What Do You Do With A Bad Review?

March 20, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been getting mostly good reviews for my books, so it came as a shock when I noticed that one woman on Goodreads downrated them. She rated more than 100 books, giving all of them five stars except for a couple of 4-star ratings and three 3-star ratings. And guess whose books were all rated three stars? Mine. I couldn’t understand it — first, because most people who have read my books like at least one of them, and second (and the point that really bothered me), if she didn’t like my writing, why read all three? Why not stop after one or two?

I’d never met the woman, only know of her because we have an acquaintance  in common — someone I met because of my books, not a pre-publication friend. “I doubt she read the books,” this acquaintance told me, “she couldn’t possibly have read them and not liked them; your books are fabulous,” which made the whole thing even more incomprehensible. 

Until . . .

I got a really bad 2-star review for A Spark of Heavenly Fire, which made those three stars seem benign:

Not a bad story…but but but. I love post-apocolyptic stories – but a common mistake authors fall into with it is to immediately lose the sense of horror – their characters hardly react to dead bodies piling up around them – Bertram did this from the get-go. And this book was so badly edited that it is astonishing. Someone made the author chop this up without any concern for the reader’s ability to follow the story and understand the characters…fortunately, I didn’t care enough about any of them to worry about it.
  
Made me doubt myself.  Did I lose the sense of horror? But I never intended there to be a sense of horror (or at least not a sense of ghoulish horror). Nor did I intend to write a postapocalyptic story, which shows you the danger of genre expectations. The whole point was the lack of  bodies. After the first dying, when people died in their cars causing a city-wide traffic jam, people stayed in their houses, so that is where they succumbed to the red death. The only way my characters knew of the continued dying were the orange fluorescent markings appearing on the doors of houses where people had died. To me, that was even more horrible than bodies piling up — just this one simple reminder that people were still dying. Even more horrific was the silent city with soldiers patrolling the streets. That would spook the hell out of me! And no, people would not continue to react to the horror. They would become inured to it. It would become the new normal. And how could the reviewer have missed the hellish scene when two of my characters discovered what was being done with the dead human bodies . . . and the bodies of beloved pets?

Besides, the story was seen through the eyes of a soul-dead nurse, a gung-ho reporter, a self-centered, world-famous actor, and a woman who had that star in her eyes. Would any of them have continued to react to the dying? I doubt it. Still, I did wonder. Should I have shown more bodies piling up?

Then . . .

I was out walking along a residential street yesterday, and there was not a single other person in sight. Not a single vehicle on the road. And I knew I was right. No one would see the bodies if all the people in those houses suddenly died. And maybe they had expired — I had no way of knowing.

So, what does one do with a bad review? Blog about it, of course!! 

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Posted in blogging, books, writing. Tags: , , , , , , . 13 Comments »

Searching for a Blog Identity

March 19, 2011 — Pat Bertram

The best blogs are those with a single focus, or so they say. At the beginning, I blogged about my efforts to get published. When my books were accepted for publishing and before they were released, I concentrated on having guest bloggers. After my books were published, I blogged about writing, promotion, and the progress of my current works (or rather the lack of progress). Then, about a year ago, my soul mate died, and this blog developed a dual personality — the almost dry articles about books and writing and the very wet and weepy articles about grief.

Now I need to decide where I want to go with this blog, to figure out what I want to say. Grief is still a part of my life and will be for some time to come, but I don’t want to be that woman — the one who hugs her sorrow and doesn’t seem to be able to move on. (To a great extent I have moved on. Only you and I know how much I still hurt.) Nor do I want to go back to focusing solely on writing and other literary matters. I’m not sure I have anything to say that hasn’t been said a thousand times before by people far more literate (and interesting) than I.

Even more than having a single focus, the best blogs are written by those who have a unique slant on a subject, who write what only they can write, who chronicle life’s journey in such a manner that the ordinary becomes extraordinary. But . . . it isn’t necessary to be a great blogger to get the benefits of keeping a web log.

