fiction | Bertram's Blog

A Thrill of Books

March 23, 2009 — Pat Bertram

51miDOzhkHL._SX333_BO1,204,203,200_ A murder of crows. A quiver of cobras. A charm of finches. A mischief of mice. A tower of giraffes. A scurry of squirrels. To this list of wonderfully evocative group names, I’m adding “a thrill of books.”

When I was young, I used to love coming home from the bookstore or library with an armful of books. I’d study the covers, read the blurbs and acknowledgments, open the book and sample a few words. It was a special thrill, this stack of new worlds that would soon be a part of me. Where would I go? Who would I meet? What challenges would I have to overcome?

The years did their damage, as they always do. Or maybe the culprit wasn’t the passing years, perhaps it was too many trivial stories, too much homogenization of genre, too much corporate policy infringing on the art. For whatever reason, I lost the thrill of having new books to read, and I thought it was gone forever.

I mentioned in my previous blog that I offered to review a few books, and today I received two of them in the mail: Steel Waters and Toxic Shock Syndrome by Ken Coffman. I looked at the covers (okay, I did more than look, I ran my hand over them, savoring the feel of the brand new books). I read the back covers, the acknowledgements, the author’s signature — “To my friend and fellow writer, Pat Bertram. I wish you all the best with your work.”

Already I could feel the glimmer of that old familiar feeling. Then I opened Steel Waters to the middle and saw, “I looked and smelled like a Bolivian sewer rat.” From comments others had made, I knew this was no homogenized piece of corporate bilge, but right then I felt it — the thrill.

So thank you, Ken, for giving me — one more time — a thrill of books.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in books, fiction, life, writing. Tags: books, Ken Coffman, reading, Steel Waters, Toxic Shock Syndrome. 7 Comments »

The Wolf’s Side of the Story

March 2, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I bet you didn’t know the wolf had a story; he’s always been the villain. But is he as black as he’s been portrayed? I just read a marvelous story by Laurie Foston, an American author of science fiction. She posted it in on her blog, and there it sits for all to read. “The Wolf’s Side” by Foston starts out:

They call me the big bad wolf. They have been calling me that forever, since that meanie, “Little Red Riding Hood”, and her grandmother told a story about me that was not true. But, as the old saying goes, “What goes around, comes around!”

I don’t have any reason to tell you a lie. I’m a good wolf.

One beautiful spring day while I was lying in a bed of wild flowers, safely guarding some nearby sheep when I heard a voice call to me.

“Good morning, Wolf!”

I turned my head in the direction of the voice and saw Little Red Riding Hood standing close by holding a basket on her arm. She was covering her face with her hood. I didn’t know why she was doing that then but now I realize she was just trying to hide the smirk on her face.

“Good morning!” I answered. I was honestly glad to see her. I picked a quick bouquet of flowers and put them between my fangs. Then I trotted over to her and dropped them into her basket. I had only the best of intentions.

“Where might you be headed today?” I asked, just to be friendly, of course.

“Oh, my grandmother is pretending to be sick again. So, I have to take her some cakes and honey. My mother told me to go straight to Granny’s house but when I saw you lying there among those flowers, it gave me an idea. I would rather eat these cakes, then lie down and go to sleep.” She said angrily.

How can you not love this story? If you’d like to read the rest of it, you can find it here: The Wolf’s Side.

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Posted in blogging, fiction, writing. Tags: fairy tales, Laurie Foston, Little Red Riding Hood, story, The Wolf's Side. 2 Comments »

Last Day for the “More Deaths Than One” Contest

February 16, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Today is the last day to enter my More Deaths Than One contest. (Entries must be received by midnight tonight EST.)

The premise:

A friend of mine found an obituary in the paper that could have been for his mother — the woman had the same name, lived in the same general area, was the same age, had the same number of children, and one of the children had approximately the same name and age as the friend. There was no relationship, merely coincidence but, joking, I said, “What if her son really is you?” That “what if” eventually became More Deaths Than One.

The contest:

Write at least a paragraph and no more than a page, telling how would you develop a story using this scenario. The three most imaginative entries will be posted on the Second Wind site for readers to vote on. The top entry will win an autographed copy of More Deaths Than One and your choice of two other books from Second Wind Publishing. You can find the entry form at: Second Wind Publishing.

