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

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

07/01/2013 • 7:45 AM 1

This Plague of Days: What I brought back from the dead

When I worked in traditional publishing, author Anne Rice made vampires huge in popular culture. It seemed everyone was reading Interview with the Vampire (and then all her other books). Soon after, many agents and editors burned out on vampires. Vampires were done to death. The professionals were ready to put a stake through the heart of the phenomenon, so it must be so, right?

Episode 3 launches today! If you’ve been holding back on jumping in, now’s the time!

Foolish humans.

After the pros declared vampires were finished, the next wave came: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Twilight series, endless graphic novels, fan fic and True Blood.

If you live long enough, you begin to see patterns repeat. It happens in products and news cycles and franchises. Interesting things don’t go away. They get made anew.

The challenge in resurrecting any subject is to make it fresh: Cheerleader versus vampires in a world secretly packed with demons; vampires that sparkle in sunlight, more sex and whatever else it takes to make the old seem new.

Today I ran across an interesting blog entry. The author is tired of zombies. Good news! Zombies are still undead, too. Whether it’s new fans discovering old material in new forms (e.g. the World War Z movie), zombies as love interests, or my new serial (This Plague of Days), fresh takes abound for new fans and for those who think they’ve seen it all.

For more video and to read the rest of this article at ThisPlagueofDays.com, click here.

My zombies aren’t dead. They’re sick, angry and hungry. (thisplagueofdays.com)
True Blood, The Vampire Diaries or Twilight? (mynerdobsessions.com)
True Blood Musings (Episode “You’re No Good”) (popcultureimmersion.com)
I like hot Vampires so bite me! (jomakessix.wordpress.com)
BleedingCool.com – Interview With A Vampire / Neo Edmund (askneo1.wordpress.com)
I’m About That Vampire Life (blackgirlnerdy.blogspot.com)
Lost Buffy the Vampire Slayer Footage Surfaces; Mr. Pointy Rejoices! (dreadcentral.com)
Watch: Previously Unseen Behind The Scenes Footage From ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ Season 2 Hits The Internets (pinkisthenewblog.com)
This Plague of Days, Episode 2: An emissary arrives (allthatchazz.com)
This Plague of Days: The mind virus is spreading. Have you caught it yet? (allthatchazz.com)

Filed under: publishing, rules of writing, This Plague of Days, What about Chazz?, Amazon, Anne Rice, author anne rice, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, fan fic, government lies in a crisis, Interview With A Vampire, pandemic, Robert Chazz Chute, This Plague of Days, True Blood, Twilight, Vampire, video, world flu pandemic, World War Z, world war z movie, YouTube, Zombie, zombies

03/14/2013 • 10:30 PM 4

More Fury: Haters, Taxes, #Readings, #Podcasts

FYI: The new edition of the All That Chazz Podcast is up at AllThatChazz.com and it includes:

1. Waiting in shivering anticipation for Liberace.

2. A short, crazed rant on haters and my unreasonable sensitivity.

3. Jesus explains and forgives plus Stitcher issues.

4. Bradley Manning and awesome podcast recommendations.

5. Scott Sigler on the Joe Rogan Experience (and self-loathing.)

6. Two readings: Chapters 9 and 10 of Higher Than Jesus: Hollow Man and Fight Club.

7. Whining about taxes and railing against my accountant.

Listen to the new podcast, More Fury: The Hollow Man Edition. If the show tickled your fancy, please leave a happy review on iTunes because that helps. If you don’t care for All That Chazz, try the Cool People Podcast. Cheers!

~Chazz

PS What am I doing? Editing the same way I do everything: Furiously.

Podcast: Furious! (allthatchazz.com)
New podcast release at AllThatChazz.com (chazzwrites.com)
I screwed up. I’m going to need a bigger boat. (chazzwrites.com)
The Mean Streets Edition (allthatchazz.com)
The Grinding Gears Edition (allthatchazz.com)
The Unknown Man Edition (allthatchazz.com)

Filed under: podcasts, All That Chazz Podcast, Author, author reading, books, Bradley Manning, Cool People Podcast, crime fiction, crime novels, ebook, fight club, haters, iTunes, Jesus, Joe Rogan, Podcast, Robert Chazz Chute, Scot Sigler, Scott Sigler, The Hollow Man, video

02/08/2013 • 10:55 AM 5

#VINE: A new way to use #VIDEO to get new readers & listeners

Tips and inspiration for the indie author’s journey to publication.

