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Distilling the Essence of a Story

August 30, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I have an interview on BlogTalkRadio on Saturday, September 5 at 11:30am ET. We’re going to be talking about back story — where I got the ideas for A Spark of Heavenly Fire and More Deaths Than One. Although one of the hosts of the show has read at least one of my books, I’m sure at some point he will ask me, “What are your books about?” And I will give the same answer I give to everyone who asks. A blank stare. Though, being radio, it will come across as blank silence.

How does one encapsulate a three-hundred-page novel with subplots and subtexts, themes and scenes, complexities and ironies into a minute of description? This distillation is commonly called an elevator speech, and after five months of being published, I still haven’t figured mine out.

I can talk around the story — More Deaths Than One is a thriller/mystery/suspense novel that explores what it is that makes us who we are. Is it our memories? Our experiences? Our natures? A Spark of Heavenly Fire is a thriller/suspense novel with a strong romantic element. It tells the story of ordinary people who become extraordinary because of the trauma they must endure. — But neither of those descriptions gives an idea of what the stories are about.

I can relate a bit of the story — More Deaths Than One tells the story of Bob Stark who sees his mother’s obituary in the morning paper, which stuns him because he buried her two decades ago before he the country to live in Southeast Asia. So how can she be dead again? A Spark of Heavenly Fire tells the story of how Kate Cummings, an ordinary woman, gathered her courage and strength to survive the horror of a bioengineered disease let loose on the state of Colorado.

The problem I’m finding is that I don’t know the essence of either story, the emotional triggers. What do the books do for readers? Why should people read them? Perhaps the books will bring romance and adventure to readers’ lives. By showing ordinary people rising to horrific occasions, perhaps readers will feel better about themselves, knowing they too have the potential for heroism. And, in the case of A Spark of Heavenly Fire, people will know what to expect if ever the Swine Flu or any other virulent disease spreads so rapidly that an entire state needs to be quarantined in an effort to curtail the deaths.

So, how do you distill the essence of your book (or any book!) into a few words and make a reader desperate to read it?

More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire are available from Second Wind Publishing, LLC.
You can also download the first 30% free at Smashwords.

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Posted in books, fiction, internet, life, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, BlogTalkRadio, Colorado, elevator speech, More Deaths Than One, suspense, thriller. 8 Comments »

Whew! Now I Feel Safe?

August 26, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been reading a very old book on blogging. For normal purposes, a 2006 copyright isn’t that old, but apparently when it comes to the blogosphere, it’s so old as to be . . . well, not worthless, but outdated. The only mention of WordPress in the book was the .org version. The .com version (the one most of us have come to rely on) wasn’t even mentioned. Is WordPress.com that new? I don’t know — I’ve only been blogging for two years, so anything before September 2007 is prehistoric to me.

Anyway, the author of the book suggests backing up your blog to make sure that your don’t lose your content in case the host’s computer crashes or the host goes out of business, as did someone who hosted 3,000 blogs many, many blogyears ago. (Apparently a blogyear is akin to a dogyear.) So I hied myself to the WordPress forum to find out the best way to back up my 351 posts, 4 pages, 33 categories, 1,350 tags, and 1,865 valuable (and much appreciated) comments. According to WordPress, however, the blogs are already backed up. I found this on a FAQ page:

If your blog is hosted here at WordPress.com, we handle all necessary backups. If a very large meteor were to hit all of the WordPress.com servers and destroy them beyond repair, all of your data would still be safe and we could have your blog online within a couple of days (after the meteor situation dies down, of course).

I also found this in a discussion forum:

Right now there are 3 copies of your blog in 3 different parts of the USA.

If California drops into the Pacific, your blog is still safe.
If California drops into the Pacific AND Texas gets hit by a meteor storm which destroys it you can still blog all about it.
If all 3 go down then there is something very serious going on …

There isn’t really a need to backup.

Unless, of course, you want to, in which case you go to your dashboard, scroll down to tools, click on export, and send your blog files to . . . wherever.

I feel safe now, don’t you? I won’t think about California dropping into the Pacific, Texas getting hit by a meteor storm, that unspecified meteor situation, or that even more unspecified “something very serious going on”. Not much, anyway.