We’ve already received some really great entries, including this one:

I would not develop the story. I am a reader, not a writer. I read and analyze books, not write them. Quite frankly, I am much more interested in seeing how the author Pat Bertram develops the story rather than how I would. How does she make the coincidence believable? How does she maintain the level of suspense throughout the novel? How does the story differ from other books written in the genre? How is the book innovative? How does the story adhere to more traditional conventions of the genre? It is often said that those who can’t write, teach. On the contrary, writing and analysis (and teaching) are completely different skills, each worthwhile in its own right. I am not a writer. Rather, I am a reader who enjoys reading other authors’ books and using my imagination and analytical skills to review and share books with other readers.

It won’t be long until you can answer those questions yourself.

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Posted in fiction, life, writing. Tags: Contest, More Deaths Than One, scenario, Second Wind Publishing, story premise. 3 Comments »

A Spark of Heavenly Fire Update — Copy-Editing Hell

February 15, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I found additional mistakes to the proof copy of A Spark of Heavenly Fire, so it will be a couple of more weeks before it’s released. I’ve been afraid that I’m going to be stuck in copy-editing hell for the rest of my life, but I’ve decided that perfection at this point really is impossible. I had the idea that single-handedly I needed to eradicate the POD publishers reputation for releasing less than stellar books, but there is a limit to what one (untrained) person can do. I am learning how to copyedit, though, and I do know one thing: however much copy-editors get paid, it is not enough.

The thing with mistakes is that they proliferate when you are not looking. You correct one, and in the process, create another. When I finished my novel, the manuscript was almost perfect — I’d read the thing out loud, so I would be sure to look at every single word, every single punctuation mark. Then . . . I did one final polish, took out all the extra justs and onlys, the particularlys and practicallys, the barelys and hardlys, the began tos, and the wases. The problem is, other words got deleted along the way (don’t ask me how, because I don’t know) and I didn’t catch them. Yikes.

And then there are the choices to be made. Is it ill-prepared or ill prepared? I originally had ill-prepared, but MSword said that was wrong, so I deleted the hyphen. And now I want it back for the simple reason that the hyphen is how it is commonly used. And what about brand new? My dictionary says it’s brand-new, but common usage has it as brand new. So which do I use? I think I’ll leave out the hyphen; that way there will be one less change to make.

Some of the changes that need to be made entail rewriting a sentence. In the proof copy, smelled is on two lines: smell-ed. Smelled can’t be hyphenated, so now I have to decide how to rewrite the sentence so smelled can fit on one line. I had “He fell silent for a moment, savoring the feel of her tee shirt- and jeans-clad body next to his. She smelled clean and fresh, like cucumber, or melon, or pear.” So how do I change the sentence, so that smelled can fit on one line? “savoring the fell of her thinly clad body”? savoring the feel of her tee shirt-clad body”? Neither of those do it for me. But now, writing this, I see what I can change. I can take out “for a moment”. (Yes, I know that the period belongs inside the quotation marks, but this is proofing, and perhaps whoever is making the changes to the print copy will think the period needs to be taken out.) See what I mean? Copy-editors are not paid enough.

Well, now it’s put up and shut up time. Make the important changes, and try not to sweat the small stuff. I can guarantee, though, that whoever came up with that particular phrase is not a copy-editor. With copy-editing, it’s all about the small stuff.

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Posted in fiction, life, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, brand new or brand-new, copy-editing, copy-editor, editing, ill-prepared or ill prepared, self-editing, writing. 5 Comments »

Final Proof of A Spark of Heavenly Fire?

February 12, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Will you keep your fingers crossed for me? I just received what might be the final proof copy of A Spark of Heavenly Fire. If it’s okay, by this time next week, I will be a published author. If it’s not okay, I’m going to shoot myself.

(Just a glancing blow on a toe, perhaps. What? You thought I meant in the head? I need my head . . . where else would I put my hats?)

Seriously, though, this book has been through several proofing sessions in my effort to make it as perfect as possible. I realize perfect does not have degrees — perfect is perfect — but you know what I mean. No matter how good a job one does, there is always, always something that slips by.

Remember that Persian carpet legend and how the carpet makers purposely put a flaw in their carpets because only God is perfect? It sounds arrogant to me, as if they thought they were so perfect that they had to fake imperfection to prove . . . whatever. Still, if you happen to find a flaw in my book, just remember that it’s there on purpose. (Wink, wink.)

