books | Bertram's Blog

Sex SCENE not SEX Scene

July 14, 2009 — Pat Bertram

One problem new writers have when they approach a sex scene is that they think of it as a SEX scene rather than a sex SCENE. Any effective scene — sex or not – serves multiple purposes. This is especially true of a sex scene, otherwise it will seem unconnected to the story, as if you just threw sex in the mix because you felt it was time to titillate your readers.

One good use of a sex scene is to show character. One of my favorite scenes in my novel A Spark of Heavenly Fire is when Jeremy King, a world famous actor, sleeps with a woman he just met in a bar.

The sound of weeping woke Jeremy. He turned his head toward his companion and saw one trembling shoulder and a tangle of gleaming hair.

He stretched luxuriously. The red hair hadn’t lied. The girl had been all fire, kindling a passion in him he hadn’t felt in years. The memory of it made him hard.

He reached over and pulled the girl into his arms. He smoothed back her hair and kissed away her tears, murmuring, “Honey,” and “Sweetheart,” and “Dear.”

“I’m such a terrible person,” she said, sobbing.

“Shh. Shh,” he whispered between tiny kisses.

Her arms stole around his neck, and her lips sought his. In a surprisingly short time she bucked beneath him, calling out his name.

You’ve still got it, King, he thought exultantly. Then, after one final thrust, he tumbled into oblivion.

I always liked that scene. It’s not very graphic, but it did what I wanted it to — define the characters

Another good use of a scene is to show the ebb and flow of human connection. For example, you could have three scenes spread throughout the story. In the first scene, perhaps, the man climaxes, feeling connected to the woman. When he immediately goes to sleep, she feels disconnected. In the second scene, perhaps he can’t get it up, leaving him feeling disconnected, but since he tries to make it up to her by cuddling her, she feels connected. In the third scene, they climax together, perhaps cuddle afterward, so they both feel connected.

In addition to the sex, then, you show a pattern of connection and disconnection between the couple (in other words, conflict), you show a whole new perspective of the characters, and you show a change in their relationship. You also end up with a subplot that adds to the overall richness of the story. In other words, you end up with a series of sex SCENES, not just SEX scenes.

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Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, character, sex scenes, writing: sex scenes. 5 Comments »

Pat Bertram and Malcolm R. Campbell Discuss the Writer’s Journey

June 22, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Malcolm: I’ve always liked the concept of life as a journey in which each of us walks as a seeker and/or a hero on a winding route to places we don’t yet know or understand. So, I appreciate the invitation to stop by your blog and talk about the writer’s journey.

Bertram: The mythic journey concept has infinite possibilities, both as a story structure and a metaphor for one’s life as an author. Do you make use of the mythic journey structure in your writing?

Malcolm: There are mythic qualities in THE SUN SINGER (2004) which is based on the hero’s path or the mythic journey as you call it. Ditto for the as-yet unpublished GARDEN OF HEAVEN. The upcoming JOCK STEWART AND THE MISSING SEA OF FIRE is unrelated to the others and is sort of a mystery/humor novel about a newspaper reporter.

Bertram: I like your image of writers as seekers walking a winding route to places we don’t yet know or understand. I often mention how hard writing is for me, but that’s because I don’t know how to write the books I want to write. I have to learn how to write each one separately as I’m writing them, and each takes me on a different journey.

Malcolm: My long-time mantra comes from author and teacher Richard M. Eastman’s book Style: Writing as the Discovery of Outlook (3rd edition, 1984):

“You don’t begin to write with a complete message or experience already imagined, which is then to be wrapped in language as a means of sending it to your readers. Writing isn’t so much communication as creation. In a real sense, you don’t have an outlook on anything without first having written on it. This outlook comes into being through the dozens of tests, choices, and unexpected chances which turn up as you write on some engaging topic; and most writers agree that the final creation isn’t anything you could have precisely anticipated when you first set pen to paper.”

Bertram: That makes sense. For me, blogging especially is a way of discovering my outlook on whatever it is that I’m writing about.

Malcolm: This has been true for me whether I was writing a national register application, applying for a grant, writing a feature article or working on my novels, The Sun Singer (2004) or Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire (coming soon). In each case, I began with a body of knowledge and an opinion that were very different by the time I finished writing.

In terms of subject matter, do you find this to be true with your novels? I’m guessing that regardless of what you knew about pandemics, your understanding of them and their potential impact was much different after you wrote A Spark of Heavenly Fire than it was when you were first thinking about writing the novel.

Bertram: My research into pandemics was actually quite extensive, and so was my research into the government’s response to such an emergency (I based my fictional response on actual executive orders that Clinton signed), so there wasn’t much difference in my understanding during the course of the book, but there was a big difference in my thoughts about what they want us to know and what they don’t. When I learned about Pingfan, the Japanese biological warfare installation where they did horrendous experiments on POW’s and nearby villagers, I thought I’d stumbled onto something really explosive. Yet, as happened to a character in A Spark of Heavenly Fire, the very next novel I picked up used Pingfan as a setting. It got me to thinking about the nature of cover-ups, and many of the discussions in the last half of the book took place while I was writing the book.

Malcolm: We often hear that the writer’s journey has an inner and outer aspect. I see the outer aspect plot as it unfolds with a variety of characters, locations, and challenges. You chose Denver and pandemics for A Spark of Heavenly Fire and I chose the Montana Rockies of an alternate universe for The Sun Singer. Thinking of stories based on the hero’s path schema, from Star Wars to The Matrix to Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings, the emotional, psychological changes and spiritual growth of the protagonist are viewed as more central and important than his thoughts, words and deeds. In mythic terms, the hero undergoes a transformation by undergoing the trials and tribulations of the outer journey. Robert Adams undergoes a transformation in The Sun Singer just as Jock Stewart is changed by the events in Sea of Fire. Do you feel this way about Kate Cummings and Greg Pullman?

Bertram: All the characters in A Spark of Heavenly Fire undergo transformation, especially the women. I always liked Washington Irving’s quote, and wrote the book using it as the theme: “There is in every true woman’s heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.”

