Literary Tragedy

April 12, 2026 — Pat Bertram

The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss was supposed to be a trilogy, but to date, no third book has been published. Although rumor has it that the author is still working on The Doors of Stone, it’s been fifteen years since the publication of the second book, so who knows if the third will ever be available.

Though some people think it would be a tragedy (in the common sense of misfortune) if the trilogy were never be finished, I’m not sure I care. There’s an underlying feeling of doom in the two published books, which leads credence to the author’s warning that Kingkiller Chronicle is a tragedy (in the classic sense of a hero being destroyed by his own “fatal flaw”). If that’s the case, I’d rather leave the story in limbo, where he isn’t exactly happy, is tormented by his past, and yet is still alive, rather than have so much of the foreshadowing come true.

Unless . . .

The catharsis of a classic literary tragedy is supposed to be in the minds and emotions of the audience or reader, coming to terms with the inevitable downfall and dealing with the buried emotions the tragedy brings to the fore. But what if, in this case, the catharsis is actually experienced by the hero, and so he’s allowed to somehow come to peace with the actions that led to his downfall?

But then, it wouldn’t be a tragedy, though authors are allowed to subvert traditional story forms.

Still, that feeling of doom, of the hero falling for his own legend and often acting impulsively, leads me to believe that the hero won’t survive. Oddly, there is an irony inbred in his impulsiveness. Although he often acts without thinking (meaning rashly) and so brings about disaster, he also sometimes acts without thinking (meaning intuitively) and so brings about victory.

If the book ever comes out, I suppose I’ll read it. Knowing ahead of time that the hero will die would make it easier to handle the tragedy, especially if he comes out of his self-imposed exile to write whatever wrongs he committed. (Oops. I’m getting the writer and his self-imposed exile mixed up with his hero’s exile.) What I meant, of course, is that a tragic ending will be more acceptable if the character rights his wrongs.

I don’t know which would be more tragic, though — to get the final book and learn of the character’s death or not get the final book and miss out on the experience. Either way, the books I have were well worth the dime I spent for each.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Rereading and Re-rereading

April 9, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What book could you read over and over again?
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I’ve spent the past couple of years rereading various mystery series from start to finish so I could get the full story of the character. Normally, I just picked books at random so sometimes a character is married, sometimes is just meeting the love of his/her life, sometimes is in full parental mode. All while being a cop or agent or private detective, of course.

After reading more than twenty thousand novels (plus thousands of non-fiction books), I’ve found a sameness to the stories, characters, situations, so that novels tended to overlap, which is why I didn’t think it would matter if I read these series again. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy the books as much as I thought I would since (for me, anyway) most novels don’t have a lot of depth. What you see is what you get. I even went back and read books I’d read over and over when I was young, but the stories didn’t have the same pull for me now that they did back then. Of course, I’m not the same person now as I was back then, either.

Lately I’d been rereading the first eleven books of The Wheel of Time. (I have no interest in ever rereading the last three books by the makeshift author. Although readers seem to prefer them to the first eleven books, I find them to be overhyped drek.) There are so many layers to the books that Robert Jordan himself wrote, there are so many inspirations from and references to real life, so many interlocking characters to keep track of, that it’s taken me a long time to piece it all together. I’d think the difficulty of remembering in book ten what happened in book two would be a failing of my aged memory, but I do know one thing — I would not have had the patience for these books when I was younger, so any comparison is irrelevant. Nor would have read them then — I never liked that whole good vs. evil theme. It always seemed contrived. Besides, I know more of the world and its culture now than I did then, so the underpinnings of the story are more obvious to me, and those that aren’t are fun to discover.

I’m to the point, though, where I might have gleaned as much of the meaning and found as much of the puzzle as possible, so I might have to pack the books away, but for now, they still sit prominently on my book shelf while I read The Kingkiller Chronicle. Only the first two books of that Patrick Rothfuss trilogy have been published, but I’ll probably reread these books, too. Although there doesn’t seem to be much referencing to our myths and legends, there is a lot of inworld referencing that I’ll need to piece together someday.

