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Celebrating the Sweet and Sour Sides of Valentine’s Day

February 13, 2013 — Pat Bertram

This Valentine’s Day, Second Wind Publishing is celebrating romance with an ebook giveaway. If you have not yet shot cupid’s arrow to get your romance ebook in the ebook format of your choice, click on the target and it will take you to the game where they will give you what you want this Valentine’s day — romance, tender sentiments, and true love. The rules are simple, and everyone wins!

If you’re expecting to win one of my books, though, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Although each of my novels has romantic elements, none of them are romances. More people tend to die in my books than fall in love, which is why tomorrow I will be participating in A. F. Stewart‘s Bloody Valentine Blog Hop to celebratate heartbreak, love gone wrong, romantic mayhem and tragedy, hopefully with that little splash of humour and blood.

I hope to see you at one of these events!

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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.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Posted in blogging, internet. Tags: A. F. Stewart, Bloody Valentine Blog Hop, ebook formats, ebook giveaway, free ebook, romance ebooks, Second Wind Publishing, Valentine's Day giveaway. Leave a Comment »

The Secret Life of Emails

January 26, 2013 — Pat Bertram

mailbox Several days ago, a friend sent me an email that somehow disappeared until today, which made me wonder about the secret life of emails, and why sometimes they don’t reach their destination when expected.

Perhaps in this case, the email lost its attachment and had to go searching for it, like a traveler who lost his luggage, retracing its steps backward and forward, until finally it managed to find the attachment hidden in the ether.

Or perhaps the address got smudged and so was routed to the internet version of a dead letter office, where postal bots scoured the contents looking for a clue as to where to send it.

Or perhaps the email decided to take a vacation, zinging from one server to the other, taking a leisurely trip around the world before reluctantly returning to its mundane duty.

Supposedly, emails are not transmitted in their entirety, but are broken into discrete packets of information, all of which are collected and repackaged at the destination. Maybe one of the packets, like the runt of the litter, kept stumbling and falling, while all the other packets impatiently tapped their binary toes, waiting for the laggard to catch up.

Since the packets of information are converted to electronic signals so they can be transmitted from server to server, perhaps this email decided to become something else for a while — a thought or a radio signal. In the end, realizing it can only be what it was created to be, it finally reached its destiny.

I’d intended to end this brief whimsy with an explanation of how information is really transmitted, but I got lost somewhere among the IMAPs, SMTPs, IRCs, TCPs, APIs, BEUIs, SPXs, ASCIIs, EBCDICs, SSLs, OSIs and all the other letters of the alphabet that make up the secret life of emails. If you’re interested, you can find information here.

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Posted in internet. Tags: bots, dead letter office, emails, lost email, whimsy. 3 Comments »

Are People More Gullible Now Than They Used to Be?

January 23, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I got a notice from my bank telling about some of the latest scams to be aware of. In one such scam, a man claiming to be from the Social Security Administration in Georgia told the old woman that they would be sending her a new social security card. Then he asked for personal and bank information to verify that he was talking to a real person. The woman felt certain it was a scam and hung up the phone.

A friend of mine got a call from a woman claiming to be from the police fraud division, who then told her that her AOL account had been hacked. My friend also hung up, feeling certain it was a scam, but it turned out to be the truth.

Some people think we’re more gullible now, especially on the internet where we tend to take people at face value, but still, most people do have a healthy dose of skepticism when they receive messages such as, “Hi Linda, my name is John. I came across your profile and was taken by your smile. I must confess you are a very beautiful lady….I would love to get to know you please be nice enough to tell me a thing or two about you ok?” Calling me Linda was my first clue that this email wasn’t directed at me personally, but even without that, I knew it wasn’t on the level. If they were truly interested in me, they would have referenced an article I wrote or mentioned one of my ideas. I am much more susceptible to flattery about my writing than I am about my looks! Well, not susceptible. Let’s say appreciative.