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Posted in blogging, culture, How to, internet, writing. Tags: backing up your blog, blogging, blogosphere, WordPress. 9 Comments »

More Blogs Than One

August 24, 2009 — Pat Bertram

A year ago when I was waiting for my books to be published, I kept myself occupied with setting up a variety of blogs. I told myself I wanted to test blogging platforms so I could help my fellow authors pick the best one for their needs, but that wasn’t my excuse for setting up a bunch of WordPress blogs since I was already familiar with the site. The truth is, I became enamored with the custom colorizer, and ended up with five blogs, identical except for color.

The blue blog, this one — Bertram’s Blog — chronicles my struggles first to become a published writer and now to become a published selling writer. It was my original blog, and the one I still consider my blogging home.

The red blog, Pat Bertram Introduces, was intended to be an authors’ blog, where I introduced the writers I was coming to know via networking sites. When so many of them ignored my invitation to be a guest, I decided to turn it into a blog for interviewing my characters. (I’d forgotten that until just now. Never did introduce them!) To get the blog going, since at the time it was too soon to introduce my characters, I decided to introduce other writers’ characters. If you’d like me to introduce your character or characters, you can find the instructions on the Character Questionnaire page. At the very least, it’s a good way for you to get to know your own characters.

The purple blog, Book Marketing Floozy, was intended to be a blog to promote my books. I was talking (online, of course — that seems to be where my life is lived nowadays) to a fellow author about promotion, and she cautioned me against signing up for too many social networking sites. She said that I ran the risk of becoming a marketing floozy, just popping in to peddle my books, and then disappearing again. Since I’ve never been one to take advice, I signed up for several sites (though in the end, I did more or less take her advice — I spend most of my time on Facebook, Goodreads, and Gather.) And I started the Book Marketing Floozy blog — I decided that if I was going to be a book marketing floozy, then I should flaunt my flooziness. Again, since it was too early to start promoting my books, I started collecting articles about book marketing and promotion by different authors. The site is now indexed for easy reference, but there is no article about my books, though I did mention them in passing in one of the articles I wrote. Too bad. I did like the idea of being a book marketing floozy.

The yellow/orange blog, Dragon My Feet, was an import from Live Spaces. I set up a blog there using a gorgeous dragon template, and since I mostly talked about how I was procrastinating, I called it . . . You get the idea. So now I have a blog name that, while cute, really makes no sense. And the blog itself makes no sense. It’s become a dumping ground for any article that doesn’t fit with another of my blogs. I have guest articles that are too self-promotiony for Bertram’s Blog. I have a few of my attempts at reviewing books. I have photo essays. Checking out the blog just now, I notice that thirteen of the past fourteen posts are related to books in some way. Perhaps I should turn it into a book blog? But that would be work — finding guests, reading books and writing reviews — and I am inherently averse to work.

The green blog, Wayword Wind, is a poor, loveless thing that sits there getting greener by the moment because of all the moss it’s gathering. I have not posted a single bloggery because I have never quite figured out what to do with it. I planned to post articles about the various themes and research in my novels, but alas, I can’t think of anything to say that isn’t already in the books. I should have talked about the swine flu and how it tied into A Spark of Heavenly Fire, but I didn’t. I could talk about the twelfth planet and the various conspiracy theories I mention in my upcoming book Light Bringer, but I won’t. Been there. Done that. At one time I thought of posting quotes and then giving a commentary, but I really don’t have much to say on any subject except writing. I discovered this recently when I started yet another blog simply because I like the WordPress theme. (Do you see a pattern here?) I call it The Mind of Pat Bertram, but since I seldom post to it, you can see how little is actually on my mind. Then I thought of turning Wayword Wind into a blog for posting my progress with Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way program, but since I haven’t actually been doing the program, it fits more with Dragon My Feet. Because of the way I spelled wayword, it seems the blog should be about writing, but I already have a blog about writing.

So, here’s my conundrum. It’s not as crucial as the one that haunts me about how to promote my books, but it is a niggling one. I have a blank blog!!!!! What do I do with it?

(The title of this article was once used in reference to me by Lisa Brackmann, author of the soon-to-be-released Rock Paper Tiger.)