I’ve been trying to find more rereadable books and series that I can sink my life into, but so far, no luck. The problem is, I’ve developed an aversion to going to our library (I’ve searched those shelves a thousand times and just can’t force myself to look even once more), so I will have to find rereadable books if I want to continue my lifelong habit of reading. There are a few other books on my shelf to go through, and there are the books I’ve written, of course, which are enjoyable to reread. (Though I have to confess, I’m a bit embarrassed by the reviews I posted here of those books. Talk about self-aggrandizement! So not my thing. Besides, every author feels the same way about their books, which makes those reviews even more cringeworthy.)

And after I’ve finished reading and rereading the books on my shelf? I don’t know. With any luck, I’ll find books to serve my reading needs.

On a completely different slant about these two series: I found a chapter-by-chapter outline by a reader showing where the final book of the The Kingkiller Chronicle might be going, which would be a good way to conclude the series if the author doesn’t ever manage to do it. I’d hoped to find something similar for The Wheel of Time, where the fans outlined what they hoped would happen, but I suppose having the finale written, no matter how badly, put the kibosh on any such online project. And anyway, I pretty much created my own ending, if only in my mind.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Reading and Empathy

April 7, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I’ve often heard that reading fiction can help a person develop empathy, and that could be true. I’ve certainly spent a rather significant part of my life reading, and I also seem to have an enormous amount of empathy.

What I do know is that reading can also help inure a person to other people’s pain. Too many books describe in excruciating detail the agonies characters are going through, and I figure I’ve had more than enough pain in my life, I don’t need to feel made-up people’s made-up pain, so I’m trying to teach myself to hold back the empathy when I’m reading.

I’m currently reading The Name of the Wind, which is interesting enough to hold my interest, but so far not more than that. One major drawback is that the character is subjected to one terrible trauma after another — deaths, losses, beatings, disappointments. Whenever something good happens to him, almost immediately two or more bad things happen. Normally I wouldn’t bother continuing to read, but I bought the book (paid a whole dime for it!) and lugged the weighty volume home, so I feel as if I have some stake in the story. I imagine all this trauma is going somewhere, turning him into the character he is supposed to be (a wizard maybe?) but getting there isn’t fun.

So, I mentally stand apart from his pain. Refuse to imagine what he is going through. And dampen any empathy I might normally feel.

I’m still a long way from knowing if the book is worth reading, and even longer from knowing if the second book is worth it (even though I paid another dime for the second volume). And probably so far from ever reading the third volume as to be as close to never as never can be.

Apparently, the author waited to submit his trilogy until the whole thing was written (being a rather obsessive writer, it took him fifteen years), and after the first book was accepted, there were huge editorial changes, which supposedly made it a much better story. But as any writer knows, small changes ripple to make bigger changes later on, and if those changes weren’t small, then the changes are almost insurmountable. Still, he did make whatever changes were necessary to get the second book published, but the third never made an appearance. As you can imagine, all those changes to the first two books demanded that the third be rewritten almost from scratch, and the poor author ended up with severe writer’s block. Not only that, he had custody issues, his publishing company was sold, he developed mental health issues, and fans dumped on him. Which leads to the question of what a writer owes his readers.

[Wait a minute! Doesn’t this sound like a movie? I could have sworn I saw something like this once upon a time.]

Beyond the authorial problems, the major issue, from what I understand is that he got involved in a charity drive where he was supposed to give a chapter to those who donated, and he wasn’t able to write the chapter (and didn’t want to just haphazardly throw out anything to satisfy his obligation), nor could he give back the money since it didn’t go to him.

Whatever the reason, there will never be an end to the story, so if I want, I can imagine a happy ever after for the poor tormented character. I can’t do that for the poor tormented writer. He’ll have to find his own way.

