C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

10/31/2012 • 5:23 PM 9

Ta-da! Motivation, Inspiration & Information for Writers

Whether you’re about to throw yourself into the teeth of National Novel Writing Month or every month feels like a NaNoWriMo frenzy, I have two new books (in pixels and paper) to keep your writing and publishing flow: Crack the Indie Author Code and Write Your Book: Aspire to Inspire. Boiled down from over 1,000 posts on this blog, I’ve edited again, added bonus writing and publishing tips plus new content that’s never been seen on ChazzWrites.

Need more? How about free ebooks? When you sign up for my newsletter at AllThatChazz.com, you automatically get a shout out on the All That Chazz podcast and a plug for your website. However, there’s a new and different cross-promotion you can’t get anywhere else. Sign up for the newsletter, answer a qualifying question in the back of the books, and you get a coupon to receive a free ebook of suspense. Complete the easy giveaway instructions and you get the podcast plug, and/or Sex, Death & Mind Control and/or Self-help for Stoners! If writing and publishing books aren’t for you, there’s a similar offer in the back of Higher Than Jesus, the next instalment of The Hit man Series. (#1 was Bigger than Jesus.)

Jump in for the hardboiled fun. Higher Than Jesus promises a little less swearing, snappy dialogue and jokes, more sex, more twists and more clever violence. My Cuban hit man is embroiled in a conspiracy around an arms deal in Chicago that has dire ramifications for the entire United States. It’s a classic tale of Bad versus Evil.

LATEST PODCAST: The Halloween edition of the All That Chazz Podcast is up with a reading of “The Way Out is Through”, a chapter of Bigger Than Jesus. Hear the podcast at the AllThatChazz author site.

~ Robert Chazz Chute is the author of Bigger Than Jesus, Higher Than Jesus, The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories, Self-help for Stoners, Crack the Indie Author Code, Write Your Book: Aspire to Inspire, and Sex, Death & Mind Control (for fun and profit).

The Way Out is Through (and a bonus!) (allthatchazz.com)

Filed under: publishing, allthatchazz.com, Aspire to inspire, Bigger than Jesus, book promotion, books, Crack the Indie Author Code, E-book, free ebooks, freebies, hardboiled, higher than jesus, mystery, National Novel Writing Month, Podcast, publishing, self-help for stoners, suspense, thriller, Write Your Book

10/18/2012 • 11:24 AM 5

Links-a-plenty: Giveaway, coffee for weight loss, video & becoming more like Joe Rogan

Read my interview and enter to win free ebooks on Jo Michael’s blog today. I get to talk about ninja monkeys, social media and

First it was kale shakes. Buttered bulletproof coffee is next!

what’s next for me, my hit man and all the people we’re going to kill together.

On AllThatChazz.com, I’ve got:

1. An article for you on drinking coffee to lose weight and growing your brain.

2. A podcast of one of my favorite chapters from Bigger Than Jesus. It’s dark and creepy and action-packed and, if you haven’t slipped into the warm pool of sexual chocolate that is my first crime novel, you can listen to this stand alone chapter to get the flavor of my Cuban hit man’s scary childhood. You even find out Jesus’s full name.

3. Check the video to get your first sneak peek of the sexy cover for Higher Than Jesus (launching next week!).

4. I got some unexpected, teary inspiration from Here Comes the Boom! Flick your switch and be more Rogan.

5. While you’re perusing the many podcast and book offerings at AllThatChazz.com, please do sign up for my newsletter. I won’t pester you, but when you sign up (on the left by my stylish photo), you’re up for giveaways and news about what’s exciting at Ex Parte Press. I’m releasing five books this fall, so lots of fun is on the way.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention, if you sign up for my newsletter, your website gets a free mention on the All That Chazz podcast. Also, for a couple more days, I’m still taking “Praise for ChazzWrites.com” for two upcoming books about writing and publishing, inspired by and boiled down from this blog. One happy blog review gets you in the books along with a plug for your book! Jump on it!