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Posted in blogging, internet, life, writing. Tags: Bertram's Blog, blogging, blogs, book marketing floozy, Character questionnaire, Julia Cameron, Lisa Brackmann, Pat Bertram Introduces, Rock Paper Tiger, social networking, The Artists Way, wordpress themes. 14 Comments »

Catapulting Me Into BetterSellerdom

August 23, 2009 — Pat Bertram

In the past week, I received a couple of emails from people asking my advice on how to promote various online activities, I received an invitation to host a seminar on promotion, and I received an invitation to participate in a BlogTalkRadio discussion about creating a successful Facebook group. Apparently, I’m making a name for myself, (albeit slowly) but not as an author. Am I doing something right? Am I going about my self-promotion in the wrong way? I don’t know.

The interesting thing — to me, anyway — is that contrary to appearances, I still don’t know much about promotion. Sure, I am creating a presence on Facebook, I’m playing around with GoodReads, I blog and tweet. I’m even going to do a presentation at the local library about the brave new world of publishing. But those are the same things everyone else is doing, and I know that to be effective, promotion has to be creative, unique, and personal.

The odds of selling a truckload of books are miniscule to none, but I have never played the odds. I’m not giving up on my first books — A Spark of Heavenly Fire and More Deaths Than One — but in the next couple of weeks my third book — Daughter Am I — will be released, and I will need to figure out how to promote it. And who to promote it to.

When Mary Stuart, my twenty-five-year-old hero, discovers she inherited a farm from her murdered grandparents — grandparents her father claimed had died before she was born — she sets out on a journey to find out who they were and why someone wanted them dead. So is this a book that will appeal to readers in their twenties and thirties? Maybe. Along the way, Mary accumulates a crew of feisty octogenarians — former gangsters and friends of her grandfather. So is this a book that will appeal older readers? Perhaps. Mary also meets and falls in love with Tim Olson, whose grandfather shared a deadly secret with her great-grandfather. So is this a book that will appeal to romance readers? Probably not. There is no real romantic conflict in the book. The conflict belongs more in the mystery category, because Mary, Tim, and the octogenarians need to stay one step ahead of the killer who is desperate to dig up that secret. So is this a book that will appeal to mystery lovers? Could be.

If I had to do it over again, I would probably be more careful to write books that fit a particular genre to make them easier to promote. Oh, hell, who am I trying to kid. If I had to do it over, I’d write the exact same books. I like telling stories the way they should be told, without adhering to the boundaries of genre or niche marketing.

So, until I come up with a creative, unique, and personal idea of how to catapult me into bestsellerdom (or even bettersellerdom) it’s a matter of continuing to make a name for myself. Even if it is as a promoter.

If you want to know what I know about promotion, check out Book Marketing Floozy. Everything I know about marketing I got from there.

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Posted in blogging, books, internet, life, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, book marketing, Daughter Am I, how to promote books, More Deaths Than One, niche marketing, promotion. 8 Comments »

It’s a Birthday Party!

August 21, 2009 — Pat Bertram

No, it’s not my birthday, it’s the birthday of Second Wind Publishing, LLC. The first book was published exactly one year ago today, and now there are almost thirty, including two of mine (with a third on the way.)

I have no doubts of the success of Second Wind. Mike Simpson has the uncanny ability of getting his authors involved in the business, challenging us to expand our abilities beyond the scope of writing. He’s gotten die-hard thriller writers to edit romances. He’s gotten shy authors to do book signings. And somehow (still don’t know how) he’s gotten me to become Second Wind’s promotion co-ordinator. Okay, I do know how. He genuinely likes the books he publishes, and says the most wonderful things about them. In an introduction to my 100-word stories that were included in the romance anthology, Love is on the Wind, Mike wrote: “Pat Bertram, author of the newly released duo of suspense novels, More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire, is a writer who defies categories, a literary maverick whose stories transcend genre and transport readers to beguiling worlds filled with compelling characters.”

So, stop by and join the celebration!

Ten Lessons I Learned (The Hard Way): A Publisher’s Reflections on the First Year
What Second Wind Book Do You Wish to Read? You Might Get Your Wish!
Introducing the authors of Second Wind!

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Posted in books, internet, life, writing. Tags: Mike Simpson, More Deaths Than One, online birthday party, Pat Bertram, Second Wind Publishing. 1 Comment »

To Trust or Not to Trust?