But I can give this poor tormented reader a happy ending whenever I want. All I have to do is step away from the books emotionally. Or physically. It’s a book — if I set it down, it can’t come chasing me!

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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We Are Who We Are

April 5, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?
View all responses

If I could be a character from a book? That’s not a hard question for me because I am already a character in a book: Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, a novel about a murder that took place in a dance class. Sure, I wrote the book, but I am still a character in the story — the narrator, the one who set the murder in motion, the one who found out who the murderer was, the one who persevered while dealing with her own issues. And one of the dancers!

I discovered something interesting while writing that book — it’s much easier to write a novel when you’re the protagonist rather than making up a person to fill the role. I never had to figure out what the character thought — I knew exactly what she was thinking. I never had to create special internal conflicts for her because I have them galore. I never had to figure out her flaws because — well, I don’t have any flaws.

That started out as a joke, but it’s the truth. I don’t have flaws: I have personality traits and character traits that might not be the most admirable, but they are not “flaws.” They are part of what constitutes . . . me.

It’s why I hate the whole “flawed character” story structure. Authors don’t need to create explicit flaws for their characters. If the characters are real, they have traits that make up their personas. So what if they’re prideful or refuse to see anyone else’s point of view even to their own detriment? Those are still not flaws — they are intrinsic parts of who the characters are. They are what makes the characters come alive. If a peculiarity or failing is a part of the character, it can’t be a flaw because a flaw is a defect or a mistake or an imperfection, and since the traits an author gives a character are purposeful, they aren’t mistakes. And if the trait makes the character perfect for their role, then it can’t be an imperfection. Besides, who has the right to say that a certain trait is a defect? One person’s defect could be another person’s hard won survival mechanism.

As you can see, I take issue with that whole “flawed character” thing.

Luckily, I am not a flawed character! (Neither are you, if the truth be told. We are who we are.)

If I weren’t already a character in a book, who would I be? I wouldn’t. I have a hard enough time imagining me as me; imagining me as someone else would take more brainpower than I have at my disposal.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Utterly Bizarre

April 3, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Reading my own books is utterly bizarre. I’ll be going along, involved in the story, loving what I’m reading, wondering what’s coming next. Whenever I’d stop to take a breath, it would stun me to realize I wrote the book. How is that even possible? Not the writing — I remember writing and rewriting and re-rewriting More Deaths Than One, for example, but except for a brief synopsis, the same one on the cover — “What if you returned home after years away and found someone with your face living your life . . .” — the story was completely new to me.

I do remember wondering if More Deaths Than One might be a tad amateurish, but I’m not finding that at all. Well, there is the girl with the eyes that sparkle perhaps too often, but even today, I wouldn’t know a different way of showing, from the hero’s point of view, how much he lit up her life. And there is . . . hmm, I don’t know . . . maybe a bit of passive storytelling, but I remember thinking that I wanted the relationship between the boy and girl to be of paramount importance as they discover the truth rather than a thriller-like chase. Whatever the case, I can no longer judge the merits of my books except for the very personal one of getting to read — and enjoy — these books as if for the first time.

I mentioned before that the “Pat Bertram” books were written by someone else, someone I’d been years before. In the case of More Deaths Than One, that someone is the person I was twenty-years ago, before Jeff died, before I went to California to take care of my father, before dance classes, before buying a house, before gardening. There’s been a lot of living in the past twenty years! No wonder there’s such a huge disconnect between the author I was and the reader I am.

Although the books were written in part for a future me, since back then (and still today) I have a hard time finding books that speak to me, I feared reading them again. What if I hated them? What if they struck me as abysmal as most books do nowadays? What if I were embarrassed by non-existent storytelling abilities? But whew! That’s not been an issue. (Well, I am a bit embarrassed by the sex scenes in More Deaths Than One. This is the only Pat Bertram book that has any, and as I’m beginning to see, they are an integral part of the character, but still . . .)