Excelsior!

Scoop.it

Space Vegans vs. Stephen Hawking (allthatchazz.com)

Filed under: publishing, allthatchazz.com, Bigger than Jesus, coffee diet, crime fiction, entertainment, fiction, giveaway, giveaways, Here Comes the Boom!, higher than jesus, interview, jo michaels, Joe Rogan, links, Podcast, rafflecopter, suspense, thriller, Weight loss

10/04/2012 • 11:19 AM 3

Publishing: New strategies, plots & plans

I have four books up for sale so far. In less than three months, I plan to release four more. This is the critical, make or break, time for me that requires a little experimentation as we swing into the high season of book sales. Here are my goals and rationales:

1. A friend asked if I planned to put my two short story collections, The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories and Sex, Death & Mind Control into print. I began to say they are a little short for paper. Then an inspiration came. Here’s the experiment: I’ll combine the two, add seven stories that I’ve banked plus a chapter that’s a sneak peek from a coming novel. I’ll also add a little introductory commentary at the top of each story. I will make this collection available only in print.

“You will laugh your ass off!” ~ Author of Cybrgrrl, Maxwell Cynn

2. Within a week or two, Higher Than Jesus will be released. This is the follow-up to Bigger Than Jesus and the second in The Hit Man Series. I listened carefully to the reception Bigger Than Jesus got. Higher Than Jesus will be lighter on the swearing and mix in a little more sex. Add in skip tracer techniques, an assassination conspiracy, an arms deal and a lot more jokes and it’s a winner. Lots of pre-publication buzz on this one from the First Readers Club.

3. Crack the Indie Author Code: Aspire to Inspire is next. I just got the manuscript back from the editor and I’m working through revisions. Anyone who reads this blog will enjoy this, the first non-fiction book that has my name on it. (Ghost writing doesn’t count.) It’s inspiration for writers, but it’s got a lot of useful information and jokes, too.

Paranormal persuasion and scary stories (including two award winners.)

4. This Plague of Days is the story of a boy who is a selective mute on the autistic spectrum. He travels with his family through North America as society collapses. A killer flu has killed more than a third of the population and chaos descends. We see the world through his odd perspective. I wrote this book over the course of a year and I just have to plunge into revisions. It’s a huge book, my longest and most ambitious.

Small-town terrors and psychological mayhem in Maine.

These are high goals over a short time, but I have worked toward these books for a long time. Everything is written. It’s all revisions and editorial pipe now. It’s time to go big. I’m powered by kale shakes and naïve optimism. I can do this.

Intern! Brew me another kale espresso, less pulp this time! It’s go time!

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop (chazzwrites.com)
Why Bigger Than Jesus? What’s it really about? (allthatchazz.com)

Filed under: publishing, Aspire to inspire, Bigger than Jesus, books, Bookselling, Crack the Indie Author Code, crime novel, ebook, ebooks, entertainment, fiction, higher than jesus, Hit Man Series, Non-fiction, paperback, print, Robert Chazz Chute, short story, suspense, thriller

09/29/2012 • 10:37 AM 5

Free tech tools to help you edit and proofread

Proofing and revising can be fun, especially if you have sharper tools to help you do the job better. I now have a new tech tool in my editing arsenal that’s a huge help: free text to speech (tts) software.

I’m in the last stages of revising Higher Than Jesus, the next instalment in The Hit Man Series. I had plot problems to review and choices to make about how fast the action would evolve for my Cuban hit man. Then there are the typos to catch, Chicago street names and geographical logistics to marry up and more jokes to make.