I have a hunch it’s not that we’re more gullible now but that the scams are more detailed and often seem as if they could be true. If someone dressed as a cop came to your house and flashed a realistic-looking badge, wouldn’t you assume that he or she really was a cop? We all have a vague idea of what a cop’s shield looks like — we’ve seen thousands of them in movies and TV shows. Many of us have even seen them up close when we had to report a burglary or car accident, but we probably couldn’t tell the difference between a real badge and a fake one, especially if it were dark and we were scared. And chances are the badge wouldn’t be fake anyway — it could have been stolen.

Dick Clark once did a show called TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes, where they played tricks on people. I didn’t watch it very often because I truly hated it. I remember one scheme they pulled on Corbin Bernsen that was so elaborately detailed, they got real producers and directors to take him to lunch and make him believe he got a big part. I still remember his blank look when they laughed at him for being gullible. How could he not believe it was the truth? It was exactly the way it would have happened for real. That blank look remained only for a moment, but I remember it more than his good-natured laugh that came afterward.

Whether people are more gullible or not, we authors hope for at least some gullibility. If it weren’t for readers’ ability to believe in things that are not true, we’d be out of a job.

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Posted in culture, internet, life, writing. Tags: Dick Clark, gullible, readers' gullibility, social security phone scam, TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes. 4 Comments »

Being Real Online: The Truth of Me

January 21, 2013 — Pat Bertram

shadow In a recent blog interview, someone asked me what I would do differently if I were invisible for a day, and I responded that for all practical purposes I am invisible. “Practical purposes” meaning “offline.” Some people responded that I was very visible, and they are right. I am visible online, but they (and you) don’t know if I’m visible offline, so basically, nothing would change if I were. I’d still be the same person — whoever that is.

I started out online with a certain persona — not fake exactly, but not entirely me. More of a slightly idealized version of me. The odd thing is that over the years, I have grown into that persona, so I don’t know which is the real me any more, but I think the fake one is the real one.

There’s been a lot of talk online lately about the truth of what we hear and see on the Internet, mostly because of Manti Te’o’s story. To be honest, I haven’t a clue he is or what is story is, but it did make me wonder if the people I meet are real.

I tend to take people at face value online, even though I suspect some of them are not who they say they are. For example, there are a few authors portraying themselves as hulking men with biceps and tattoos that I suspect are really women who are using not only pseudonymous names but also pseudonymous personas, but it doesn’t matter as long as they add a bit of color to otherwise staid discussions. And if they really are those men, that doesn’t that matter, either.

If the people who comment frequently on this blog — the ones I have come to think of as online friends — turn out to be not who they say they are, it wouldn’t change anything. Their insights add depth to the conversation and make me think. That is real even if they are not. But I would be willing to bet they are exactly as they seem.

I have met several people offline that I first became friends with online, and they were who and what I expected. In most cases, there wasn’t even a moment of uncomfortableness — we just continued our online relationship offline.

Of course, online we talked about books and writing, ideas and dreams, and that is hard to fake. I mean, if you don’t have ideas it’s hard to pretend that you do, or if you haven’t read books, it’s hard to make an intelligent remark about literary matters.

Maybe the point is that online we are who we say we are. Offline, we get so used to being what we’re not so that we don’t get in fights or so people don’t get angry with us or to get our way or so we can get a promotion or for any number of reasons, but online, what we are really doing is stream-of-consciousness writing, and that taps into the inner us.

If we are creatures made of stardust and electrons, if all our thoughts are particle waves or energy or whatever, maybe it’s easier to plug in to the essential spirit of people online since the Internet is an electronic medium. Online, you get a feel for people, for who they really are, not how they look or what they do for a living. Online, you’re not obese or crippled or ugly. Online, you don’t repel people with your awful smell or your terrible disease. Online, you’re just you.

Sometimes people take the freedom of the internet too far and, hiding behind fake personas, spew invective at the world. But that is true, too. It’s who they are. It’s the real people who are bogus, pretending to be affable when in fact, they are filled with anger and hate.

Are you wondering if I am real? You already know the answer. Whether I’m visible or invisible, fake or real, it’s my words that matter. My words tell you the truth of me.