In the past couple of years I’ve developed an interest in photography. I have a separate blog for photos — Wayword Wind — and I joined 365 Project, committing to taking a photo every day for a year. This project has helped to turn my focus outward. While walking, I tend to let my mind wander, and it generally wanders to what (or rather who) I have lost, so searching for that special image each day makes me more alert to my surroundings, to what is rather than what is not.

In the same way, blogging helps concentrate my thoughts, makes me more alert to my inner surroundings. Sometimes it seems as if I’m too full of myself, my posts a bit too pedantic, and yet it’s all part of my journey. Like this blog, I seem always to be in a state of flux, searching for some sort of identity . . .  or at least a focus.

If I ever find where I’m going, either with my life or with this blog, I’ll let you know.

Posted in blogging, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 11 Comments »

Will Traditional Ways of Selling Books be Effective in the Ebook Era?

February 9, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I participated in a discussion with several authors the other night concerning ways of promoting our books. For once, I didn’t say much, just sat back and listened to their suggestions for getting book reviews, getting the publishing company recognized by RWA and MWA, getting their books in stores. What struck me was that these were all traditional ways of promoting books. There was not a single mention of online promotion, of alternate means of promoting.

I’m the first to admit that online promotion doesn’t sell many books if you’re an unknown, but to be honest, I never said that it did. For me, online promotion has always been about establishing an internet presence. What I know about marketing books can fit on the head of a pin and still leave room for a host of dancing angels, but I figured that once my books reached a certain critical mass of reviews, sales, and readers (fans?), momentum (via the linked nature of the internet) would cause sales to mushroom. Hasn’t happened, but that’s the theory, anyway.

On the other hand, do the traditional ways work? Or, more importantly, will the traditional ways of promotion continue to work as ebooks supplant print books? I never thought that would happen —  too many of us prefer the comfort of a print book —  but recently two bits of information made me rethink my bias. First, the day after Christmas, Barnes and Noble sold a million ebooks. Second, a recent poll found that college students don’t read books. I’m not sure all those people filling up their ebook readers are actually going to read the books they download, but the fact is, ebooks are selling.

Does it matter that our books aren’t in stores if people are going to buy ebooks? Does it matter that we don’t have offline reviews if people will have to go online to buy the books? Does it matter that we don’t have book signings if there are no print books to sign? Perhaps I’m looking too far ahead. Perhaps print books won’t disappear until long after we’re moldering in our graves, but the ebook era is approaching faster than we imagined. We need to find news ways of promoting to meet the challenge. Oddly enough, blog tours are already so prevalent as to be almost useless. But what’s beyond book signings, reviews in magazines, bookstores? What’s beyond blogging, Twittering, Facebooking? That’s what we need to be considering.

Posted in blogging, books, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Dear (Deleted) — Conversation With a Marketing Expert

January 24, 2011 — Pat Bertram

One of my blogs is Book Marketing Floozy, a compendium of articles I collected to help authors learn how to market their books. Every time I see good information, I ask the writer for permission to post their article on the blog. (If you’ve written an article about some facet of book marketing, please let me know. I’ll be glad to post it on the site.) The articles all credit the writers and provide whatever links the writers wish. It’s one of my efforts to help promote other authors.

A month ago, a promoter contacted me asking for my help in promotion. This promoter owns a word of mouth marketing company that connects businesses with consumers and consumers with businesses. I thought you might appreciate the irony of our emailed conversation. I’ve deleted names to protect . . . me.

Dec. 27 — Pat, Your website & blog came across my search today — excellent recommendations on here for a niche marketing in the literary world!  How long have you been blogging?

I was curious to know if you might be interested in linking to an online degree program. I work in affiliation with (deleted) College and I wanted to make a recommendation to include the (deleted) College Marketing Management degree in your link list.

***

Dec. 30 — Dear (Deleted): thank you for your interest in Book Marketing Floozy. I’ve been blogging for three years, and Floozy is just one of the blogs I run (though it isn’t a blog so much as a resource — I post articles sporadically, and most are written by other authors.)