What’s Vine? It’s video Twitter. Make a six-second movie and spread your word. I’m all over this and I’m telling you now as your fellow author and good buddy, get in early. Not a lot of authors are there yet, so join me, join the fun and build your platform, too. It’s a fun tool and toy. We need tools like this to muster more promo mojo and muscle our way into minds. I’ll explain why we need Vine to build our book cults.

I’ve used Vine so far to let people know about my podcast and books, but also just to let people know I can be witty in six-second bites. I hope they’ll conclude I’m worth more of their time in other media. (Oh, and not for nothin’, the new free All That Chazz podcast is gripping. The What’s Uncool Edition is available to your ears here and now.)

Why video? Video and audio are easier for people to consume than books. Yes, there are still actual readers out there, but to stick a barbed hook in an eyeball, we have to reach out to them where they are. If rabid video consumers aren’t already readers, don’t complain. Convert them to your cult.

I expect objections from a few.

There’s a neo-Luddite reflex in many authors that says:

1. “I shouldn’t have to do this!”

Waaah! I don’t want to floss, either. However, I like my teeth. Besides, if you do it right, marketing and promotion can actually be fun and productive.

2. “Here’s another piece of technology that takes us away from books!”

Here’s another piece of technology to attract new readers to your books.

3. “Video is the death of literature!”

Video is another medium. People who really love reading books will still make time for reading books.

4. “Real book lovers won’t be watching six-second video loops of cats playing.”

Have you ever met a bibliophile? Your demographic loves cats to the point it may be unhealthy. “Real” book lovers have varied interests because, mostly, they’re intelligent.

5. “This is yet another promotional thing to spam and annoy people.”

Not if you’re clever and fun. (Are you saying you aren’t clever and fun? Get off my blog! You can’t possibly be a friend or fan of mine!)

6. “I don’t know…sounds hard.”

Check it out. It’s easy, intuitive and took the shortest time to set up than anything else I’ve ever set up. Vine is definitely worth the minor time investment and it’s free. You will need an iPad, iPhone or iPod. I use an iPod because it’s the cheapest option that makes my life better. If I couldn’t do that, I’d borrow an Apple device from a friend once a week for a few minutes.

7. “But how will people find it?”

It not only works like Twitter, it’s integrated with Twitter and Facebook.

8. “But what can you do in only six seconds?”

Remember when I told you the story about the editor who said of Twitter, “I can’t say anything of value in 140 characters.” Translation: She was telling the world she was a lousy editor. Lots of people manage it so we can, too.

9. “I heard Vine is just filled with porn.”

They had issues with pornography but Apple made Vine’s developers scrub it. That end of the story got a lot of media coverage as Vine launched. That was last week. That data is out of date.

10. “I’m already on too many social media and can’t take the time.”

To the second point, it’s six seconds. You can spare six seconds. (Okay, maybe it takes me a minute and six seconds to get it right and post it.)

As for being on too many social media platforms: Evaluate what’s working and delete what isn’t. For instance, if you’re not looking for a job, dump LinkedIn. I did.

We call them platforms because that’s where we climb up to speak to a larger crowd. Do it and, if you’re tragically unsexy like me, do what I do and let puppets do the talking.

As soon as you download the app and get set up, find me, follow me and show me your videos. It will be great to put voices and faces to all of you. Without video, I’m just imagining you’re all lingerie-clad Angelina Jolies, Joan Chens and Beyonces. Even the guys. Especially the guys.

What Is “Vine”? (fox2now.com)
Will the “Vine” start to grow on Journalist? (drakej70.wordpress.com)
9 Things We’d Change About Vine (mashable.com)
Vine’s 6-Second Video Loops: The New 140-Character Tweet? (fishandbicycles.com)
Why I Like Twitter’s Vine App (livinglocurto.com)
After Its Porn Problem, Twitter-Owned Vine Adds 17+ Age Rating To Video Sharing App (techcrunch.com)
Why Vine will be as revolutionary as Twitter was (theweek.com)
Vine app for iOS, waiting game for Android (phonesreview.co.uk)
Vine Ripened – Twitter’s New Six Second Video App (vergenewmedia.com)

Filed under: author platform, book marketing, podcasts, Vine, All That Chazz, Apple, blogging, book, book promotion, books, ebooks, entertainment, fun, funny, Marketing, Media, Podcast, podcasts, promotion, promotip, Robert Chazz Chute, six-second video, social media, technology, Twitter, video, Vine

01/20/2013 • 8:45 PM 7

Micro-publishing is publishing: Tools, tech and committing to change

WordPress Widget: Milestone

Your greatest tool is your mind, but your armoury doesn’t stop there. There’s that baseball bat under your driver’s seat. Oh, and glance to the left for my new deadlines, on display for Thor and everybody. I’ve struggled a bit with two works-in-progress. I had a false start and have to backtrack a bit with one (for the greater good). The other book is in revisions. It’s a huge project. It’s so secret, a team of kidnapped international scientists are working on it in a fortified base under a volcano guarded by an army of cloned ninja monkeys.