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Posted in being me, culture, internet, writing. Tags: being invisible, believing what you see onlne, blog interview, internet, offline friends, onlne friends, what is real online. 9 Comments »

Seven by Seven by Seven

January 18, 2013 — Pat Bertram

A fellow author tagged me in a game on Facebook the other day where authors were supposed to “Go to either page 7 or 77 of your manuscript. Count down 7 lines, then copy the next 7 lines to your status. Then tag 7 other writers.”

I don’t like tagging people because it seems rude to include them in a game they didn’t ask to play, but still, all those sevens caught my attention, so I thought I’d play out the game here. Feel free to tag along!

A SPARK OF HEAVENLY FIRE

He ushered her toward a battered red Honda Accord that looked as if it could have been one of the first models off the assembly line.

“It has close to two hundred thousand miles on it,” he said proudly, opening the door for her.

To her relief, the heater worked.

They headed down the long sweeping driveway.

MORE DEATHS THAN ONE

“Then he met you,” Kerry murmured, “and found contentment once again.”

Bob swallowed. “Yes. After he finished telling me the story of the figurines, he said a consortium of Japanese executives had approached him. They wanted The Lotus Room for a conference center, and he decided to sell it to them. He said his dreams of looking for the gold Buddha had faded, but he wanted to find the remains of his wife and child, and give them a proper burial.”

LIGHT BRINGER

“We were inept.” He clamped his mouth shut. The challenging assignments in exotic locales he’d expected when he transferred to Teodora Zaroff’s unit had not materialized, and now it looked as though they never would. He’d have been better off staying in Identification; the work was as elementary, but at least he’d be back in the real world where things made sense most of the time.

DAUGHTER AM I

Once inside, they could barely move around. A folded rollaway bed, a shallow wooden cabinet, a metal desk and chair took up most of the available space.

“A secret room,” Mary breathed. “It’s like something out of Nancy Drew or the Hardy boys.”

“It’s a storage area,” Bill said.

“Then where’s the door?”

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Posted in fiction, internet, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire excerpt, Daughter Am I exerpt, Facebook, Light Bringer excerpt, More Deaths Than One excerpt, page 7 line 7. 3 Comments »

Why Can’t I Plagiarize Myself?

January 17, 2013 — Pat Bertram

twins Yesterday I got spammed by someone trying to sell me software to help me keep from plagiarizing myself. Huh? What’s the big deal? Why can’t I plagiarize myself? Who’s going to sue me if I do so — me?

Coincidentally, I’ve been planning to write a facetious post about plagiarizing myself, thinking to be clever — I mean, really. Self-plagiarism? Is there such a thing? I did a bit of research, and it turns out there is an epidemic of self-plagiarism going on. Successful authors who combine bits and pieces from different articles or previous books into one supposedly new article without citing the original sources. Fiction writers who copy and paste descriptions of characters and places from one novel to the next. Academics who use sections of old papers for new ones. (Called double-dipping.) Researchers who recycle old research into new documents. (Called salami-slicing.) Bloggers who repurpose old posts.

If someone is paying for new articles or new books, either as an editor or a reader, and they get recycled hash, there is a matter of ethics involved. But blogging? Who even cares?

A couple of times I have recycled old posts, and that’s what my facetious confession was supposed to be about — going back to some of my early posts that got a few views when they were first published and none since, updating or adding to them, and posting them as new. Why should my old writings go to waste? I wrote some good pieces that no one read. Why should I have to let such treasures get lost in the depths of the blogging garbage dump? They were my words. I should be able to dig them out and recycle them if I wish.

Sometimes I cut and paste a paragraph or so from a previous post to maintain consistency from post to post, especially if I’m writing about how I felt back then. I’d trust my blog posts more than I’d trust my memory. Is that self-plagiarism?

Occasionally, I’ve sent other bloggers an old post to use as a guest post (they knew it was an old post — in some cases they chose the article themselves). Is that self-plagiarism, too?

In my novels, I have been very careful not to reuse any part of one book in another (except in the case of Light Bringer where I paid homage to More Deaths Than One by letting Bob Stark appear briefly). Readers pick up echoes in books — if writers repeat themselves within a novel, readers sense the echo even if they are not consciously aware of it. And readers can pick up echoes from one novel to the next, which is why I don’t like series — too often, the writers recycle bits from one book to the next and the echoes are deafening.