If you’d like to write an article for me to post on the site about some facet of marketing, I’ll be glad to include any links you want. The only condition is that the article has to be informative and helpful — a how-to — rather than simply self-promotion. –Pat

***

Jan 5 — Pat, We can certainly provide some content for a post.  If that’s the case, ideally would like to provide a link in the post content as well as have a sidebar text link on your homepage or blogroll.  Is this possible? Let me know your thoughts. When would this post?

***

Jan 5 –Dear (Deleted), I can give you whatever links you want in the content, but I don’t have a blogroll on that site, just a list of my blogs.

If the content is acceptable (helpful rather than self-promoting) I can post it whenever you want me to. –Pat

***

(Jan 20) Pat, Apologies for the delay in responding:

Attached is good solid information about the course program we discussed.  It’s factual, so hopefully this is acceptable for your blog.

(What she sent was a list of courses along with a list of possible careers.)

***

Jan 20 — Dear (Deleted), I’m sorry, I didn’t make myself clear. The article has to be a how-to of some facet of promoting. I will then include links for people to get further information about your program. What you sent me is nothing more than an advertisement. Free promotion for you. Book Marketing Floozy is (at least up front) a compendium of articles to help people learn about promotion. The back end, of course, is promotion for you, but you have to give them something to attract their interest. –Pat

***

Jan 21 — Pat, Below is an informational document about a career in Marketing.  Let me know your thoughts on this – hopefully this is something you can incorporate into your blog!

(This time she sent an expanded version of the course syllabus, explaining the career paths that will be open to students once they have their degree. A very expensive degree, I might add — tens of thousands of dollars in tuition.)

***

Jan 21 — Dear (Deleted), This article is still a promotion for your program. It doesn’t tell the blog readers how to market their books. That is the whole point of Book Marketing Floozy. To tell people how to do some facet of promotion. Once they see the wisdom in your how-to article, they might click on information about your program, but you have to give them something to get something. You of all people should know that.

Please read the articles at book marketing floozy to see what I mean. http://bookmarketingfloozy.wordpress.com. I really would like to help you, but Marketing Floozy is a compendium of how-to articles. –Pat

***

Jan 24 — Pat, Thanks for the opportunity of posting on your website.  However, the whole point of us placing a link is for some type of promotion.  The article was written with the intent of being informational about various marketing careers. We will pass on this opportunity then.  Best wishes to you in the new year!

***

That was the end of the conversation.

So, there you have it: a marketing company trying to promote a marketing program on Book Marketing Floozy, and the marketer hadn’t a clue what I was talking about. But then, maybe I’m the one who doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

Posted in blogging, culture, internet. Tags: , , , , , , . 7 Comments »

Grief Update — Throwing a Tantrum

January 16, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I haven’t blogged about grief recently. Actually, I haven’t blogged about anything for a while. I’m in a transitional stage — not sure what I’m feeling, not sure what direction I want to go with this blog, not sure what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’ve been purposely thinking of other things than the death of my soul mate, though grief does geyser up without my volition now and again, especially on Saturdays, the day of the week he died. Even if I’m not consciously aware of that day, still, nine and a half months later, something in me acknowledges the date, and sadness grabs hold of me.

Except not this Saturday. This Saturday (yesterday), I wanted to throw myself on the ground and beat the floor in a full-fledged tantrum. I’ve never thrown a tantrum in my life, but if I’d been someplace where no one could hear me, I would have made an exception. I wanted desperately to talk to him. His death was the most significant aspect of our lives since the day we met, and he’s not here for us to compare notes. I want know how he’s doing. I want to know what he’s doing. Is he doing anything, feeling anything? Or is he drifting on a sea of light, like a newborn star?

It seems impossible that he’s gone, and the simple truth is that I don’t want him to be dead. Sure, I can handle it. Sure, I can deal with living the rest of my life alone. Sure, I can do whatever I need to do. But I don’t want to. I want him. I want to see him. I want to see his smile. I want . . . I want . . . I want . . . All those wants erupted Saturday night, hence the desire to throw a tantrum.