August 17, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I recently helped run a short story contest for Second Wind Publishing, LLC — the first contest that was sponsored solely by the company — and it went smoothly. Until last week. That’s when we found out one of the finalists had copied a story from another writer who had posted it on the Internet. Whoooo. So not the thing to do!

Deborah J Ledford, a friend and fellow author keeps warning me about posting my writing on the Internet since such episodes are not uncommon, but I still persist in posting just about everything I write except for my novels. And even then, I post the first chapters on various sites. It might be prudent to be careful of what I post, but I have only one way of selling my books — getting known. And the only way I have of getting known is to write articles, bloggeries, mini fiction (100 word stories), whatever my brain can conjure up in the hopes of attracting some attention.

The way I figure it, a person can decide to trust everyone and post at will or distrust everyone and never post. So far, it’s been worth the risk. One of my blog posts was copied once, but I notified Google, and they made the people remove it. More importantly, I have made many friends because of my posts. I’d hate to have to worry about posting what I write — what new friends might I end up not meeting if I curtailed my writing? Still, it’s something to be aware of.

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Posted in blogging, internet, life, writing. Tags: Deborah J. Ledford, plagiarism, Second Wind Publishing, trust. 19 Comments »

Is Anyone Really Writing the Great American Novel?

August 2, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I still come across characters in books who want to write The Great American Novel, though in real life (or as real as it gets online) I don’t see people saying that. Has the desire to write The Great American Novel been superseded by the desire to write the next million-dollar bestseller? And is either goal realistic for most of us, or even worth pursuing?

Frankly, when I started writing this bloggery, I didn’t even know what The Great American Novel is, so I went trolling the Internet (so much more fun than actually sitting here writing!) to see what I could see. (Ah, the adventure of it all!)

(I don’t know why blogging brings out my desire to use parentheses — I seldom use them in my other writing, but there it is.)

Anyway, from what I gather, The Great American Novel shows the impact of American culture on the characters, shows the spirit of life in the United States at the time of publication, and is supposed to be a counterpart to the great English writers. Nothing in that definition precludes the novel being a bestseller, but it’s generally assumed that The Great American Novel is a literary novel rather than a commercial one. If the novel needs to show the spirit of life in the U.S. at the time of publication, then that means it needs to show today’s culture. Do we have a culture any more? I sure hate to think that fast food restaurants and blockbuster movies and and bestselling pap — books and music — are the only things that define us culturally. Though they certainly have had an impact on all our lives.

And why The Great American Novel? Why not the Great International Novel? The Great One-World Government Novel? The Great Earth Novel? Aren’t we supposed to be moving out of a parochial viewpoint into a global one? Either way, I am not writing an American novel, great or otherwise, even though my novels are set in Colorado. Perhaps Light Bringer, which will be published later this year can be considered a The Great Earth Novel since it strives to tell the history of humankind in a unique way. (Some people call it science fiction. Could be, I don’t know — I just told the story.)

What about you? Do you have any desire to write The Great American Novel? The Great Canadian Novel? The Great Global Novel? The next million-dollar bestseller?

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Posted in blogging, books, culture, internet, writing. Tags: American culture, literary novels, The Great American Novel, The Great Global Novel. 15 Comments »

Words of Healing, Words of Fun

July 30, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Tonight is No Whine, Just Champagne, my live discussion on Gather.com, and the host of the discussion chose to discuss — among other writing concerns — jingles, verses, word play, greeting card sentiments. It should be fun — I tend to take writing too seriously, but my love of writing started with a love of playing with words. Long before I started writing novels, I wrote snippets of poetry. I’d spend hours looking for the perfect word, for the perfect rhythm, the perfect innuendo. Some of those snippets fit nicely into tonight’s discussion, because they would make great greeting card sentiments . . . for a cynic. I’ve started posting these snippets on my Quantum (Uni)Verse blog, but here are a few that fit with tonight’s theme:

Quantum (Uni)Verse #1

I thought it was only a story
But now I find it’s true —
You smile at me and I’m happy;
You ignore me and I’m blue.