I have found a few changes to my submitted manuscripts (like the ones in Bob: The Right Hand of God that make me look as if I don’t know what I’m doing when in fact it was an editor who made the changes), a few words in both A Spark of Heavenly Fire and More Deaths Than One that mysteriously became hyphenated (more editor’s work, I suppose), and a stray typo or two. Despite those minor imperfections, the books all seem professional to me.

But yes, it’s utterly bizarre to be reading a book I wrote, breathlessly waiting to see what happens next. And it’s even more bizarre to be blown away by the ending. Whooo.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Relevancy

March 31, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Well, so much for my “Pat Bertram books” solving my reading crisis. I’m down to only one left to read. I might actually have to start writing again! The only problem is that it takes me a year to write a book, several years to let it sit so I forget it, and less than a day to read it. Still, if ever a new story invaded my mind, I’d consider writing the book. Unfortunately, there’s been no story invasion for many years.

I just finished reading A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and of all the books, that’s the one I most remembered. Which isn’t saying a whole lot. I knew it was about a quarantine, knew it was about a biological weapon that had been released, even knew a few specifics, such as this excerpt where a reporter, Greg, and his boss, Olaf, are discussing research papers. Olaf says:

“Convoluted writing and obscure terms are a way of intimidating the uninitiated, keeping the profession closed to non-scientists, and adding to the scientific mystique. Just think, if diseases had names like Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, doctors wouldn’t make anywhere near the amount of money they do now.”

Greg laughed. “That’s an idea. They do it for hurricanes, why not everything else?” He mimed seizing the phone and dialing. “Mr. Olaf? I can’t come in today. I’ve got the Bob.” He hung up his imaginary receiver and looked inquiringly at his boss.

Olaf nodded. “Works for me.”

That’s about all I remembered (and mostly because I called Covid “Bob” so as not to give credence to that whole mess), so most of the story was new, and I read the book as avidly as I did my other books. After the “Bob,” I had wondered if A Spark of Heavenly would feel dated, but it didn’t seem like it to me, especially since a theme of the book is biological warfare. Although a lot of people do believe the twenty-first century pandemic was biological warfare on two fronts, first the virus and second the vaccines, there’s no real consensus on the matter. And anyway, I prefer using historical references rather than current ones. It keeps the book from being controversial and it also keeps it timeless since too many current references date a book. That’s important for me because being an overnight success is a race that was lost almost two decades ago, so my only hope (if I even have a hope) is for continued relevance.

And the story is relevant, as are all character-driven stories. The prism of death and survival in A Spark of Heavenly reflects what each of the main characters values most. Kate values love. Dee values purpose. Greg values truth. Jeremy values freedom. Pippi, who values nothing, learns to value herself. All eternally relevant values.

As with all my books, the writing was good (though several words that were unhyphenated in the manuscript mysteriously became hyphenated in the published work). The story moved at a rapid pace since each important part was told by the person with the most at stake. And the ending came as a complete and satisfying surprise.

It does make me wonder, though, since this showcase of my abilities is such a surprise to me, if I’d ever be able to recapture that ability. And if I did, would the book still be a “Pat Bertram book”?

All I know is that this Pat Bertram book, A Spark of Heavenly, was thoroughly enjoyable.

Click here to read the first chapter of: A Spark of Heavenly Fire

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Reading the Books I Wrote

March 30, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I’m continuing to read my books. Not the books in my personal library (which consists of a single bookcase) but the books I wrote.

It’s funny to think that this is most I have enjoyed reading in years. Even though I read and wrote about the Wheel of Time book series, I’m not sure I actually enjoyed reading the books. It was more of a puzzle for me, a game, a thing to study and to learn from, a way to pass the time.

But my novels? Pure enjoyment! Admittedly, since I was the one who wrote the books, they probably find an echo in my psyche even though what I remember barely qualifies as an elevator pitch (a one or two sentence synopsis). But I don’t know if that matters. It feels as if I am coming to them fresh, not as if I wrote them, not as if I’d read them years ago, but as if I’d vaguely heard of them once upon a time.

