out his portfolio and use his services for book covers, web banners, Quote Art, book trailers, promotional videos and all your graphics needs. He’s the best!

Click here to see all the books by Robert Chazz Chute.

Authors & Publishers: How to Make a Media Kit Part 2

For more writing & publishing advice, you could go nuts and buy Crack the Indie Author Code. Just sayin’.

Part One of this article and points 1 -7 appear at ChazzWrites.com. For a sample media kit, please take a moment to sign up for my newsletter in the link to the right or send your email address to expartepress at gmail dot com and I’ll email the pdfs to you anyway. However, if you mention your website in the newsletter sign-up form, I’ll give your page a plug in the All That Chazz Podcast. I’m easy that way.

Now, on to more fun yet crucial points about creating a killer media kit: 

8. Some people think email is easier to delete so they send boxes to media outlets. Stick with email. You’ll never hear from a bunch of the journalists you approach. Printing out a fancy press kit and trying something UPS-delivered with a red ribbon on it is not worth the expense. Better to hit them up for editorial coverage several times through the year and do it cheaply instead of betting it all on one killer package that has to hit now to pay off. Save some of your chips for the next roll. Seriously, please save your money. A document that arrives in the mail is just as easy to dump in the garbage can beside the desk. If the package is perfumed in any way, you just went from quirky and interesting to creepy stalker.

9. Unless you’ve cured cancer and have been keeping it a secret from the world’s medical community until now, don’t pay for a huge media release from a press release propagator. I tried it and, besides jumping through their annoying hoops, it had all the amusing charm of throwing money out the window of a moving car. It was expensive, had no measurable impact and their sales team kept calling until I got mean.

10. Keep the press release short and to the point. More than one page is a strain and a mistake. If you’ve got too much to share it will get lost so use it in your catalogue page. Bullet points are awesome if you can fit your content to your pitch. A solid FAQ page with lots of white space is an alluring alternative. Don’t send a video on CD. There’s a good chance the production values will be too low and they’ll also be afraid that if they watch it, they’ll die in seven days. (Give them a Youtube link instead if you feel your video is that strong.)

11. Provide some detail in your author bio that establishes you as an expert: Awards won, relevant job experience, books written or other media in which you’ve appeared. Keep it short (or go longer if it tells a story. Rags to riches is good. Plucky, spunky and coming up will probably have to do.) You have an advantage over all the other press releases your target will receive today: Every reporter wants to publish  a book, too, so they want to meet you and find out how you cheated, lied and took enough drugs to get this stupidly quixotic. 

12. Think visually and use images: Luckily, this is where your killer book covers come in. To make sure the attachments got opened so they could see and appreciate all my awesome covers, I used this ad designed by Kit Foster of KitFosterDesign.com at the bottom of my cover letter: 

13. Provide your name, contact numbers, email address and websites. It’s a really good idea to remember this point so they can contact you for the interview unless you are wicked clairvoyant. 

14. When they interview you, be positive and chipper and helpful. It’s not in the bag until it’s in print or on air, so pretend you’re an extrovert. Later you can go back to being miserable in private. I am.

15. Hit multiple news outlets over time. It’s unlikely one media event will sell a lot of books. You could get a bit of a bump depending on the venue, but awareness takes time. Sales usually require repeated encounters as you permeate the world’s consciousness. Don’t bet everything on one roll of the dice and keep your expectations low to very conservative. Success always pleasantly surprises me.

16. Someone will be unhappy about your apparent success, however deceptive appearances may be. Ignore them. Several someones may contact you to write their book idea (as happened to me after a much-publicized contest win.) Run away screaming at full speed with your hands over your head. Change phone numbers, and country of residence if they persist.

17. Remember that you don’t do this for the fame and riches. It’s all about the writing and the orgies with the Roman toga theme. Get back to the keyboard and TO-GA! TO-GA! TO-GA!

~ Robert Chazz Chute is the author of a bunch of cool, helpful and suspenseful books that you can buy here. How suspiciously convenient.

I am not puddin’. I am a jungle cat.

McDonalds used to have crap coffee. It tasted so bad, I thought it was a mistake. Then I tried it again and it tasted just as bad. Then they wanted to compete with Tim Hortons and Starbucks and improved. On my next try, I thought the McDonalds’ coffee wasn’t bad (and it was all I’d consume there.) However, after drinking it, I’d always feel awful and sleepy soon after. I found out why: It’s the mold we’re drinking in cheap coffee.

As a writer, I’m incredibly sedentary. I’m drinking, and chewing, kale shakes with some positive results to combat becoming puddin’. When I eat cookies, cakes and carbs, I feel lethargic. Knock back a kale shake and I feel energetic and focussed. But I missed the coffee. I drink almond milk as coffee, but was overloading on aspartame.

Next addition to the arsenal? Coffee, but not your dad’s coffee. Strong coffee filled with slimming MCT oil, coconut oil and unsalted creamy butter loaded with the kind of fats that are healthy for your brain and make you feel full.

I’m working on brain and body hacks using Bulletproof Exec. I can’t afford shipping in coffee, but I do have access to fire roasted coffee that seems fine. (It’s the mold and mycotoxins often found on coffee beans that make you feel like crap and when I drink the fire roasted stuff, I feel fine. I experimented with the butter (ghee) and MCT oil and coconut oil today. WIth a little bit of Xylitol (or stevia) it’s okay. It doesn’t taste as great as a latte loaded with sugar and cream, but the options I’m working with now might save my life, so there’s that.

Scoop.it

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.