Projects need deadlines and production schedules. Successfully meeting those goals requires that I broadcast those commitment to my peers. That’s you, and that’s where the time trackers to the left come in. It’s a countdown to the launch of my metaphorical rockets. The timers are created with a WordPress widget you can use, too. On the Widgets menu of your WordPress dashboard, it’s called Milestone. Easy-peasy-here’s-a-reminder-to-stay-on-track.

Use Animoto for quick and easy video messages

The second tool for spreading the word is Animoto. Videos get more attention than text. That’s our world. Deal with it. Many readers will click the video without reading these words. That’s okay. I just wanted to point out that a couple of months ago, I made a loud declarative statement that I would soon have all my books available everywhere. After polling a number of fellow authors and chatting with friends and allies through this blog, it’s apparent to me that I’m not ready to ditch KDP Select entirely just yet. The migration to other platforms will be slower than I anticipated because the consensus is that exclusivity with Amazon is still the better bet overall. My forays into other platforms will be experiments, measured and evaluated.

Here’s a link to my first Animoto video.

Make a video of your own at Animoto.

Ditching intermediators

The beauty of micropublishing is that we can be flexible and change our minds without calling a meeting or paying extra fees for each detail. In the spirit of taking full control of my books, I’m ditching BookBaby. For my first book, Self-help for Stoners, I used their service to publish the ebook. It might even have been the right choice for me then. I was too intimidated by the details of dealing with formatting and taxes and I wanted to get my book published faster.

Now I’ve got it together eight or so books later, it’s apparent I’ve sacrificed too much flexibility in giving up Self-help for Stoners to an intermediator. Any minor change in strategy costs more money, takes more time and, frankly, they’ve been slow to respond to my requests in the past. I like when the check arrives, but with a little more effort, I can cut costs, regain control and optimize the book. Once I withdraw it and republish, I can make those changes quickly and easily. I’ll release Self-help for Stoners as a new edition with new material. This baby’s growing up. No more hesitation or excuses, hoping things will get better. I’ll make them better.

Book category Bingo

Speaking of switching tactics easily, readers may find you by your book categories. They may not discover your awesomeness for the same reason. When is the last time you revisited your book’s categories?

I reviewed all my books’ assigned categories yesterday. For my writing and publishing guides, I changed to “Editing and proofreading” for the first book and “Authorship” for the second. You are allowed two categories per book. Choose wisely. For Bigger Than Jesus and Higher Than Jesus, I switched from “Hardboiled” to “Crime” and from “Suspense” to “Crime” respectively. I’ll give that some time and if there’s no improvement, I might try switching to “Men’s Adventure” and see how that flies. It’s free to experiment when it’s all under your direct control.

Experimentation, improvement and getting it right is fun when it’s under your control.

~Robert Chazz Chute is that guy who thinks like a hit man but has learned to sublimate his rage with humor, usually. Hear the first chapter of Higher Than Jesus, in which his hit man, Jesus Diaz, looks for love in all the wrong places (and Vicodin and bombs in Chicago.) It’s on the All That Chazz Podcast, broadcast chapter by chapter once a week. Or just go read the book. It’s fun and funny.

8 Tools to Create an Irresistible Ebook (chazzwrites.com)
Allison M. Dickson: Why I Left Smashwords (chazzwrites.com)
Seven publishing trends that will define 2013 (pandodaily.com)
Kindle books from Word: A micropublishing tutorial (walt.lishost.org)
Top 9 Thoughts on Why You Might Want to Self Publish (selfpubadvocate.wordpress.com)
#NaNoWriMo: How to make reading like cardio (chazzwrites.com)
How I handle trouble (like Jesus) (chazzwrites.com)
My Year in Indie Publishing: Lessons learned (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: publishing, Amazon, Amazon.com, Animoto, Author, book, book marketing, commitments, crime, deadlines, E-book, micropublishing, Publish, publishing, suspense, video, WordPress, writing

01/04/2013 • 7:02 PM 1

Write like the wind!