I’m working backwards. I started with the most recently published novel, Bob, The Right Hand of God, and am now reading Daughter Am I. There are only two more books for me to read — the first two I wrote — and I’m already feeling the loss. I was used to having nothing to read that I truly enjoyed — I just read for no other reason than to read — but already I have become addicted to the surprises inherent in my books.

The biggest surprise, of course, is how thoroughly I have forgotten these books. Odd, but true. The next biggest surprise is that I really do know how to write and know how to tell a story. I have no idea why I’d begun devaluing my writing ability over the years, unless it’s because of that non-selling thing. Still, other obscure writers manage to hold onto the idea of their own worth, so it’s good to at least get that feeling back. I do understand to an extent why the books languish. There’s nothing shocking, such as with the Shades of Grey franchise, to catapult them into fame. There’s no horde of people looking to read anything new in their preferred genre, such as with the Wheel of Time readers, because my books have no distinctive genre. And none of my characters are ever despicable enough to command bestselling attention. They are kind folk who are nice to each other. The stories are never about their interpersonal conflicts, but their joint conflict with an outside antagonist, who generally isn’t all that despicable, either.

Whether other people will ever come to like my books, it’s enough that I do. The stories are fun with plenty of twists and turns. Just when I think I know where the stories are going, they head in a different direction. And the endings have all come as a total surprise to me. Not just the ending, but the twist that comes after I thought it was all over.

Now that the shock of how much I enjoy reading my novels has passed, I find myself second guessing what I am reading. In Daughter Am I, is there too much story telling going on? The old gangsters that the hero Mary has managed to gather around her love talking about the old days, and one long-winded fellow named Teach lives up to his name and has tendencies to lecture. But is that a drawback or a necessary part of Mary learning who she is and where she came from? I don’t know. Luckily, the book is finished. Published. And all that’s left for me to do is what I did with the others — simply sit back and enjoy the ride.

And what a ride! At its most basic, Daughter Am I is a modern version of the Hero’s journey. The hero, Mary, goes on a dangerous journey to learn about her recently murdered grandparents. Instead of wizards and other magical folk, her mentors and allies are six old rogues (gangsters and con men in their eighties) and one used-to-be nightclub dancer. By journey’s end, all their lives have been transformed. For a more detailed description of the quest, click here: Daughter Am I and The Hero’s Journey | Bertram’s Blog.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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A Very Readable Hoot

March 28, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Before I moved back to Colorado, I was living in California and taking dance classes. When one classmate discovered I was a writer, she suggested I write a murder mystery about our class, and she volunteered to be the victim. I wasn’t sure I wanted to kill off someone I knew — words have power, and I didn’t want to unleash that power on even a suspecting victim. Despite my misgivings, I started to follow through, going so far as to take a photo of our lovely victim for the cover of the book. I’d expected to have to take several shots to get the pose I wanted, but she sank to the wooden floor as gracefully as she did everything else, and lay in the ideal pose. Right then I knew I could kill her. She was just too damn perfect.

After a lot of procrastination, I did end up writing the book, though funnily enough, after it was published, she asked “Why did I have to be the victim?”

Another member of the class belonged to a book club, and when it was her turn to choose the book, she chose the book I’d written, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, and invited me to join them for the discussion. I agreed because I thought it might be fun, but when I arrived, I found out that the discussion was to be cut short because of a baby shower as well as a birthday party. They weren’t all that interested in discussing the book, anyway. Nor were they interested in anything I had to say. The only person who actually addressed me asked accusingly if I’d been my own editor. I mentioned that I had several copy editors, and she just made a rude noise and said we’d all done a lousy job because there were more typos than she could count. I did ask her to point them out, but she ignored me. So I thanked them graciously and left.

I’d had a lot of problems with my publisher during the publication process — he insisted on editing the book but ended up making many mistakes. After several heated discussions, he finally agreed to submit the manuscript as I had formatted it, but I had no idea if he had followed through, though when I got the final proof, it seemed okay.

