Author, blogger, reviewer Sheila Deeth, interviewed me for her blog, and here is one of the questions she asked, followed by my response:
You are always such an encouragement to other writers, posting excerpts, interviews, character interviews, offering advice, sharing experiences. . . . What do you think drives your generosity?
I don’t consider such online activities as generosity, just part of the internet experience. I never quite knew what to do on Facebook, for example — I don’t like games or sharing cute animal photos or any of the other things that clog the news feed — so I built up a couple of discussion groups. It gave me a way of interacting with people and besides, I love talking about the whole writing process. As for the interviews and such. Well, that was a fluke. My personal blog is blue, but I figured out how to change the color, so just for fun, I did an orange blog, a green one, a red one, a purple one, and then I had to figure out what to do with all of them. A book blog and an interview blog seemed the obvious use for two of them since I came in contact with so many authors. The interview blog especially has a fairly good rating, and it seems a waste if I don’t have an interview to post, so I keep promoting it.
In the back of my mind, I hoped that all the author karma I’m building up would somehow help catapult my books to stardom, but so far, it hasn’t happened. But that was never the point of promoting authors on my blogs. As I said, that was mostly a fluke.
(You can find the rest of the interview here: My thanks to author Pat Bertram)
That is only part of why I promote other authors on my blogs. The truth is even less altruistic than I made it sound. I’ve had those two author blogs for several years and just posted sporadically until a couple of years ago. After the death of my life mate/soul mate, I got addicted to a few of the games on my computer — Spider Solitaire, Mahjong Titans, and FreeCell. I so desperately needed for something to work out, I kept playing the games over and over until I won. I couldn’t redo my life, so there was some sort of comfort in redoing something — anything — until it came out right. And the games were a way of taking a vacation from the pain that all but consumed me at times.
When I realized how obsessed I had become, I decided to go cold turkey and give up the games, but I still needed something to do to break the hold of grief when it got too much for me to handle, so I substituted blogging — posting excerpts and author interviews to promote other authors in addition to daily blogging here on Bertram’s Blog. I figured that at least I would be doing some good with my online activities, which is something that cannot be said about computer games.
As for why I keep up with promoting other authors now that my grief is dissipating . . . well, it’s the right thing to do. If you want me to interview you, you can find the questions and instructions here: Author Questionnaire
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Pat Bertram is the author of the conspiracy 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+
One of the most fascinating people I have met online is Mike Pettit. His nightly “Goodnight America” is worth waiting for. His books covers are wonderfully nostalgic, reminding us of an earlier age of publishing. His comments are a bit too amusing to be truthful (except for his political comments, which are a bit too truthful to be amusing.) I’ve wanted to interview Mike for a long time for 
Bertram's Blog 
What Do You Do If Someone Posts an Insulting Comment on Your Blog?
November 28, 2012 — Pat BertramFor one thing, my posts tend not to be controversial — they’re more of a way of chronicling my journey through life and the writing life. It’s hard for someone to argue that I’m getting it wrong when I can’t get it wrong. I’m being me, and who can argue with that?
For another thing, my readers tend to be intelligent and kind, and they give thoughtful responses that add to the conversation instead of posting negative comments that bring the discussion to an abrupt end.
The other day, however, someone left an insulting comment on my article How Many Books Are Going to be Published in 2012? (Prepare for a Shock) that I didn’t know how to handle. That is not my favorite post by any means, in fact, it’s one of the few I wish I had never written. I’d only written the article as a way of trying to make sense of the current book climate and to show the meteoric increase in the number of books available, not to establish myself as any authority on the subject. And yet it’s become my most quoted article, and the one most frequently linked to.
It’s no wonder that an insulting remark landed on the post. Someone commented: “why would anyone bother to pay attention to a blog which starts off with uninteresting stuff about the author, and then gives data without a source? takes all types, I guess.”
I guess it does take all types. When I see an article that doesn’t lead up to the hype, I merely pass on by without stopping to leave a comment. But, for whatever reason, that person left a comment. I didn’t know whether to delete it or approve it. And if I posted it, I didn’t know whether to respond to it or ignore it. Admittedly, it’s not much of an insult, but it still put me in a quandary.
I asked my blogger friends on Facebook what they do in such a circumstance, and got a whole range of answers from “delete it” to “find where the person lives and go beat them up.” Some people thought that if it had merit or if it said more about the commenter than me, that I should post it but not respond. Some said that if it was a business blog, to delete the comment, that it wasn’t good to have snipers in your store.
The comment now seems innocuous, and the commenter has a point, why would anyone bother to pay attention to that particular blog post? (Though I did give a source, just not a link to the source.) Still, I left his remark in comment limbo until just a few minutes ago. I found the deciding factor in You and Your Blog Suck: 7 Steps to Responding to Negative Comments, a blog post by Marc Ensign. He said, “By deleting it you are telling your readers that they are welcome to say whatever they want as long as they agree with you. The only time I would consider deleting a post is if it was obscene or offensive to your readers.”
Since the comment under consideration is not obscene, not offensive to my readers, not even much of an insult, I took a deep breath and approved the comment.
So, what do you do if someone posts an insulting remark on your blog? Do you delete it or do you approve it so posts where everyone can see it? If you post it, do you answer it or ignore it?
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Pat Bertram is the author of the conspiracy 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+