Maybe someone will write a song for you, too, some day.

Filed under: publishing, Game of Thrones, video, write, write faster, write like the wind, YouTube

07/26/2012 • 5:39 PM 2

UBC #27: Use Google Search Stories to tell your stories

Every day, there is a lesson. This new video was created with Google Search Stories. It’s easy and quick. The only trick is finding the video creator because Google will send you, nine times out of ten, to an old site that doesn’t actually have the video creation tool anymore. There are a lot of angry people out there who would love to use this tool, if only they could find it!

Here’s the link:

https://searchstories-intl.appspot.com/en-us/creator/

Bookmark it.

But before you go, there’s something else that’s important to be learned here. Go back through your links and see what you need to update. I just realized last night that I hadn’t updated my book page on my author site for awhile ( as in not since two books ago!) The page was out of date. Then I realized I needed to update my tags on a couple of my books on Amazon. I know we all have long to-do lists, but from time to time, go back and look at the pages you hardly ever look at. Revisit old blog rolls and see what links are dead or inactive. (I recently overhauled this page so I got rid of my blog roll completely and instead, to your left, you’ll see a nifty grid of blogs I follow.)

You don’t have to do it all at once, but little by little, cut out the dead wood, weed your garden and revamp. There’s surely stuff there that needs to change. When everything works right, your readers won’t thank you, but when something’s broken, it will really annoy them. Sadly, they still probably won’t tell you. They just won’t come back.

~ Robert Chazz Chute is the author of Bigger Than Jesus, Self-help for Stoners and other titles that bewilder, intrigue and mostly annoy. Ah, but you saw that in the video. Never mind. If you visit my author sales page, do a brother a solid and click “LIKE” and at the bottom of the books sales pages, please click “Agree with these tags.” That would help me, make you a better person and possibly cure your scurvy. Cheers!

UBC #23: Loves & hates & the Fab Blog Award (chazzwrites.com)
UBC TOP TEN: Everything we know is wrong. Stop That! (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: publishing, Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Bigger than Jesus, blogging, etiquette, Google, google search stories, Robert Chazz Chute, search, search engine, technology, Ultimate Blog Challenge, video, YouTube

07/17/2012 • 9:51 PM 2

NSFW: Make stuff

As you regular readers know, I love Kevin Smith. Here’s another reason.

(And yes, this applies to books, too.)

Filed under: publishing, #Makestuff, Art, creatives, Criticism, critics, critique, entertainment, film criticism, Kevin Smith, make stuff, movies, video, writer, writing

05/17/2012 • 9:01 AM 0

VIDEO: Confrontation over copyright infringement & CYA

Caricature of Gregory House Italiano: Caricatura di Gregory House (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This week, the theme that emerged on the blog is: Writers in Conflict with People Who Undervalue the Work and Try to Take Advantage of Them. In this tense video, a writer whose work has been stolen gets recompense from a newspaper. (Well done for keeping it civil and still getting paid.) I can’t help but wonder how this would have gone down differently without the camera running. Got a problem? Take a camera.

Failing that, keep all your emails and the paper trail so when people cross you, you can crush them if you need to. Don’t crush them if you don’t need to, of course, but be assured that at some point it will come up. Recently I felt I had to use a digital voice recorder when forced to chase someone over a bill. Even though I ended up only leaving a voicemail, I kept the recording to show how unfailingly polite I was if I needed to show the transgressor what reality looks like. It saddens me that these things are sometimes necessary, but after getting harassed by someone once, I now keep the recorder by the phone should anyone ever make the same mistake. When people get nasty, they inevitably hang themselves with their own rope.

What a downer. So we should also affirm that mostly? Things work out. Most people in the industry have good intentions. Most people deal in common, solid business practices. Very few people set out to be unkind. Usually, the problem is in a miscommunication, a misunderstanding or the person who is in the wrong is only wrong. A mistake is not the same thing as a sin. Also? When people are unkind, it often catches up with them. (Just yesterday, an old enemy fell due to the atrocity that is her personality. Am I unkind to taste the delicious schadenfreude? Yes, a little, I suppose. However, despite my efforts to stay pure and innocent, I’m still human so I have to point out that karma is a bitch and so was she.)

We have to believe that most people are doing the best they can. We have to believe that most people are good. To keep moving forward through our days, we have to believe it.

Believe it, even if it’s not true.

You don’t really want to be Dr. Gregory House.