Publication has been a long time in coming. Years, in fact. It took a year to write A Spark of Heavenly Fire, another few months to edit, years of querying and rejections — I queried almost two hundred agents and editors. I did find an agent about three years ago, but she was worthless; she sent the book to publishers who did not carry my genre (whatever that might be). When the contract expired, I started querying other agents and editors. Still no takers.

Odd, but through it all, I believed in this book. I have doubts about my other books for some reason, but never about A Spark of Heavenly Fire. It’s spooky thinking that soon I will know if all the rejecters are right, or if I am.

At least my publisher likes the book. He said, “I was told by some other small publishers with whom I had done research that I was going to get mountains of unacceptable crap for every worthy thing I received. So when I got Pat’s manuscript for A Spark of Heavenly Fire, which was like the first submission to Second Wind, I thought, ‘OMG, is this possible?!’ I knew in the first 20 pages that she was the real thing. Then, as we corresponded, I realized where I knew that name: she and I were neck and neck throughout the FCC contest on Gather.com. I remember reading her first chapter of More Deaths Than One and thinking, ‘Oh, man. I hope her second chapter is messed up! I can’t beat this.’ Well, it just goes to show, if you can’t beat ’em, publish ’em!”

So, I’m off to proof the book again. Here’s hoping . . .

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Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, Persian flaw, proofing, querying, Second Wind Publishing, writing. 6 Comments »

Did I Really Write a Feel-Good Book?

February 8, 2009 — Pat Bertram

It will be interesting to see what people say about my books; I’m beginning to think I have no idea what I wrote. For example, A Spark of Heavenly Fire is the story of four ordinary people who become extraordinary while struggling to survive quarantine and martial law in Colorado. It was supposed to be a hard-hitting novel with an edge, but my proofreader told me, “You might do well. I think people are ready for a feel-good book.”

A feel-good book? Where is the edge? The horror? The feeling of doom? According to said proofreader, “Those elements are in the background, but the characters are the story. And they are heartbreakingly real.” Oh.

I thought I couldn’t write good characters. Most books on writing (and many authors) say that a writer has to feel what her characters feel or else the reader won’t feel the characters’ emotions. If you don’t cry, neither will your reader. But I don’t feel what my characters feel. Writing erases emotion, takes me to a place of serenity. And serenity is not generally where you want to take a reader. But I am deliberate in my choice of words and in the details I include. Perhaps those elements combine to help overcome my lack of emotion.

Of course, I generally don’t feel the emotion in the books I read, either. Often, despite the blurbs and reviews that extol the great characters, the characters seem to be only props on which the author hung the story, and a banal story at that.

Perhaps, after all, I won’t mind if I haven’t written a book with an edge. There are plenty of those out there. But I do like my proofreader’s description of my book. He wasn’t the first to use the phrase “heartbreakingly real” about my characters, and with any luck, he won’t be the last.

I can live with that.

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Posted in books, fiction, life, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, character development, character's emotions, characters, creating characters, feel-good book, writing. 4 Comments »

“More Deaths Than One” Contest. Win Free Books!

February 2, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Win an autographed copy of More Deaths Than One (my very first autograph!) and your choice of two other titles from Second Wind Publshing LLC.

The premise:

Rules:

One paragraph to one page of your own version of the “What if?” from above.
Submitted by Midnight (12:00) EST Monday February the 16th 2009.
Only one submission per person.

Judging:

Pat Bertram and Second Wind management will read over all the entries and decide which three are the best — completely subject to our personal opinions as publishers and writers. The three best will be published on the Second Wind website on or around February 23rd 2009. From then you will have a week to vote on the best of the three entries. The top voted entry will receive the books.

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Posted in books, fiction, internet, life, writing. Tags: Bertram contest, Contest, More Deaths Than One, Second Wind Publishing, story premise. Leave a Comment »

On Writing: Characters and Group Mentality

January 26, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been trying to develop the middle part of my current work. I have an idea of how my hero, Chip, will progress and how he will change due to the psychological problems he will be dealing with, but I still have to figure out how he will fit in with the group.