Malcolm: In my life, the deepest part of the writer’s journey comes from how the writing changes me. The Sun Singer and the darker, as-yet unpublished Garden of Heaven were each written over a twenty-year period because, other than the plot and theme the reader sees, these novels dealt with integral issues within my own life. I had a lot to work out!

Bertram: I’m beginning to see that what I write is what I happen to be living. My first four books explored the theme of public lies and hidden truths because that’s what I was studying at the time. My current work supposedly explores the theme of safety vs. freedom, but it’s really about change, and there is a lot of change in my life right now.

You have a book that’s going to be published this summer. You once mentioned that you wrote it differently from the first two.

Malcolm: In Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, I opened the floodgates and let the words flow. I wrote quickly and it felt like play because I had turned my wisecracking alter ego loose with no chains or boundaries. When I finished writing and editing the material in less than two months, I felt the good kind of tired one feels after an afternoon at a carnival or a day at the beach. This was energizing because, well, I was still capable of play and the benefits of play. Do you feel this “play value” from certain chapters of your novels or from your short stories?

Bertram: I start out playing with ideas and characters, and then when I start writing and trying to make all the pieces come together, I lose that feeling of play. One of the things I am looking for on my journey as a writer is more playfulness. I don’t know if you can you choose where you want to go on the journey, or if the journey takes you where it wishes, but I would like to experience what you did — opening the floodgates and letting the story flow.

Malcolm: I’m curious about your novel in progress.

Bertram: So am I! For a long time I had no real idea what I was writing — I thought I was writing a whimsically ironic apocalyptic fantasy — then all of a sudden one day it dawned on me I’m writing another story of a mythic journey. As my hero tries to find his place in a world that changes by the minute — cities becoming prairie, oceans appearing out of nowhere — he follows the hero’s path, and becomes transformed.

My third book, which is going to be published in a couple of months, was my first mythical journey story. It’s about a young woman who discovers that her grandparents were recently murdered which came as a shock to her because her father claimed they had died before she was born. She goes on a journey to discover who her grandparents were, why someone wanted them dead, and why her father lied to her. I purposely used the mythic template for the book (wanted an excuse to use it, actually), though her mentors and allies aren’t the typical alien or fantasy characters such as wizards, but are aged gangsters and conmen.

Malcolm: My father’s brother was murdered in Fort Collins before I was born. The case was never solved. From time to time, I wonder what happened. Time and distance are part of the challenge of finding details. It would be a journey to dig into it as your character will do in Daughter Am I. I love the concept of going back to figure out the real story.

Bertram: I do, too. All of my books follow the same underlying story: who are we, really? And how do our experiences change us? Which brings me to another question I want to discuss: does a person write a book or does the book write a person?

Malcolm: Your question reminds me of the difference between a layperson’s view of a complex and a Jungian analyst’s view of a complex. People sometimes admit that they have one complex or another. Jungians see it the other way around, saying that the complex has you.

Perhaps the relationship between author and book is the same for many authors, with the book holding a much greater sway over the author’s life than s/he–and especially his readers–may believe. At best, it’s like a marriage, author and book, and the better the book is, the better that marriage has been.

Bertram: That makes sense. I am at a crossroads in my writing life. I’ve used up the theme that haunted me for many years — public lies and hidden truths. Because of my stories, I seem to have come to an accommodation with the reality, and so I no longer have any desire to write about such things. So now I’m waiting for some other . . . passion, perhaps. Or a transformation. Because it does seem as if writing transforms us.

Malcolm: People often talk about defining moments, good and bad. Afterwards, they see themselves and the world differently. Plunging into the deep waters of a work of fiction in progress is also a defining moment. Writers experience what their characters experience whether it’s the horrors of Pingfan or the joy of my protagonist in The Sun Singer when he reaches the summit of a mountain of visions. We polish these scenes until the horror and the joy are shown to the reader in ways that cause the greatest impact. Doing this, I think, changes a writer just as much as a “real life” experience.

Bertram: In The Writers Journey, Christopher Vogler talks about writing as a perilous journey to probe the depths of our souls, and that the struggles we undergo to write, to sell our work, to deal with rejection seem to kill us, but we are resurrected to write again. And to go on another journey. Best of luck with your next journey, Malcolm.

Malcolm: This has been fun, Pat. Of course, I’m not the same person here at the end of the post that I was when we started. But that’s what it’s like being on the path.

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Posted in blogging, books, fiction, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, Daughter Am I, Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, Malcolm R. Campbell, pandemics, Pingfan, Richard M. Eastman, Style: Writing as the Discovery of Outlook, The Sun Singer, The Writer's Journey. 26 Comments »

The Writer’s Journey

June 22, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Malcolm R. Campbell, my guest today, worked as a college journalism instructor, corporate communications director, technical writer and grant writer before publishing The Sun Singer in 2004. Malcolm says:

Writers’ journeys are filled with highs, lows and limbos, and down at the what’s-my-next-word level the path often looks like a mess. Joseph Campbell suggested that our lives often appear disorganized when viewed close up. Yet when the point of view is pulled back far enough, the route from here to there and back again stands out as perfect and well orchestrated.

I wrote my fantasy adventure novel “The Sun Singer” in 1983 because there was a story inside my head that I thought I ought to tell. A young man suddenly becomes psychic when he visits a bronze statue of Apollo. At first, it’s fun. Then he sees a tragedy and his gift is immediately tarnished and he tries to ignore it until he ends up in a mysterious alternative universe in the western mountains. He needs the gift to survive and to complete a mission his avatar grandfather couldn’t complete.

When I found an agent who liked the novel, that was definitely a “high.” While she thought literary fiction with a teenaged protagonist would be a challenge to market, she liked the story and settings and wanted to try Within a month, I withdrew the novel when she told me one of her other clients books suddenly became a bestseller. That meant my novel would sit on her shelf for potentially a year before she could actively work with it. This was definitely a “low.”

The low got lower when the manuscript was rejected by about 100 publishers, many of whom liked the book but said that nobody could successfully sell a literary novel to teens or a teenager’s story to adults. This was pre-Harry Potter! They wouldn’t touch the book unless I added ten years to the character’s life. This began a 20-year period of limbo when “The Sun Singer” sat at the bottom of the sock drawer forgotten until I self-published it in 2004.