But blogging? Does anyone really care? There are a handful of people who have read almost all 1111 of my posts, but most people who have stopped by read only a few. So who, besides me, would ever even notice if I repeat a section of a previous post for consistency’s sake or rework one of my first bloggeries?

Still, now that I’m aware of the problem, if ever I rewrite an old post, I will either link to it or mention that it’s a revision. You never know — someday I could get litigious and decide to sue myself, and I couldn’t afford the lawyers since I’d have to foot the bills for both sides of the case.

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Posted in blogging, culture, internet, writing. Tags: double-dipping, plagiarizing myself, recycling blogs, repurposing blogs, salami-slicing, self-plagiarization. 19 Comments »

Come See My Etchings!

January 14, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I couldn’t resist using the old come-on line for the title of this article, but etchings I’m referring to aren’t my etchings. They are the work of Mickey Hoffman, a talented artist and author. (She wrote the mysteries School of Lies and Deadly Traffic, published by Second Wind Publishing.) The first etching is one Mickey did of Beijing, and the second is Myanmar.

If you’d like to see how involved the etching process is, check out Mickey’s blog, What the heck is an etching? She shows step-by-step what exactly goes into the making of her etchings.

If you are more interested in travel than in how to make an etching, here are a few of Mickey’s wonderful travel blogs:

Up and Down, More from Tibet

Myanmar: Bagan, a City for Dreamers

The Islands and the Death Railway

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to check out Mickey’s books:

SCHOOL OF LIES: by Mickey Hoffman is a funny mystery novel about a dysfunctional public school. http://tinyurl.com/783sq7r

DEADLY TRAFFIC: The local sex trade flourishes and girls are disappearing from Standard High http://tinyurl.com/83crtzh

Posted in blogging, culture, internet. Tags: Deadly Traffic, etchings, Mickey Hoffman, Myanmar, School of Lies, Second Wind Publishing. 2 Comments »

Willpower vs. Won’t Power

January 11, 2013 — Pat Bertram

tugofwar I got spammed by a company that wants me to go to its site and take some sort of psych test to assess my willpower. The comment said their studies show that “when it comes to being disciplined and making healthy lifestyle changes, men tend to have a stronger resolve than women” and that “women may have a little more difficulty staying away from temptation and sticking to healthy habits this year.” Apparently, 46 percent of women rated their willpower as good compared to 61 percent of men.

Since the company has obviously made up its minds about my determination to stick to my resolve based on my gender, there doesn’t seem much point in following through. But besides that, the study seems dubious.

Their sweeping statements about men and women’s relative resolve was based on approximately 200 self-assessments, which isn’t exactly a “study” but more of a poll. Many things could skew the results. Perhaps men who didn’t have a strong resolve when it came to health resolutions didn’t want to go on record as having a weak resolve and so didn’t respond. Perhaps women are harder on themselves than men are, and see any infraction as a lack of resolution where men let it slough off. Perhaps men overrate themselves. Perhaps women have a better knowledge of themselves. Or perhaps men and women interpret their resolve differently. For example, if someone vows to eat healthier and passes on a second piece of cake when normally they would eat three pieces, that could be interpreted as sticking with their resolve and having willpower.

The poll revealed that “if pressured by a friend to “pig out” (after eating healthily for an entire week), 7% of women would totally give in, 46% would only share some of their friend’s junk food, and 47% would stay disciplined and eat healthy. For men, 8% would give in, 41% would share, and 51% would stay disciplined.” Not exactly a resounding indictment of women or a pat on the back for men. Assuming that the participants in the poll were equally divided between men and women, only four more men than women claimed they would stay disciplined. Which means that almost half of both sexes say they won’t. (The poll didn’t reveal if in fact more men would stay disciplined, only that they said they would.)

New Year’s resolutions are always difficult. By making a big yearly resolution, you’re setting yourself up to fail because it’s very difficult to make a major change all at once and stick with it. For one thing, habit is too strong. For another thing, you have to retrain your family and friends so they don’t pressure you back into your pre-resolve lifestyle. For still another thing, once you’ve broken the resolution, there seems less impetus to re-resolve.