Necessary aside: The tech tool I’m about to recommend is not Scrivener, it’s text to speech software. However, if you aren’t already using Scrivener, I recommend it, not least because Scrivener already has tts built in. (Click speech on the Edit menu.) Last night I needed to know if I’d revealed a name in an earlier chapter. With Scrivener, it was easy. With Word, it would have been a time-consuming pain. Writing Higher Than Jesus is like putting together a puzzle and using Scrivener helped me make sure I wasn’t screwing up. Scrivener is $45 USD and compiles your book for manuscript, print or any ebook platform. This concludes the Scrivener PSA.

As I podcast Bigger Than Jesus, chapter by chapter, I find things that I’d like to change (and do so as I record.) At the microphone, some edits are clearer, especially when you have to speak them. Yes, I know editing never ends, but still, I find things that bug me. Finding those niggles on the mic, I make a note to edit the print and ebook edition. (That’s the beauty of ebook and print-on-demand publishing. I can go back and make those minor adjustments quite easily.)

One way people edit is to go through a draft reading backwards. That’s very tiring and I don’t know anyone who has actually accomplished that for a work of any length. For short stories, that’s reasonable. Another way is to read your book aloud. I do that, but one chapter at a time, one podcast at a time. When I read too long aloud, my throat gives out. TTS helps me catch problems by getting the computer to read the book to me and saves my vocal cords.

I catch much more than I thought I would. As I prepare to hand the book off to my editorial team, I’m saving them a lot of time by giving them a more polished draft. I really don’t want to waste the team’s time. Perfection is impossible, but excellence we can reach.

The Read4Me app is free software that can read you your story, for instance. With tts apps you can, of course, control the speed of the narration. For editing, let it read slow. I listen at 141 – 149 words per minute and follow along as the highlighted text lights up.

One problem is the available voices can sound a bit too much like Stephen Hawking (who still hasn’t updated his speech software! I’d love to hear him talk about black holes as gateways to other universes in a Texas drawl, wouldn’t you?) I tried “Alex’s” voice. Alex is familiar to all Mac users as the computer voice that cuts in and says, “Excuse me,” when a program you don’t want to deal with now requires your attention. I switched to one of the female voices because it punched me in the ears less over time. If you’ve got a long book to read, you want a pleasant voice in your head.

I found another option that’s available free to Microsoft users: NaturalReaders.com. The voices are pleasant and you can easily test out that assertion on the landing page. I’m very impressed with what NaturalReaders.com offers, but here’s a much more extensive list of tts products on Squidoo for your evaluation. And yes, they’re all free.

Dating Scrivener (limebirduk.wordpress.com)
Corkboard mode in Scrivener – never fails to please (davidhewson.com)
Quick (Mac-only) Scrivener tip: find a character’s scene (davidhewson.com)
Scrivener Training Webinar (everythingscrivener.wordpress.com)
From Scrivener to Kindle step-by-step (davidhewson.wordpress.com)
Thinking of using Scrivener? (petedenton.wordpress.com)
Quick Scrivener tip: multiple scenes in full screen (davidhewson.com)
The Tire (allthatchazz.com)
Bigger Than Jesus: RUN! (allthatchazz.com)

Filed under: publishing, Bigger than Jesus, blogging, editing, editing tool, editors, free text to speech, free text to speech. text to speech review, higher than jesus, Microsoft, print on demand publishing, proofreading, Robert Chazz Chute, Scrivener, Speech synthesis, tech, technology, tect to speech as a proofreading tool, text to speech software, the hit man series, tts, writers, writing

08/11/2012 • 12:33 PM 4

And the winner of the Six Words or Less Contest is…

Liberty Montano!

Thanks to all who entered the Six Words or Less Contest. We had some solid entries, but there can only be three in the top three, if my understanding of math is correct.

Liberty’s happened to be the very first entry and the votes skewed toward a religious bent. (I have mentioned

Click to get Bigger Than Jesus here

my Cuban hit man’s name is pronounced “Hay-soose” a ton already, right?)

Liberty’s entry won first prize with:

“Ezekiel 25:17”

Cloakey Notes came in second with

“Revelation 6:17”

Who would have thought I would have so many readers so familiar with Bible text?