The agent did me a favor. She saw the novel in a pre-PC era. The book was a paper manuscript typed with an electric typewriter. When I took it out of the sock drawer in 2004, I had to scan it into a file with an OCR program. What a mess. In the process, I fine-tuned the book a great deal. It became a much better story.

I suspect most writers can tell similar stories. Manuscripts that look hot, then look cold. Stories buried in the back of a file cabinet that suddenly come to life years later.

My upcoming novel, “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire” is quite a different story. I had been trying to market a companion book to “The Sun Singer” for over a year when a publisher told me that in today’s market, no publisher was going to take a risk on a 240,000-word, push-the-envelope literary novel by an unknown.

Intended or not, I heard a challenge in those words: do something to become known. That meant putting another manuscript in the sock drawer and writing a much shorter book for a mainstream audience. I wrote the first draft straight through without stopping. The story seemed to tell itself because it was sitting right under my nose. My alter ego “Jock Stewart,” a hard-boiled 1940s-style reporter, had been running a blog called Morning Satirical News with exactly the style and focus I needed.

After taking 20 years to publish “The Sun Singer” and 10 years to write the companion book, writing a book without all the angst of creation was a very empowering experience. It represented a jog in my writer’s journey that I had never foreseen. I’m still rather stunned by what’s happened. I have a feeling, though, that one day I’ll stand back and see everything from another perspective and feel that what happened had to happen as though the trail was always clearly marked on an old map I’d forgotten about.

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Posted in blogging, books, life, writing. Tags: Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, Joseph Campbell, Malcolm R. Campbell, Morning Satirical News, The Sun Singer, writer's journey. 9 Comments »

Where Do We Go From Here?

June 11, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I’m sure it won’t come as any surprise to those of you who follow my blog and my comments, but I am at a crossroads in my life. I’ve spent most of the past eight years learning to write, writing my four novels, studying the publishing industry, sending out query letters, dealing with hundreds of rejections, finally finding a publisher, preparing the books for publication, and then waiting for their release. Two of my novels have already been published and the other two will be published later this year — Daughter Am I in August and Light Bringer in November. Daughter Am I is in the proof stage right now, and I am doing the final edits of Light Bringer. (Have I mentioned how much I hate doing that? It’s the one phase of writing that I truly abhor — de-wasing the manuscript, getting rid of the justs and onlys, the ups and downs, and all the other extraneous words that only serve to dilute the story.)

Eventually though, the books will be put to rest — in readers’ hands, I hope. And then what? The overall theme for these four books has been public lies and hidden truths, but Light Bringer pulls it all together and kills the need to write any more on the topic. I do have another book in the works, which is about half finished. I thought I was writing a book about freedom vs. security, but it turns out that I write what I live, and so the book is really about change. Lots of changes. Perhaps the reason I haven’t been able to work on that particular manuscript is that I need to first rethink my journey as a writer and decide where to go from here.

Which brings me to tonight’s discussion. One thing I am rethinking is this group. Members come and go, though a few people have participated in most of the discussions. Considering the few participants recently, I’ve been wondering if I should disband the group, but the fact is, I still enjoy it. So, even if I end up monologuing, I will continue. But . . . should I restructure to make it more user friendly? Set it up at another time? Perhaps 7:30 to 8:30 pm ET? Change the focus of the discussions? We’ve talked about many different aspects of writing, but perhaps there are topics that you would like to discuss that we haven’t touched on. Perhaps you would like to post bits of writing for critiquing? (Though I have to tell you that I can’t really participate in such discussions — I no longer feel that I have the right to give my opinion about other people’s writing since I don’t follow the rules myself.) Also, I have become a bit self-conscious about asking people to host. It seems to be a bit of an imposition, especially since there are so few regulars. So do I continue doing that? Or do I post the discussions myself until someone volunteers?

Besides talking about where this group should go from here, let’s also talk about where we each will go from here. I know I’m not the only one at a crossroads. Some of you are getting published, others are doing the final revisions on their books or beginning the querying process. Still others are setting up new websites with a look to the future. Maybe together we can figure out the next step.

On Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 9:00 pm ET, the group No Whine, Just Champagne will discuss where we go from here, both as a group and as individuals. I hope you can make it. I’m interested in what you have to say. Everyone is welcome to participate, and I hope you will!

Click here to join the live discussion: Where Do We Go From Here? If you prefer, you can leave your comments here on the blog. I would like to know where you are going.

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Posted in blogging, books, internet, writing. Tags: live chat, live discussion about writing, No Whine Just Champagne, writer's goals, writer's journey. 9 Comments »

30% of More Deaths Than One — Free at Smashwords

June 7, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Both of my novels, More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire are available at Smashwords. Smashwords is a self-publishing platform and online bookstore for indepedent ebook authors, publishers and readers. They offer multi-format, DRM-free ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device. (Kindle, Sony, Palm, Stanza, etc.) Many publishers (including Second Wind) are starting to use their services, which allows them to offer their books in all the ebook formats with little added expense. Why is this so important? As I’m sure you know, ebooks are the wave of the future, even for those traditionally slow to adapt to new technologies, such as the over 50 crowd. (Does this still hold true, I wonder? Most people I meet who enthusiastically embrace computers and the internet belong to that age group.)

The new demographics are:

People 50 or older are leading the way in adopting the Kindle, followed by those 18-34
People 35-49 prefer using their iPhones to read e-books
But most people (48%) are still using their computers or laptops to read e-books
While e-books are1.5% of the total book market, ebook sales grew 125% overall in 2008
E-book sales grew 183% among seniors aged 65+ and 174% among seniors aged 55-65

So whatever your choice of reading device — printed book, Kindle, Sony, computer — I’ve got you covered. (Do ebooks have covers? Perhaps that wasn’t as clever a word choice as I thought.) And, you can begin reading online immediately.