I’ve never heard of tantrum as a phase of grief, but I’ve never heard of most of the stages I’ve gone through. My grief cycle does not at all resemble the stages defined by Kubler Ross. Hers is a simplistic view of grief when in fact grief is a cyclical emotional and physical quagmire. The frequency of my grief eruptions has diminished, and so has the worst of my pain, but the hole his death created in my life remains. I try filling the emptiness with physical activity, talking to people, reading, writing, even eating, but nothing fills the want.

How can someone who was so much a part of my life be gone? Even if he is waiting for me on the other side of eternity, he’s still gone from this life. And I don’t want him to be. I want . . . I want . . . I want . . .

Clear the area. I feel a tantrum coming on.

Posted in blogging, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Unexploding a A-OK Life

December 14, 2010 — Pat Bertram

I had to check my spam comments today to see if anybody’s contest entry ended up there by mistake. (If you add more than a link or tow to your comment, it’s sure to be classified as spam). I thought I’d share some of the canned crap I found.  If these absurdities aren’t enough to ponder here’s something I just discovered: On average, 3.8 cans of SPAM are consumed every second in the United States. Yikes.  

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Grief: Loose Cannon on Deck

December 2, 2010 — Pat Bertram

A loose cannon conjures images of a weapon wildly firing in all directions, but it actually refers to a cannon on the deck of a ship. Cannons needed to be lashed down, but in turbulent waters, cannons sometimes came loose and rolled around the deck. Their great weight (some weighed as much as 1800 lbs!) made those loose cannons a dangerous liability and they could crush a hapless sailor who got in the way.

That’s exactly the way grief feels. Every time you feel as if you’re getting a solid footing despite the turbulence of your new life, whack! That cannon comes loose and crushes you again.

It would be so much easier if the so-called stages of grief were actually stages that you can check off after you’ve experienced it. Denial. Check. Pain. Check. Anger. Check. Depression. Check. Acceptance. Check.

All done, right?

Wrong!

After you’ve gone through the list, there it comes again, the pain or the anger or the disbelief that he is gone, and you have to do it all over again. Add to that the innumerable stages that aren’t commonly known such as isolation, anxiety, low self-esteem, confusion, panic, frustration, hopelessness, loneliness, bitterness, missing the person, fretfulness, hanging on, waiting for you know not what, and dozens of others. Not everyone who has experienced a significant loss goes through all the stages, but no matter what, we’ve all felt that loose cannon and wish we could just tie the dang thing up and get on with our lives.

So we do.

And then, comes another storm, there’s that loose cannon again.

Can you sense the pettishness of my tone? Must be another stage I’ve never heard of. Well, check this one off, too.

Posted in blogging, culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Finding Inspiration From Uninspiring Sources

November 29, 2010 — Pat Bertram

Deserts have traditionally been mystical places where one goes to find inspiration, themselves, the meaning of life, but nowadays people use the desert as a park, a place of recreation rather than re-creation. They whiz by on dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles, they honk their dogs (let the dogs out of the vehicle and and follow along behind, honking whenever the creatures go to far astray), they have drunken parties, and they dump trash, including old furniture.

I used all of these bits to set the scene for the first chapter of Rubicon Ranch: A Collaborative Novel, a novel being written online by me and eight other Second Wind authors, especially the discarded furniture. I do believe I have seen enough old furniture in my walks to furnish a living room, but the piece that most captured my imagination was the television sitting out in the middle of nowhere. No road led to the television, just a footpath. Yet there it was. And so it appears in my chapter:

She turned around to get shots of the trail she’d just climbed and saw a glint of metal reflecting the sun. She squinted. What was that? A television? She found herself smiling—her first smile since Alexander died. She scrambled back down the trail. The television had been dumped a long time ago judging by the creosote bushes that had grown up around it, but footprints leading to the box suggested it had been visited recently. She took several shots from the trail, about fifteen yards from the television, then moved closer. The television had no screen, and she could see that something had been stuffed inside. A doll? She crept closer. Ten feet away, she stopped to take another photo, and the truth washed over her. Not a doll. Crammed inside the console was a child, a girl, her eyes half-eaten by some desert predator.