Tony Collett came in third with a reference from The Fisher King:

“Moral Traffic Light”.

All three will get mentions on my podcast and, when Higher Than Jesus comes out, they’ll receive a free ebook. Congratulations to each of the winners.

Liberty’s name will appear in Higher Than Jesus and her quote will be woven into the story. Hey, that’s a good character name! Not too many people named “Liberty” out there. She’ll be getting the paperback, too.

As the publication date for Higher Than Jesus approaches, I will contact the winners with details.

Thanks again to everyone who participated.

Announcing: The Six Words or Less Contest (allthatchazz.com)
More Lies for Lily (allthatchazz.com)
Bigger Than Jesus: RUN! (allthatchazz.com)
Why Bigger Than Jesus? What’s it really about? (allthatchazz.com)
Is Bigger Than Jesus sacrilegious? (allthatchazz.com)

Filed under: publishing, action, Bible, Bible quotes, Bigger than Jesus, crime fiction, ebook, funny quotes, higher than jesus, Hit Man Series, Novel, paperback, pithy, Podcast, Robert Chazz Chute, six words or less contest, suspense, thriller, winners, witty

08/07/2012 • 9:13 PM 0

Voting for the Six Words or Less Contest Closes Soon

Just a reminder that the voting closes in the Six Words or Less Contest on August 10. Go to the comment thread, take in the brilliance and vote for the wittiest and pithiest. Nice prizes, bragging rights and greater fame for the winner.

Send your vote to expartepress AT gmail DOT com.

Cheers,

Chazz

Voting Is Open in the Six Words or Less Contest (allthatchazz.com)
More Lies for Lily (allthatchazz.com)

Filed under: publishing, Bigger than Jesus, Contest, crime fiction, crime novel, higher than jesus, Robert Chazz Chute, six words, suspense, the hit man series

07/12/2012 • 11:32 AM 5

Top Ten: My best fight

**I’m so happy with my new fight scene from Higher Than Jesus.**

Here’s why:

Check out all the books by Robert Chazz Chute here.

1. My first draft of this chapter was too easy on the protagonist. I wanted to show that Jesus had skills. He’s not a lame sad sack, though he is subject to Murphy’s Law: If something can go wrong, it will. This seems particularly true of my Cuban hit man Jesus Diaz. When I went revised, the chapter doubled in length to a much more tense and intense sequence.

2. I needed to use this scene to show that the heroine was worth fighting for. I really dislike stories where the heroine is merely an interchangeable object who, when things get dicey, can’t be depended upon. There are already too many stories out there where the guy fights the bad guy while the woman runs away, is tied up, twists an ankle, or presses herself against a wall while looking on in horror. (That’s a way too retro view of women. I like strong women.) A real man in any fight for his life will shriek, “Grab a shovel and hit this monster in the head! Don’t just stand there! He’s trying to kill me, for god’s sake!” Heroes who fight alone with an ally/romantic interest nearby aren’t heroes. They’re morons.

3. I put my protagonist through the burner. His reactions are realistic. He shakes. He trembles. He feels the euphoria of savagery and depths of fear. When bad things happen, he doesn’t just shrug it off. When somebody shoots at you, it’s totally unrealistic to react as if the shooter has offered you a sandwich of a sort you simply do not prefer.

4. The obstacles don’t stop. The guiding principle in The Hit Man Series is this: I don’t like it when the reader knows what’s coming next. Try to anticipate the unexpected. A lot of the time, I’m not sure what’s coming next, either. Expect a fast pace, twists and reversals.

5. A lot of fight scenes are dumb. This one isn’t. It means something much more to the larger story and to the characters.

6. There are long term consequences to a good fight scene. It’s not an episodic chapter of action only for action’s sake.