My Smashwords profile: Pat Bertram
Smashwords: More Deaths Than One
Smashwords: A Spark of Heavenly Fire
Printed Book: More Deaths Than One
Printed Book: A Spark of Heavenly Fire

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Posted in books, internet, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, ebook statistics, iPhones, Kindle, More Deaths Than One, Second Wind Publishing, smashwords. 1 Comment »

When Did the Realization “I Am a Writer” Hit?

June 5, 2009 — Pat Bertram

The title of this bloggery is the topic of a discussion on Facebook hosted by Christine Husom, a fellow Second Wind author. My response was:

The realization that I am a writer hasn’t hit, and I’m not sure it will. I’m very involved with writing — I belong to various groups; I talk a lot about writing; and even when I’m not writing creatively, I’m writing: blogs and articles, comments and emails. But I don’t define myself as a writer. When you consider all that being a published writer entails — promotion, engendering good will, etc — writing is a small very small part of the whole.

Of course, when I’m accepting the Nobel Prize for literature a dozen years from now, perhaps then the realization will hit. (You do know I’m joking, right?)

A few people responded that of course I was a writer, and they are right — I do write, therefore I am a writer. I even have two books published. But the question was: when did the realization hit? And it never did. My journey to becoming a writer was a long, smooth (or almost smooth; let’s just forget about those 200+ rejections) journey from first draft to second, from second draft to edits, from edits to proof to copy-edits, from proof to finished book. I saw so many copies of my proofs that when I received the final book, it never struck me as being different from the proofs I’d struggled over. Even the demarcation between being published and not being published was smeared. A month or so before A Spark of Heavenly Fire and More Deaths Than One showed up in print, I noticed that they were available from Second Wind Publishing as ebooks. I don’t know how long they’d been on the site, but their availability made me a published author, and I wasn’t aware of it.

I’m sure if I was making a living off my writing, I’d define myself as a writer. And if I won the Nobel Prize, I might. But still . . . I blog more than I write creatively, but I don’t call myself a blogger. I promote more than I blog, but I don’t consider myself a promoter. I sleep more than I promote, but I don’t call myself a sleeper. (Though some people might.)

But how I define myself isn’t the question. The question is: When did the realization “I am a writer” hit? And my response holds true. I never did have that realization.

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Posted in blogging, books, internet, life, writing. Tags: being a writer, Second Wind Publishing, the writers life, writer's journey. 14 Comments »

Pat Bertram And Lazarus Barnhill Discuss Writing as Destiny

May 26, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Lazarus: The other day I was marveling at the uncanny string of events—starting with a writing contest on Gather.com—that brought me many wonderful new friends, saw the publication of my first two novels and empowered me to express my artistic vision in ways that I never imagined. When I read Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, I began to wonder if in fact what I saw as a lucky string of chance events was really a matter of listening to a still, small voice that has always intended better for me than I could have imagined for myself.

In a nutshell, Julia Cameron says that, whether you call it destiny, the hand of God, or just the creative direction of the universe itself, our purpose is to create and we allow ourselves and others to stymie our creativity.

Bertram: Are we really fulfilling our destiny, though, or does it just feel like it? The solar system seems to be designed perfectly, with the planets constantly moving, yet staying out of the way of the other planets. But it wasn’t always so. At one time they were banging and crashing into all sorts of space debris, and over billions of years they annihilated everything in their path to end up the ordered system we know. So, is our writing destiny the same? Something we see only in retrospect, perhaps, with our brains trying to make sense of chaotic events?

Lazarus: Do you think when you write that you are fulfilling an essential aspect of your truest purpose for existing?

Bertram: I do think the universe itself is a creative power that we tap into, and that we are creative by nature. But . . . if we are all fulfilling our natures as writers, who is fulfilling their natures as our readers? Writers need readers, and now that there are (supposedly) more writers than readers, how can writing really be our destiny? Except personally, perhaps.

Lazarus: Cameron teaches two “sacred acts” in The Artist’s Way. The morning pages (3 pages you write when you first get up in which you allow your inner self to freely express itself) and the artist’s date (essentially, you have to have 2 hours a week in which you go off by yourself and do exactly what you want).

When I first started doing the morning pages, I was correcting my spelling and changing my word choices. All of that was stymieing the child inside me; and if I don’t let that child have a say, he disrupts whatever the grown up Laz wants to do

Bertram: Three pages when you first get up in the morning, just to express yourself? I never could understand how people can dash off the pages like that. It takes me an hour or two to write a single page. I try to be more spontaneous in my blogs, just to let the words and feelings flow, but it still takes me more than an hour to write 300+ words.

Lazarus: Whoa, Pat, sounds as if you’re a “blocked creative”

Bertram: Blocked creative? Maybe I just don’t have any ideas. Or maybe my inner child likes to play with words and sentence structure.

Lazarus: Well, seriously, what would happen if you just started describing how you were feeling at the given moment?

Bertram: Usually when I sit down to write I don’t feel anything but peace. Not a whole lot to say about that. And when I do let the words roll out, I usually end up with a silly character interview or something equally worthless except as a blog post. I really don’t have a lot to overcome. I figure my inner child is my outer child. Pat Bertram was two years old on May 17th. That’s when I started from scratch to create myself as an author rather than just a writer.

Most of my inner demons I let out while writing my first book. I don’t usually acknowledge it as my first book — it was too much me and not enough creativity. To say nothing of terrible writing. Still, it did help me work through the past and allow me to re-emerge as . . . still don’t know, actually. I’m still emerging.

Lazarus: How many stories do you currently have swirling around in your cerebellum?

Bertram: None. I know you don’t believe it, but it’s true. If I had any stories there, I’d be writing them.

Lazarus: How do you know when you’ve heard a worthy idea for a new novel?

Bertram: I don’t know. Mostly I have to put several ideas together. And I don’t have any ideas right now.

Lazarus: Do you often suffer from long “dry spells” in which you don’t have anything to write or you don’t know how to get started?

Bertram: Is it a dry spell if you don’t feel like writing? Or if you’re doing something else instead, such as promoting? Even when I’m writing, I have more non-writing time than writing time. I need to let things percolate.

Lazarus: Yes, I call it “marinating.” How long does it usually take for your stories to percolate. Do they progress in stages?

Bertram: Definitely stages. Even when I know where I am going with a story, I seldom know the details.