Willpower in action seems more like “won’t power,” — “I won’t eat potato chips. I won’t go off my diet. I won’t sleep in instead of exercising.” For myself, I stay away from “won’t power.” The more I say I won’t do something, the more I want to do it. As for willpower, I think it’s highly overrated. I try to do the right thing for my health most of the time, and if I get side-tracked, I don’t beat myself up for it.

One thing for sure — I won’t go to the spammers site and rate my willpower. And I won’t even need any willpower to stick with that resolution!

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Posted in culture, internet, life. Tags: men vs women, new years resolutions, pigging out, sticking with resolutions, willpower. 3 Comments »

An Accidental New Year’s Resolution

December 31, 2012 — Pat Bertram

Untitledt When I first got the internet in 2007, I embraced it as if it were a wonderful new friend. At the time, my mother was dying and my life mate/soul mate was sick. There was nothing I could do about either of those circumstances, and the internet gave me a place to escape from my real life.

The terrible times continued. My mother died, then three years later, my soul mate died, and one of the few ways I could escape from the grief was to spend time online. (Screaming also helped alleviate the grief, but being online was so much easier on my throat.) I moderated writing groups, connected to thousands of people, dived headfirst into blogging. I used a couple of my blogs to promote other authors because . . . well, because the blogs were there and it seemed like the right thing to do.

Several unsettling incidents happened recently that made me rethink what I’m doing online. These incidents didn’t amount to much. A contretemps over an excerpt someone wanted me to post. The discovery that a terrible writer I know who writes awful books is making a fortune. A discussion about talent vs. persistence (most writers seem to believe that talent is more important, which disheartens me — are writers really so arrogant in their belief of their talent?). Just trivial things, but they got to me more than they should have, and it suddenly dawned on me that if I turned off my computer, these things don’t exist.

The truth is, except for this blog, I’m not having any fun online. I seem to have fallen into an alternate universe of self-published writers. I’m even getting known as a promoter of self-published writers, but I find this new world of publishing very discouraging. Many of the excerpts I post on my blog are not well written or are excerpts from books I’d never read if they were the last books left on this earth. And that’s saying a lot since once I read everything that fell into my hands. So why am I promoting such books? I no longer know.

It used to be that self-published writers were iconoclasts, following a dream at any cost. Now so many self-published writers are conformists, following a dream at no cost. Even worse, they are a militant lot, demanding regard for no apparent reason. I have become friends with numerous self-published writers in an online sort of way, and I know that many are good at the craft and strive to get better, but just as many self-publishers dash out a book in a month (sometimes even in a week) and expect to be taken seriously.

To be honest, I have no regard for most of the authors published by the big six, either, so this isn’t a self-published vs. traditional-published discussion. It’s about me. I am not self-published, though many people assume I am (guilt by association). Nor am I published by a major publishing company. Authors who were published by small independent presses used to called “indie authors” but self-publishers have adopted that name for themselves, so now there is no name for us.

In my case, it no longer matters what kind of author I am since I am not writing much fiction. Being around so much bad writing and so many self-aggrandizing writers has stifled any urge I might have to contribute words of my own.

So, to save my sanity, I’ve decided to escape from my online life. I’m going to keep up this blog, of course, but I’ll be cutting back on other online activities, especially those that involve promoting authors I don’t know and don’t like.

This resolution isn’t accidental — I’ve been giving a lot of thought to where I want to go with my online life. What’s accidental is the timing. What was supposed to be simply a resolution has accidentally become a New Years resolution.

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Posted in blogging, internet, writing. Tags: escape fom the internet, escape into the internet, New Year's resolution, promoting other authors, self-published writers. 6 Comments »

2102 Year in Blogging Annual Review

December 30, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I received my 2102 Year in Blogging Annual Review from WordPress today. According to WordPress:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 77,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

In 2012, there were 365 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 1,099 posts. There were 358 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 53 MB. That’s about 7 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was December 3rd with 1,683 views. The most popular post that day was Thirty-Two Months of Grief.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2012 (Some of your most popular posts were written before 2012. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again):