Groups take on a life of their own, with a culture and a group mentality that is different from the sum of the individual members. The group, in effect, becomes a character, so I need to develop this character while I am developing my hero’s character.

There are five stages of group development:

1. Coming together and finding roles
2. Defining the task
3. Disenchantment with the leader, each other
4. Cohesion, feeling like a team
5. Interdependence, acting like a team, becoming more than the sum of the parts.

Most groups unconsciously assign roles to the members, and once these roles have been assigned, tacit agreement maintains them. The most common group roles are: leader, seducer (wants to bewitch others), silent member, taskmaster, clown, victim, oppressor, conciliator, combatant, nurse, young Turk (wants to take over the leadership), the naïf, and the scapegoat.

In the first part of my WIP, where Chip deals with the loss of everything he loved, he meets three mentors, but he is mostly alone. Even his cat deserts him. In the second part, he has to become a part of a group that will escape the place of refuge, choosing freedom over safety, but he is still a loner. I know readers like forceful main characters, the go-to guys and gals (for those of you who hate the word “gals,” sorry, but I couldn’t resist), but I prefer the quieter types, the ones don’t take charge until they are pressed into it out of necessity. So, in the group hierarchy, Chip will not be the leader. He will be the silent member and he will be the scapegoat.

Groups tend to isolate one person as the source of any conflict, whether warranted or not, and they deposit their negative feelings on that person. Because Chip keeps to himself, and because the others think he’s “teacher’s pet,” he becomes the scapegoat. I don’t think he cares, though, so if you don’t care, are you still the scapegoat? Either way, that’s the role the group has assigned him.

Chip’s eventual love interest will fulfill the roles of nurse and taskmaster. A serial killer will fulfill the role of clown. A woman who never quite fit into her other life will find a fit as the leader. The combatant and perhaps oppressor will be a soldier. A lawyer, an erstwhile ambulance chaser, will be the conciliator. But I don’t yet have characters to fill the other roles. So that’s what I need to work on — creating those characters.

This was supposed to be a silly book, a story just for fun, but in the development, it’s becoming something different, something I have to learn how to write as I go along. I keep promising myself that my next book will be one I know how to write. It would make it a heck of a lot easier. But then, where’s the challenge in that?

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in culture, fiction, life, writing. Tags: character development, characters, group mentality, group roles, hero, scapegoat, stages of group development, writing. 4 Comments »

From Conception to Birth: One Book’s Journey to Publication

January 17, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Today’s guest blogger is Margay Leah Justice, author of Nora’s Soul , available from Amazon and Second Wind Publishing. We are exchanging blogs, so I will be at Margay’s Blog. Margay writes:

Ah, the first blush of romance. The first time you see the idea, sitting there in the corner of your mind, trying to get your attention in that inconspicuous manner these ideas sometimes adopt. You look away, convinced that there is no way this idea could possibly go anywhere. It’s just a fluke, a fling. Surely, you’ll forget it by morning. But when you look back, the idea is still there, sitting in the corner, flirting with you. So what’s a harmless little flirtation? You approach the idea cautiously, in a manner you hope is suave and sophisticated, but as you get closer, your excitement rises. Your heart begins to race. You lick your lips in anticipation. It’s even more exciting up close. So you flirt with it, spend the night with it, take it home with you. In the morning, you’re surprised that it’s still with you. After two months, you begin to believe this idea has a future. So you cultivate it, give up sleep for it, nurture it as it grows within you. Soon, what began as a nugget of an idea in your mind blossoms into a full-blown creature. It grows within you, like a fetus in a womb, becoming bigger by the month, more substantial. You can almost feel it move within you; you carry it everywhere, wherever you go, it’s there with you. All of your energy is devoted to it.

After a suitable gestation period, your little nugget of an idea, which you have affectionately begun to call “the book” while you search for the right title, is ready to make its appearance. Your months of labor are about to pay off as you prepare to deliver your book into the capable hands of the publisher who will introduce it to the world. But wait, his assistant has to help you clean it up a bit first and you are struck by the niggling thought, What if my baby’s ugly? What if I put this out there and no one likes it? But with the reassurances of your publisher, you clean the book up and send it back, maybe with a prayer or two, and you wait. Now it’s time for your baby to prove its worth.