Lazarus: But I have the sense that you’re implying you can’t promote and really write creatively. Is that right?

Bertram: I have a one-track mind

Lazarus: But not obsessive?

Bertram: No, not obsessive. I just can’t commit to two projects at once.

Lazarus: Have you ever had the experience of being so hooked, engaged in a story that you turned your back on other pursuits just so you could write?

Bertram: No, not really.

Lazarus: You’ve completed four novels, though you told me Light Bringer is going through a final polish. How long do each of these projects take and usually how much time elapses between them?

Bertram: Light Bringer has been ongoing for eight years. Or thirty-eight if you include the research. It won’t be completely finished until it’s published later this year.

Lazarus: Thirty-eight years of research? So you’re bringing your entire life’s experience to bear on this piece.

Bertram: Yes. Everything I ever learned. And studied. Daughter Am I was the quickest — outlined in one day, written in a year. A couple of months usually elapse between books, mostly so I can type them up. I write long hand.

Lazarus: Pat, does the average reader perceive the deeper messages you conceal in your stories?

Bertram: I don’t know. The books are written so that even if they don’t see anything beyond the basic story, they should still like them. At least that’s the plan.

Lazarus: Had to back up and start over when you said that. So you acknowledge then that your books function at differing levels of depth; that there are meanings to be fathomed that someone reading just for enjoyment might miss?

Bertram: It’s possible that there are meanings people will miss. Heck, I missed some of it! When I proofed A Spark of Heavenly Fire, I saw themes that I didn’t put in there.

Lazarus: You didn’t put there? Is it fair to say that a really well written book will plumb emotional, human themes beyond the writer’s intention? And that’s what’s happened with your books?

Bertram: When a story flows, when everything is motivated, it makes sense that some ideas, emotions and themes show up that aren’t planned. If the characters are true, it has to happen. I am not saying that the characters do things that I don’t plan. Their actions are completely planned. But some underlying truths could emerge.

Lazarus: This is the contradiction in you that is so mysterious: you talk about being methodical, plodding, taking years to write a single piece; and yet at the same time you admit that the story flows from a place deep within you and parts of it emerge unannounced.

Bertram: I have a dual nature: half mystic, half logician.

Lazarus: Did you ever think that you are really “discovering” the story: that some mystical intentionality has dropped the clues of the story in your consciousness, in your experience and intended you to find them and fashion them together?

Bertram: Of course.

Lazarus: Then writing these stories is your destiny?

Bertram: So this is what you were leading up to.

Lazarus: It’s not like you didn’t see it coming.

Bertram: I don’t know if the stories are my destiny, but I do think they wanted to be written.

Lazarus: Yes! Wanted to be written. They wanted to be written by you. And I like the notion of “half way.” They came to you in pieces and only half conceived. They were waiting for you to complete them.

Bertram: But it’s also possible that mystical intentionality is myself.

Lazarus: Okay, that’s a realistic point of view.

Bertram: One thing that’s always puzzled me is that when I sit down to write, my mind goes blank. Other people can write a book a month. They can let the words flow. I have to dredge each word out of my mind. Yet, when my books are finished, there is an inevitability about them as if they were inspired, not perspired (at least it seems that way to me). But I don’t believe that they are “destined.” It’s all the little choices I make along the way that creates the inevitability. When you start writing, you have the entire world to choose from, but as you make choices — genre, setting, characters, plot, etc, etc, it narrows the story world and keeps narrowing it until it seems inevitable. Yet it all comes from the thousands of choices that we made.

Lazarus: I have one other question about the way you create these stories: is it possible it takes so long to write them because it is mentally strenuous for you to overcome your own internal resistance to writing?

Bertram: It’s possible. Yet when I started writing, I had nothing to overcome. I wanted to do it. It was only when I had four unsalable books that the logician in me decided it was silly to keep writing.

Lazarus: So now that you’re published (and selling! Unsalable my eye) can you tell the logician to take the back seat? Though Julia Cameron wouldn’t call it your logician. She would call it your Censor.

Bertram: Right now, the logician really doesn’t have anything to do with it. My problem is I don’t write books I know how to write. I have to learn how to write each book. And the one I’m doing now has me totally flummoxed. It’s truly a ridiculous project. Three distinct parts with distinct themes.

Lazarus: What? I thought you said you didn’t have a story rolling around in your head.

Bertram: It’s not in my head. If it were, I’d be writing to get it out of my head. It’s an incredibly silly/mystical/apocalyptical story. I started it when I thought I couldn’t get published — decided that I would write something totally unpublishable.

Lazarus: “Totally unpublishable.” (translated) “I’m writing this just for myself and the beauty of writing”?

Bertram: For something to do.

Lazarus: Oh, you are so perverse!

Bertram: After I started writing it, I got a computer and had to learn that. Then I got the internet and had to learn that. Then some idealistic publisher (Second Wind Publishing) decided to publish my books, so I had to learn how to promote.

Lazarus: Something else I want to explore. First let me ask if you saw Spielberg’s “Minority Report”?

Bertram: No.

Lazarus: Spielberg is to filmmakers what you are to novelists: intentionally convoluted. He makes these incredibly compelling movies and critics totally don’t even get them.

Bertram: I am not intentionally convoluted!!!

Lazarus: Okay, if you were an intentionally convoluted person and someone called you on it, wouldn’t you say you weren’t?

Bertram: You’re right, an intentionally convoluted person would not say they were convoluted, unless of course it would make them seem doubly convoluted by agreeing that they were.

Lazarus: But we need to tie this back in to your particular talent we’re talking about tonight. In the same way as “Minority Report,” More Deaths Than One is incredibly full of irony. It’s a very gratifying novel, even as it surprises the hell out of you.

Bertram: I’ve been wanting to ask you for months. When we talked that time, I asked if you were disappointed in More Deaths Than One, and you laughed and said no. Why the laugh?