We’ve now posted the first six chapters of Rubicon Ranch, the latest one by Christine Husom, author of the Winnebago Mystery Series.  The most fun of a project such as this is that we do not yet know who killed the little girl (if in fact, she was killed) and we won’t know until all but the final chapter has been written. I hope you will enjoy following our story as we write it.

  • Chapter 1: Melanie Gray — by Pat Bertram
  • Chapter 2: Seth Bryan — by Lazarus Barnhill
  • Chapter 3: Jeff and Kourtney Peterson — by J B Kohl and Eric Beetner
  • Chapter 4: Dylan McKenzie — by Nancy A. Niles
  • Chapter 5: Mary “Moody” Sinclair — by JJ Dare
  • Chapter 6: Cooper Dahling — by Christine Husom
    • Posted in blogging, books, fiction, internet, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

    Tell Them Pat Sent You

    November 22, 2010 — Pat Bertram

    I am doing NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), which is why I am temporarily back to blogging the way I started out — a post a day. It’s been fun; I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed blogging. I started this blog soon after I hooked up to the internet because I heard that all authors should have a blog as the foundation for promotion. I hadn’t a clue what a blog was, hadn’t any idea what blog platform to use, but wordpress seemed intuitive to me, and so I signed up — a bit timidly, I admit. That timidity didn’t last long. I took to blogging like a frog to a bog, and never looked back.

    The fun of blogging comes in saying whatever you wish, but the most fun is saying something that touches people enough that you get comments and have conversations. Thank you, everyone, for making this such a great experience.

    A special thank you to frequent commenters: Carol Ann Hoel, Malcolm R. Campbell, Carol J. Garvin, Sheila Deeth, Joylene Nowell Butler, Leesis. Not only have they helped me through a very dark time in my life, which is reason enough to salute them, they all have wonderful blogs of their own. Clicking on their names will take you to those blogs. If you leave a comment, tell them Pat sent you.

    Posted in blogging, culture, internet, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

    Blog Jog Day: Introducing Light Bringer

    November 21, 2010 — Pat Bertram

    Welcome to Blog Jog, a one-day jog around the highways and byways of the blogosphere. Feel free to rest here for awhile before you trot on to the next blog in the jog. If you don’t know where to start exploring Bertram’s Blog you can scroll down to see my latest posts, or you can check out the index of all my posts: Archives.

    Everyone who leaves a comment on this post will be entered in Second Wind’s best contest ever — a chance to win a copy of every title Second Wind will publish in 2011. This will include a copy of my upcoming book Light Bringer, which is scheduled to be released in the spring of 2011. (Suzanne Francis, author of The Song of the Arkafina Series, and first person ever to read my new book said Light Bringer is “brilliant.” My favorite word!)

    Light Bringer tells the story of  Becka Johnson, who had been abandoned on the doorstep of a remote cabin in Chalcedony, Colorado when she was a baby. Now, thirty-seven years later, she has returned to Chalcedony to discover her identity, but she only finds more questions. Who has been looking for her all those years? Why are those same people interested in fellow newcomer Philip Hansen? Who is Philip, and why does her body sing in harmony with his? And what do either of them have to do with a shadow corporation that once operated a secret underground installation in the area?

    So, be sure to leave a comment, then jog on over to visit novelist and writing coach Emily Hanlon at: Fiction Writing: the Passionate Journey.

    You can find the entire list of participants for Blog Jog Day at: Blog Jog Day.

    Note: If you don’t want to receive information about upcoming releases and contestsfrom Second Wind, be sure to note that in your comment. You will still be eligible for this contest.

    Posted in blogging, internet, writing. Tags: , , , , , , . 22 Comments »
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