7. This fight scene elucidates in part how Jesus got the skills he did so what he can do doesn’t arrive out of nowhere.

8. The fight unearths something from Jesus Diaz’s personal history that overturns what readers think they know about his origin story. There was much more going on in Cuba than was revealed in the first book. I only found out when Jesus told me the other day.

9. The fight scene establishes my hit man’s amoral centre, but, because of his love for the heroine, he wants to reach higher. He wants to change. One of his challenges for the long arc of the series is, can he change? Can anyone?

10. When Higher Than Jesus comes out, you’ll see what I mean about this. No spoilers here, but I can say when the action is fast, the scene slows to take in details and make you grit your teeth. When the action slows down, the tension cranks up so there are questions that propel the story to the last word of the scene and the chapter.

This particular fight scene shows where Jesus Diaz has been and where he’s going.

The fight isn’t just with a couple of bad guys.

It’s about the fight between the two sides of Jesus’s character.

It’s about the fight we all face with the devils of our worse nature.

~ Like my flavor? Listen to the first chapter of my crime thriller, Bigger Than Jesus. I’m podcasting the book through the summer. Enjoy! (Or be a hero and just click the cover to grab it. Thanks for reading!)

UPDATE: Click here for the audio of Bigger Than Jesus, Chapter 2.

UBC #15: What’s missing from this thriller’s back matter? (chazzwrites.com)
Top 10 Jackie Chan Fight Scenes in Honor of His Retirement from Action Films (kineda.com)
Noah Wyle: ‘Fight scenes are like sex scenes’ (digitalspy.co.uk)
Ultimate Blog Challenge: Top 10 Things I know I don’t know (yet) (chazzwrites.com)
Choreographing Fight Scenes (tpwords.wordpress.com)
Podcast: Bigger Than Jesus, Chapter 2 (allthatchazz.com)

Filed under: publishing, Bigger than Jesus, Blog, blogger, blogging, Combat, crime, fiction, fight scenes, higher than jesus, Hit Man Series, Jesus Diaz, Robert Chazz Chute, suspense, suspense novelist, Ultimate Blog Challenge, writer, writing, writing fight scenes

07/11/2012 • 10:20 AM 5

UBC #15: What’s missing from this thriller’s back matter?

Something is missing from the following back matter from Bigger Than Jesus.

Pop quiz, hotshot! What’s missing?

About the Author

After several years working in the publishing industry, I took a long hiatus and then founded Ex Parte Press. I was a journalist and magazine columnist and now write in a lead-lined bunker full-time. I’m happily chained to my writing desk by an intravenous line feeding me espresso. My desk chair is a toilet and I’m writing as fast and as well as I can.

Thank you so much for reading Bigger Than Jesus. If you liked it, it will help Jesus Diaz and me immensely if you could please leave a happy review on Goodreads or Amazon or wherever you bought this book. Watch for the next instalment in this series: Higher Than Jesus, coming soon. Five books are planned for this series so far. If you’d like to get a glimpse of Jesus as a mature, more professional, hit man, you can find the story that started his character in my collection of short stories, Self-help for Stoners. You’ll find he’s more polished, but things still go awry. All the latest updates about my books can be found at AllThatChazz.com.

After this note I have a list of my other titles and notes on how to contact me through my websites, email, media inquiries and a note about my podcast and Twitter.

Steady…ready…go!

Here’s my answer about what’s missing:

In its current incarnation, I haven’t loaded up the first chapter of the follow-up book in The Hit Man Series.

Click to get Bigger Than Jesus

It’s written and I should include it. People like a sneak peek and, after spending so much time with my clever, funny and scarred protagonist, they will probably want to get a hint at where Jesus Diaz goes next. I think I really need to include a chapter from Higher Than Jesus. His story continues in unexpected ways, means and places in a plot that includes Neo-nazis, a street gang, drugs, arms, a very tall blonde and a plot to assassinate the President of the United States.

Fortunately, since I can upload at any time, it’s never too late for an afterthought, an improvement or a tweak.