Lazarus: . . . So I’m wrestling. Shall I let you off the hook by letting you ask me a question? Okay, but I won’t stay distracted for long. I laughed because the book was totally unexpected. I knew when I first read the initial chapter during the TruTV Search For the Next Great Crime Writer contest on Gather that it was written lights out. Where you took it in terms of 1) character development; 2) plot twists (I love plot twists); 3) ironic subthemes; and 4) emotional gratification was truly gripping and surprising. I laughed because anyone who knows anything about writing would know how good it is.

Bertram: Tell that to the 200+ people who rejected me.

Lazarus: Steinbeck submitted 40 novels (different novels) before he had one accepted. This says more about the publishing industry than you. Now back to the task at hand: “The devil in Ms. Bertram.”: Your romance vignettes that were published in Love Is On the Wind are the most ironic, humorous and biting pieces I think I’d ever read — but undeniably focused on romance. Beneath them one sensed an incredible bittersweetness. So my question is, why did you write like that? I guess what I mean is, you are a true romantic at heart — but I don’t think you believe in romance.

Bertram: I thought I was just trying to put a twist on a story.

Lazarus: So, what, you think I’m falling for that?

Bertram: Well, you silence me. I have no idea how to respond to that.

Lazarus: Either that or I got a little too close to home.

Bertram: Could be. But I never thought of myself as either romantic or unromantic.

Lazarus: Let me ask it in a more friendly way, . . . thinking . . . How about this: in your heart, there are things you want to say to romance readers, but you don’t really think they’ll hear them. Yes or no.

Bertram: I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I don’t like category romance. I think the stories are generally too trivial to be truly romantic.

Lazarus: Ah — there it is. If what you had written had been logical, dispassionate, then the answer would’ve been “no.” The answer is “yes.”

Bertram: Huh?

Lazarus: What you want to say is, “don’t trivialize love; go deeper.” Right?

Bertram: I guess. I read many books that are well written, but they leave me cold because in the end the stories are trivial. Love shouldn’t be trivial, but they make it so.

Lazarus: Okay. In your two published novels, you manage to take the subject of romance and examine it in a plethora of meaningful ways: pure attraction; devotion in the face of great hardship; true love lost and then recognized for its falseness; rescuing disguised as love. Yet despite the quality of the loving relationships you examine in your stories and the romantic element that is clearly present (and there is nothing trivial about them), you haven’t really give us a romantic story yet.

Bertram: The very first book I ever wrote was supposed to be a romantic story of love that transcended time and physical bonds, told with sensitivity and great wisdom. I quit a job when I was young to write that book, discovered I had no talent for writing and no wisdom, so twenty-five years went by before I tried writing that book again. That’s the one that I don’t acknowledge as a book. Someday I’ll get back to it. I know the basic story, but don’t know how to say what I want.

Lazarus: Have you read my novel Lacey Took a Holiday? It’s an intentional convolution of romance. As we would say in classical literature, “romance turned back upon itself.” The characters are both extremely flawed: the girl is a drunken prostitute; the guy is a bitter, widowed war veteran. They begin their relationship when he kidnaps her out of a brothel.

Bertram: I read it. It’s profoundly moving. The theme that I mentioned earlier that I saw in A Spark of Heavenly Fire was the theme of love in all its guises. You use that theme in your books, too. It’s especially apparent in The Medicine People, though the book is being sold as a mystery, like mine.

Lazarus: Yes, love in all its guises: you make Pippi an incredibly sympathetic character when it would have been so easy to turn her into someone we intensely dislike.

Bertram: Pippi was supposed to be the character I hated. It was supposed to be a silly sub-story about the unattractive woman getting what the attractive one didn’t. A childish theme, really.

Lazarus: Pippi embodies the woman searching for love. She ends up discovering that the only love she can trust is self-love. Suppose you wrote a sequel about Pippi. What would happen to her?

Bertram: I don’t know what will happen to Pippi. Haven’t thought about it.

Lazarus: I never realized it until now, but there is a tremendous comparison between the two women in A Spark of Heavenly Fire. It cannot be characterized simply the way you did: beauty loses out to plain. That’s what the unaware reader will get out of it. It’s much deeper than that. The women drive the story. It’s their strength that carries the day in the face of the plague, the atrocities and the recovery.

Bertram: Yes, the women drive the story. I wrote the book to prove a quote by Washington Irving: There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.

Lazarus: I would like to share another thought about your writing — both your ability and what you’ve achieved. Let me preface it by saying that I’m no critic — which is to say that I really do understand literature as opposed to formulae. I feel what authors are saying in addition to recognizing the beauty in the way they say it.

Thus I feel the need to point out what you might not even acknowledge: you have a marvelous ability to write the longest parables in all of literature. A parable unglues the world as it is perceived and rebuilds it in a wiser and more beautiful way. That’s particularly true in A Spark of Heavenly Fire and even more so in the ironic, visceral More Deaths Than One.

Bertram: Again, you’ve silenced me.

Lazarus: You know, some writers will tell you that they treat their stories/books like children. You don’t do that. It’s something more than that with you. It’s metaphysical. A mystic statement.

Bertram: No, they’re not my children. One thing I have to believe: that these books will find a readership. That they have enough substance for people to talk about them. Do you think that’s possible?

Lazarus: I think your books are really mainstream books. The real difference between a mainstream book and a genre book is that a mainstream book intends to have something of merit to say. I think, with your books, there are several important realities: 1) They’d make damn good movies — which is to say they have great popular appeal and people will read them; 2) They could be studied in literature classes, and in that respect people will talk about them and discuss and learn; 3) I think to really, really get the lessons at the heart of your books you have to be a worldly, mature person. So if I say that people will have a lot to talk about in your work, I’m really implying all three of these things.

Bertram: This has been the most unlikely discussion.

Lazarus: Thank you, Pat, for the conversation. I look forward to being a writing colleague of yours. In the years to come, I anticipate reading many new works that evolve from that place where you have no new ideas, works that really do lurk in your inward being.