Quantum (Uni)Verse #5

ours was no great love
but even so
whenever our eyes chanced to meet
we shared a sudden joy

Quantum (Uni)Verse #18

of course
I want more
much much more
but even if I never saw you again
I’d still be content
with all that I’ve had
with everything you’ve given me

Quantum (Uni)Verse #19

i want to tell you I love you
but my heart gets all tongue-tied
and the words just can’t get through . . .

It’s summertime, so let’s play . . . with words.

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Posted in internet, writing. Tags: greeting cards, jingles, live chat, live discussion about writing, No Whine Just Champagne, Quantum Uni(Verse), verses. Leave a Comment »

Claire Made Me Do It

July 25, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I have a confession to make: I seldom leave comments on the blogs I visit. Mostly I don’t want to sound like an idiot (or a spammer) and say: Thanks for sharing, though sometimes that is exactly what I want to say — so many bloggers write fantastic and helpful articles. Occasionally I don’t understand the repartee going on in the comments, so I skulk away without leaving my mark. And all too often I don’t have the time to come up with something witty, clever, or even passably intelligent to write. Every task on the Internet takes way more time than it should, so I always seem to be scurrying from one link to another, one discussion to another, one blog to another.

And I don’t always respond to comments left on my own blog, either. Some bloggers respond to every single remark. Some don’t respond to any. I fall in the middle. It’s a question of hospitality. As the host, do I let the guest have the last word? Or do I acknowledge their comment with one of my own?

Last night I was discussing blogging with a fellow author at Second Wind Publishing, LLC, one who has developed a blog following in a very short span of time. How did she do it? By finding humorous blogs she liked and leaving a trail of comments back to her own. Truth be told, she was a bit appalled when I told her that I don’t leave comments, and she strongly urged me to go through my blogroll and visit each blog. So I did. Read the articles I hadn’t yet taken a look at. Left a comment everywhere I went.

If the comments aren’t intelligible, blame Claire. She made me do it.

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Posted in blogging, internet, life, writing. Tags: blog comments, Claire Collins, Second Wind Publishing. 32 Comments »

Sun-Warmed Apricots and A Court of Western Kingbirds

July 23, 2009 — Pat Bertram

July is almost over. I could ask where the time has gone, but I know the answer to that one — it passed me by while I was paying attention to other things. No, writing is not one of those things, unless you call sending dozens of emails and posting several blog articles writing. Of course, those are writings, and they are creative, it’s just not the sort of writing that adds pages to a manuscript.

So what have I been paying attention to? Starting a new blog for Second Wind Publishing, as if one isn’t enough! Posting to my own blog. Editing my final manuscript. Editing a great thriller written by another Second Wind author. Cleaning house. Oops. That’s not strictly a writing-related activity, but it is something I’ve been putting off and putting off for . . . let’s just say I’ve been putting it off for way too long so that I can participate in writing-related activities.

I’ve also spent too much time emailing and IMing friends I’ve met online. Can’t seem to get it through my head that just because I’m online, it doesn’t mean I’m being productive. But writing isn’t always about being productive. Sometimes it’s just about living. Replenishing the creative wells. Treating the senses.

I had a bit of a sensory treat today. I was standing in a small clearing, watering my trees and bushes (planted hundreds of them, turned this acre of land into a miniature forest), when I heard Western Kingbirds — a whole court of them — in the leaves a few feet above my head. Though I looked, I never caught a glimpse of a single bird, but I feel privileged to have participated in the aviary world for a few minutes.

Actually, I had two sensory treats. Several apricot trees planted themselves among the other trees, and this year they produced a bit of fruit. So as I was watering, I plucked one of the apricots, warm from the sun, and ate it. Truly a taste to remember.

Both these experiences will wind up in a one of my books, but those upcoming scenes wouldn’t exist if I had been writing and not experiencing.

So, what are your writing concerns? What writing activities have you been involved with this week? Did you have any successes, breakthroughs, realizations? How have you replenished your creative wells? Did you treat your senses?

Let’s talk.

The group No Whine, Just Champagne will meet here: No Whine, Just Champagne Discussion #75 for a live discussion about **** on July 23, 2009 at 9:00pm ET. I hope you will stop by. At least you cannot use the excuse that we don’t talk about what you want to talk about! If you can’t make it, we can have a discussion here — just leave a comment.

**** Insert your choice of topic here.

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