As I’ve mentioned in the previous couple of posts, I’ve been reading my books, though always with a bit of apprehension. This one most of all since I didn’t want to face the “more typos that she could count.”

I also worried that since it was more or less a novelty book, it would seem silly or lacking any depth. But I shouldn’t have worried. After all, it is a “Pat Bertram book.”

As with the other of my books that I recently read, I was astonished by how good the writing was and by how much I liked the book. Except for the brief synopsis, I had completely forgotten the story. I hadn’t even remembered who did the deed, and wow! The ending really blew me away.

I was especially delighted by the sly mention of mystery genre tropes. For example:

The first thing you learn when you set out to write a novel is that you need a strong protagonist. No ditherers. No brooders. And I am both.

And:

I climbed into my ancient VW bug (no, I am not plagiarizing a well-known fictional detective, I really do own such a car—bought it new when I was young and never got another auto) and drove to the gas station.

And:

Like a fool in a bad drama, I stared at my phone. Huh? She expects me to drop everything and drive over there so she can tell me something she could just as easily have told me over the phone? With a shudder, I realized what had just happened. The worst cliché of all. So often in mysteries, someone makes such a call, and when the recipient arrives at the rendezvous, they find the person dead.

And:

In every mystery story, it seems, there comes a time when the author wants a way to present insights, needs to show state of mind, or simply gets bored with a straightforward narrative and plays at being creative, so the storyteller recounts a dream. Since I hate dreams, my own included, I usually skip those parts of a book, so I won’t bore you with the details of my dream.

There isn’t a lot of action in the book, it’s more of a psychological mystery, but it’s a fun story within a story — a writer writes a story about a fictional writer writing a story showing how life follows fiction.

As reviewer Malcolm Campbell wrote, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare is “a very readable hoot. In this dandy mystery, everyone has a secret, a reason for covering it up, and a possible motive. The characters are well developed, the introspective protagonist wonders if she inadvertently set the stage for a murder by agreeing to write a murder mystery based on the dance class, and the cops tell her that in real life, most amateur sleuths end up dead or worse. Readers who love mysteries will enjoy this book. Writers who write mysteries will consider being more careful when pretending to kill off their friends in a novel. And those who’ve been thinking of taking a dance class will see the story as a cautionary tale.”

And oh, yeah — there were typos. Three of them. One absent hyphen, one missing “not,” and one extraneous “a.” It’s possible there were translation errors in the ebook, which she had read, but that’s a mystery for another time.

***

Click here to read the first chapter of: Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare.

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New Favorite Author

March 25, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I have found a new favorite author. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of her. It’s someone by the name of Pat Bertram.

I was going to continue on that vein, talking about that new author in the third person, but it seemed a bit too . . . cutesy . . . for lack of a better word.

I’ve been reading the books I wrote, and to be honest, I am stunned by what a good writer I was. Admittedly, the books had been written by me (and by extension, for me) so that could account for why I like them so much. They’re also (obviously) the type of books I like, the type that aren’t written any more, such as books that take place in familiar circumstances but that have an otherworldly strangeness about them. Bob: The Right Hand of God is a good example of this kind of book, and Light Bringer is another. They’re a sort of fantasy. A sort of a what-if type of story. A sort of speculative fiction. But not really any of those. They are just (as someone once called them) “Pat Bertram novels.” As if I were my own genre.

Light Bringer blew me away. Truly. It’s been fifteen years since I looked at it and, except for a general idea of what the book was about, the story came as a complete — and delightful — surprise. So did the more-than-competent writing. I truly had no idea I had used color and sound as a backdrop to the story. I had no idea the depth and beauty. I had no idea the research that had gone into the making of the story — all that talk about harmonics and graviton drives and mind/matter interfaces and laghima was new to me as I read the book. Amazing.