Posted in books, life, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, destiny, Julia Cameron, Lacey Took a Holiday, Lazarus Barnhill, Love is on the Wind, Minority Report, More Deaths Than One, Spielberg, The Artists Way, the Medicine People. 18 Comments »

The Most Unexpected Truth About Writing

May 26, 2009 — Pat Bertram

My guest today is Lazarus Barnhill, author of the wonderful and profound Lacey Took a Holiday and The Medicine People, available from Second Wind Publishing. Laz talks about destiny, which is a perfect topic for his guest appearance here on my blog. We met in November 2007 during an online writing contest (TruTV Search For the Next Great Crime Writer Contest on Gather.com) where we finished consecutively — 10th and 11th — out of over three hundred entries. Now we are colleagues again — this time at Second Wind Publishing. Lazarus says:

“We are not accustomed to thinking that God’s will for us and our own inner dreams can coincide.” –Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

It was Monday, August, 20, 2007, and I was driving home from down east North Carolina in a driving rainstorm. After I dropped off my daughter at her home, I turned on the local NPR station. As it happened, I tuned in precisely in the middle of an interview. It became clear within a few seconds that I was listening to an author who had just had his first book published. Because I was trying to catch up on the information in the report, I paid especially close attention and was able to piece together that there had been an online contest, the winner of which received a contract to have his book published by a major house. As an aside, the interviewer concluded the report by saying that the same literary website was about to host a second contest. This second one was for romance novels.

At that particular moment, I was sitting at a stoplight. I remembered how, a few months before, I had finished a novel that-if you closed one eye and squinted just right-could be considered a romance: Lacey Took a Holiday. The light was still red, so I took out my extra fine point felt tip pen and scribbled the site on the back of my hand: “Gather”.

This commenced a twenty-month string of the most unlikely events: the following day was the last day to enter the romance contest and I made it in just under the wire; in the process of reading the romance chapters of almost 300 other authors, I became well acquainted with a number of them and for the first time recognized a “great miscarriage of publishing justice” (there were far, far more worthy romance novels than there were agents and publishers to snatch them up); many of the quality writers began to coalesce into writing groups and I was actually invited to join in with them; a third Gather contest — crime/mystery novels — commenced soon after the conclusion of the romance competition and I had, only days before, finished a crime novel (The Medicine People); once again I encountered and befriended a number of outstanding writers and experienced the reality that only one of them was going to receive a book contract; at the end of that contest, a blended group of romance and crime authors decided to take matter into their hands and start up a publishing company; that company (Second Wind Publishing), ten months after its inception, has twenty books available for purchase in multiple venues with another twenty waiting in queue.

The other day I was marveling at the uncanny string of events that brought me so many wonderful new friends (by the way — thanks, Pat, for the invitation to be here!), saw the publication of my first two novels and empowered me to express my artistic vision in ways that I never imagined. Ironically, as I participated in the Gather contests, I had assumed I would be one of those writers who might pen a worthy story, but never get picked up by an agent or contracted by a major publishing house. In retrospect, I’ve gotten to the point where I feel pretty lucky that I didn’t. In fact, as I read Julia Cameron’s remarks in her wonderful book, The Artist’s Way, I began to wonder if in fact what I saw as a lucky string of chance events was really a matter of listening to a still, small voice that has always intended better for me than I could have imagined for myself. If Julia Cameron is right, that same little voice has something to say to all of us.

My premise is this: whatever force there is out there in creation (call it God, destiny, a Higher Power or whatever you want) actually wants you to write. When you write, you are fulfilling an essential aspect of your truest purpose for existing. What do you think?

Here is another far out, mystical question: for the sake of argument, let’s say the universe wants you (in fact the whole perverse group of us literary creative people) to write. Is there such a thing as praying for help with your writing? What would you pray? “Get me unstuck, O literary angel”? What about this, “Let my writing muse guide me to express my truest self as a writer, and trust the outcome to be in greater hands than mine”?

What if your literary angel has a purpose and story in mind for your writing that is greater than anything you can currently imagine? Of course that implies that being on the NY Times bestseller list may not be the greatest destiny.

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Posted in books, culture, life, writing. Tags: destiny, Higher Power, Julia Cameron, Lacey Took a Holiday, Lazarus Barnhill, literary angel, Second Wind Publishing, The Artists Way, the Medicine People. 12 Comments »

The Transformation of the Hero

May 14, 2009 — Pat Bertram

One of the best books about writing I ever read was David Gerrold’s Worlds of Wonder. It’s a how-to for writing science fiction and fantasy, but it’s applicable to all writers since, in the end, we are all creating worlds of wonder.

The aspect of the book I would like to discuss is the transformation of the hero. In the beginning, the situation is introduced and the hero discovers she has a problem. She attempts action and, though she gives it all she has, she is beaten by the problem. She gains a deeper understanding of the problem, then tries again, exhausting all possibilities she knows. All that is left is what she doesn’t know. Finally, because some event occurs or some person says something that triggers the hero’s realization of what she has to do, the hero goes through a shift in being, a reinvention of herself, and confronts the problem directly.

This transformation of the character is the reason you’re telling the story. A story is an account of how a particular person who started out like that ended up like this.

Most problems are about not handling the problem. By choosing to make the situation the problem, the hero creates herself as the source of the problem. Until she recognizes her own authorship of the dilemma, she cannot create herself as the source of the resolution. She has to give up whatever investment she has in not solving the problem. The hero has to be awakened to the possibility that there is another way to think about this. Another way to be.

So transformation is not only the re-creation of the hero as the owner of the situation, it is self-empowerment as well.

In science fiction and fantasy, this transformation is not metaphysical but real. In the process of transformation, not only is the hero changed, but the world in which he exists is also transformed.

In all other fictions, this transformation is more internal, but still real.

I have been thinking about transformation lately as pertaining to my real life. In order to become one of those rare writers who can support herself with sales of her books, I need to transform myself into an “Author,” to recreate myself as if I were a character in one of my books. Don’t know how to do it, and the only reason I’m mentioning it is to show the validity of the hero’s transformation.

So, what problems confront your heroes? How do they attempt to solve them? How are they thwarted? And finally, how do they recreate themselves to solve the problems?