As you can tell from my whimsical tale above, writing and publishing, to me, often mimic conception and birth. The stages of both are remarkably similar. There is the courtship period when you are first introduced to the idea that will one day take over your life. Followed by the get-to-know you period during which you decide whether or not the idea has longevity and you want to commit to it. Once you make that commitment, there is the gestation period – I think you can guess what happens here. The idea grows and grows, taking on a life of its own, convincing you that you are mad, suffering from a hormonal imbalance, or both. But in the end, it’s worth it because you deliver a rollicking, three hundred page epic that someone is bound to love – and not because they’re related to you.

So I guess you could say that Nora’s Soul is the first of my literary babies. She is almost two months old now, having made her debut in November, and growing stronger every day. Bringing her to the attention of the public is similar to the care and nurturing of an infant, requiring constant vigilance. Yet the pay off is that people are noticing her, some are cooing over her, and others even want to take her home with them. She may just be crawling now, but soon she will gain her legs and walk on her own – -and I will sit back in amazement like any proud mother, thinking, Wow, I can’t believe I created that! And in the grand tradition of mothers everywhere, I will want to create another one, forgetting all of the pains and labor involved in the process. Keep your eyes open for the debut of Nora’s brother, Dante. Thank you for riding along with me on this whimsical journey into my take on writing. I hope you enjoyed the trip as much as I did.

Also see: Pat Bertram Introduces Dante, the Hero of Nora’s Soul by Margay Leah Justice.

Posted in fiction, life, writing. Tags: Dante, Margay Leah Justice, Nora's Soul, Pat Bertram Introduces, writing. 7 Comments »

Author Cheryl Kaye Tardif is “Finding Bliss” on her iPhone 3G

January 11, 2009 — Pat Bertram

My guest blogger today is Cheryl Kaye Tardif, bestselling author of Whale Song, The River, and Divine Intervention. Cheryl writes:

Recently, I was a guest blogger on Book Marketing Floozy and I talked about how authors have to “think outside the book”. Sometimes a book can be marketed even before it has been published, and once in a while even before it has been written. That’s what I’ve done with my iPhone novel Finding Bliss, a novel that has only 2 chapters written yet has already received much media attention.

It all started when I saw a commercial for Hershey’s Bliss chocolates in their individually wrapped foil packages. I saw the word BLISS on the TV and thought, “Wow, that would make a really neat girl’s name.” Almost instantly a picture came to mind of a teenaged girl with scraggly dirty-blond hair and torn jeans. Foster child, street child, pickpocket, unwanted, unloved-the complete opposite of the word “bliss”. And Finding Bliss was born.

I didn’t want to lose any of my ideas for this novel, but I also didn’t want to stop watching the TV show that was on, so I grabbed my new iPhone 3G. There is a Notes application and this was the first time I used it. What was really great was that I was able to type in my notes on this new novel idea during the commercials and then email them to myself. Later, I went upstairs to my office, opened the email on my PC, copied and pasted the notes into a Word document and-voila!-I had started a new novel.

About 2 years ago, a writing craze swept across Japan ; cell phone novels took the publishing world by storm in this small country. In the first six months of 2007, Goma Books and Maho i-Land published more cell phone novels than the major Japanese publishers did print books. And now, North America has its first English language cell phone novel platform through Textnovel.

I am very familiar with Textnovel. CEO Stan Soper heard about my iPhone novel Finding Bliss and he personally invited me to check out Textnovel. Since I always like to try new things, I submitted three short stories, serializing them over a period of time. You can find my novelette Remote Control there. Stan has shown great interest in Finding Bliss, and there is a possibility that my iPhone novel might show up on Textnovel in the future.

To date, I have appeared on a number of television and radio interviews, and in newspapers, because I have chosen to write a novel in a completely different way. Another major company contacted me about Finding Bliss a month or so ago, and they too would like to be the first company to “release” this novel to the public. Let the bidding wars begin!

‘Finding Bliss’ will be an emotional, heartwarming story of a damaged teenage girl who must fight to survive in a world of abuse, lies and loss. As she struggles to find herself, Bliss will discover exactly where she belongs and she’ll learn that she is worthy of love after all.”

There is no publish date on this book as I have not finished writing it. Once I am done, it will be handed to my wonderful agent Jack Scovil to pitch to publishers.

Cheryl Kaye Tardif

“Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.” — Katherine Mansfield