It’s funny, but I used to think that perhaps I deserved the resounding silence my books generated from the reading public, that perhaps my writing was amateurish, but Light Bringer showed otherwise. One problem is that I never found an effective way to promote. Another problem, one that touches on the first, is that I didn’t know how to categorize the books. As I mentioned, there is no genre to most of my books, and if there were, each would be listed as a separate genre, which is frowned on in today’s (and yesterday’s) publishing world. People want to know what they are reading before they even start reading, whether a mystery, a thriller, a romance. None of my books are any of those things. Or maybe they are all those things.

In that, I was an oddity, both as a reader and as a writer. Some of my favorite books were those written by authors with various types of stories to tell. An adventure story, then a science fiction novel, and then maybe a mystery. But those writers are gone. Well, except for me, and I’m all but gone since I don’t write anything but blogs anymore. (Though reading my books does give me an itch to maybe . . .  someday . . .)

One thing I do remember about my books is how much I had to fight my first publisher to keep him from changing my books. Or rather, I had to fight him to change them back to the way I wrote them. I never knew of a copy editor who added typos to a book, but mine did. Each of my first several books degenerated into a such a miserable experience that it made me lose interest in writing. But seeing how good my books are, I now know they were worth fighting for.

Even though I would have liked to become more of a selling author (my first publisher went bankrupt, so no royalties would be forthcoming even if I did become a bestselling author), it’s enough, for today, that I read and loved Light Bringer.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

 

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When Books Were Just Books

March 23, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Once upon a time, books were just books. At least, once upon my time they were. I always knew books were written by people, of course, but the authors were separate from their works. Like literary midwives or hedge doctors, they brought stories out of the everywhere into the here. It didn’t matter who they were. Only the books mattered.

I miss those years of innocence, the years when the back covers had tantalizing blurbs, not a close-up of an author’s face, when the snippets of reviews were from reviewers, not other authors peddling their own books. I miss the mysteriousness of authors, when all that was known was the brief biography hidden in the end matter.

Now, of course, with the onset of the internet, there is no such thing as simply a book. Too much about authors is known. Too much is discussed. Too much is . . . too much.

I’ve stopped reading works by a couple of authors because of their politics. In some cases, I simply cannot abide those they choose to align themselves with, and it completely changed the tone of their books for me. I’ve stopped reading other authors because of remarks they’ve made online. I’ve stopped reading still others when I found out that opinions in the books are their own, not just their characters’ thoughts. In yesterday’s blog, I mentioned that we read ourselves into books, but it’s hard to read yourself into a book when you find the person who wrote it is too much in the book. And even harder when you find them less than admirable.

Perhaps it’s naïve of me to think it was ever possible to separate an author from the books they’ve written, but for most of my life I did. An author was simply a brand. (And often a dead one at that.) If I liked a Frank Slaughter book or a Graham Greene, I’d look for more. Back then, there were no dust jackets on library books, just some sort of generic fabric-covered binder’s board, with only a name and title on the spine, so that’s all I had to go by.

It no longer matters, really, that authors have destroyed their mystique for me because most books published nowadays are not worth my time, but I do wish I still thought that books — and authors — were something special. Something . . . magical, even mystical.

I’m sure it sounds hypocritical of me to think this way since my books came to be published because of the internet, at least in a roundabout way, and those I’ve sold I’ve sold because of the internet. But in a way, it proves my point. I’m too visible (and yet, oddly invisible because so few people find me). There’s nothing magical about how I wrote my books, no sitting in an ivory tower birthing stories, just one word dredged out of my mind at a time. There’s certainly no mystique to my being an author. There’s just . . . me.

I suppose I should be glad there are still human writers, even unadmirable ones, because all too soon, there will be mostly non-human writers wringing stories out of the nowhere.

Makes me wonder: will there still be human readers? Or will there be hundreds of little artificial readers sitting around reading those artificial books?

It’s funny though. Here I am being nostalgic about a time in my life when authors didn’t matter, only their work did, and yet the future when perhaps there will be no authors doesn’t seem all that much more palatable.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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