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Posted in books, writing. Tags: David Gerrold, fantasy, hero, science fiction, self-empowerment, story, transformation of the hero, Worlds of Wonder. 3 Comments »

DeForest Kelley: A Harvest of Memories, My Life and Times with a Remarkable Gentleman Actor

May 11, 2009 — Pat Bertram

My remarkable guest today is Kristine M. Smith, author of The Enduring Legacy of DeForest Kelley: Actor, Healer, Friend, and DeForest Kelley: A Harvest of Memories, My Life and Times with a Remarkable Gentleman Actor. And she writes a blog with a perfect name: Almost Famous by De’s Fault. How cool is that? Kristine talks about writing a personal memoir:

It’s funny. No one showed me how to write a personal memoir before I sat down to write one. I hadn’t studied the genre, and although I had read numerous memoirs over the years, that hardly qualified (or qualifies) me as an expert in the field. So please accept everything I say with a grain of salt. What success I’ve had with my memoir may have had as much to do with “luck” (a sad, secular substitution for what is actually “unrecognized divine intervention”!) as it did with anything else.

The memoir I wrote had a built-in niche audience: STAR TREK.

The STAR TREK aspect of my story began in earnest on May 4, 1968 the day I met actor DeForest Kelley, who portrayed Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy on the original series. I was so impressed with his graciousness and appreciation for his fans that I went home and wrote an article about meeting him for my creative writing class. My teacher thought it was so good that he insisted I should send it to Mr. Kelley for him to read and enjoy. Oh, boy, that was nerve-wracking! I wasn’t in the habit of writing to TV stars.

When De and his wife Carolyn read it, they, too, thought it was exceptional and forwarded it to a New York publisher with a suggestion that it might make a good piece for their magazine, TV STAR PARADE. When the publisher agreed, De wrote me a letter letting me know I was about to become a published author.

My parents had to peel me off the ceiling for a week.

Over the course of the next thirty years, the Kelleys and I established an on-again, off-again correspondence, and I continued to flail away at my typewriter, since the Kelleys and the publisher had convinced me that I did, indeed, know how to string words together to good effect.

I kept notebook journals, of course. (Doesn’t every writer? If you don’t, start now. The reason will become clear momentarily.) As I accrued experiences with the Kelleys, every detail of our interactions went into scores of notebooks. Over time, I segued from a giddy fan to a point where the Kelleys began to encourage me to move to Hollywood and find a place in the entertainment industry where I might be able to utilize my writing skills in a major (lucrative) way.

They helped me get my foot in the door in the entertainment industry, helped me find a landlord who would allow me to keep my hand-raised serval “son” (a knee-high African wildcat) in the backyard of the house I rented, and continued to encourage me in every way, all without any thought of paybacks or rewards. (It took me a while to realize that they truly were as benevolent as they seemed. I don’t trust very easily, especially when it comes to denizens of Hollywood!)

Toward the end of De’s life, I became his personal assistant and caregiver. He was already hospitalized and would never again leave the hospital except for brief forays to visit his bank, doctors and home. Mrs. Kelley, his usual helpmate, was already hospitalized with a broken leg.

All of this, too, went into my journals, sometimes only in “talking points” because I was so exhausted (after fourteen and sixteen hour days near the end) from the stress and busy-ness of being their almost-constant companion, helper and confidant. My hours were my choice, not a demand of theirs. It was my way of paying them back in some small way for the thirty-plus years of devotion and encouragement they had extended to me.

A few weeks before De passed away, he gave me permission to write his biography, or a memoir, or anything else I wanted to do with the story of our association. I handed off the biography to Terry Lee Rioux, a tried-and-true historian (now a history professor at Lamar University) whom I had met at a STAR TREK convention several years earlier, because I’m an anecdotal writer, not a researcher or interviewer.

After De passed away, I served Carolyn for another eight months. I pondered writing a book, but figured I probably didn’t have much of significance to say except for how wonderful they were and how much I loved them. End of story. (?)

Then Terry Rioux came to Hollywood to do research at various regional motion picture libraries in preparation for writing De’s biography and to interview De’s co-stars, producers, writers, friends – and me. At one point she asked me, “How did you go from being a fan on the outermost regions of fandom to being at his bedside when he died?”

I was speechless. I had no answer.

I finally responded, “That’s something De would have to answer. I have no idea how that happened.” Terry insisted, carefully and pointedly, “You know the answer. Just connect the dots. I need to know the answer – and so do you.”

Wow. What an assignment!

Then she said, “I think you somehow became the daughter they never had.”

I started bawling, right there in the restaurant. “Oh, no! Don’t say that! If that’s true, I didn’t do enough for them.

Terry said, “You did everything you could, everything they would allow you to do for them.”

That was true . . .

Then I remembered the journals – six large plastic bins, sitting out in the garage, crammed with my journals, with the entire adventure, from beginning to end!!!

I dug them all out, laid them out in order, and began the journey anew, connecting the dots, following the crumbs. There were hundreds of small details I had completely forgotten about. It was like discovering a gold mine!

I watched as a cordial first meeting morphed into an association, then built to become a familiar, comfortable relationship. Then I watched as the relationship swelled into agape love, trust, and mutual support.

That’s when I knew I had to write the memoir, and that’s when I knew I could write it, that I had enough material for it.

Had Terry not asked me the one question about the Kelleys that I could not answer without researching and writing a book, I never would have written it – would never have remembered all those journals tucked away in the garage!

So I became my own historian. I became a memoir writer. It took three solid months of 12-14 hour days, six days a week. It took lots of guts to go over the last months again and put them down in a way that would inform without half killing the reader.

But it resurrected the man, and – in conjunction with Terry’s bio – it has extended his legacy far beyond what fans would otherwise be able to learn about him.

So, to me, writing a memoir is all about diving into journals we’ve written and culling from them the nuggets that resurrect a place, a time, and the crucial people who helped mold us into what we have become, whether for good or for ill.

If you do the task well, the person or people you resurrect don’t have to be TV stars and the times you depict don’t have to be historical in nature. All that needs to happen is that the reader connects, lives with you in your past for a time, and comes out changed in many of the same ways that your history has changed you. The reader “gets” you, your times and your loved ones (and others) in ways they never did before. That’s the essence of a good memoir.

Kristine has agreed to answer questions and respond to comments, so feel free to leave a comment for Kristine. And don’t forget to check back later for her responses.

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