life | Bertram's Blog

THE BLUEST SKIES YOU’VE EVER SEEN ARE IN . . .

September 27, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I’ve never been to the state of Washington, but I’d be willing to bet that the Colorado skies in September are much, much bluer than those in Seattle. The thin, dry Colorado air gives the sky a purple cast so deep and vast you can only call it the color of infinity.

I live off a highway, so unless I want to take my life in my hands by dodging demented drivers or being asphyxiated by exhaust, I walk laps up and down the .3 mile rock- and gravel-strewn dirt lane in front of my home. Although the scenery provides a gorgeous setting for the trashy trailers and tacky houses, after about the ten-thousandth lap (not all in the same day!), the scenery fades into the background. Which is a good thing — I need to look down at my feet to keep from stepping on sharp rocks or stepping into potholes. Still, with writing, as with life, the significance is in the details, so during each walk, I try to find a new detail to focus on. Today it was the sky. A perfect, cloudless, September sky.

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Posted in life, writing. Tags: bluest skies, color of infinity, Colorado sky, significant details, skies. 10 Comments »

My Fruitful Summer

September 25, 2009 — Pat Bertram

We are now officially into autumn, and where are the words I planned to write? Not in my head, not on paper. A Facebook friend emailed me the other day and asked if he could be part of the blog tour for my new book. All of a sudden it dawned on me that I have done no promotion for Daughter Am I, my young woman/old gangster coming of age tale. I’ve been so caught up in the edits, in making the book as perfect as possible, that I conveniently forgot that the finish line for one heat of the race is the starting line for another. To my dismay, I’ve discovered that getting published does not end the querying — I’ve spent the past few days trying to find bloggers willing to host my tour, and at the rate I’m going it will take many more days of querying to find enough hosts to make the tour interesting.

I did have a fruitful summer, though — I went to a u-pick cherry farm a mile down the road, (took pictures, have a great title for the photo essay, but the words to said essay are buried in the back cabinet of my brain with the rest of the words I’m not writing). I also picked plums — greengages — just a few yards from my house. Now that particular photo essay I managed to do while I was procrastinating on writing this discussion: Plum Tuckered.

Bear with me. There is a writing discussion in this.

All that fruit picking made me think that once upon a time food was free for the picking. Literally. That realization helped put me in my hero’s frame of mind — he is going to be living in the wild when I finally get back to my WIP. It also gave me a totem or token or symbol for the second part of the book (the token in the first part was a specific type of candy). And finally, it made me wonder about the use of fruit in stories. The only thing I remember about a certain book I read when young was a mention of greengages. “The children were sick from eating too many greengages.” That’s it. I don’t remember anything else — not the title, not the author, not the story.

So, has any fictional fruit made an impression on you? Eve’s apple, of course. Snow White’s apple. Apple sellers in the Depression era. Oranges in Victorian Christmas stories.

Has fruit ever played a part in anything you’ve written? Did you have a fruitful summer in any meaning of the word? What are you working on? How was your writing week? Did you accomplish what you wanted? Did you make any interesting discoveries? Did you have fun or was it a chore?

Let’s talk.

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Posted in blogging, books, culture, life, writing. Tags: apples in literature, book promotion, Daughter Am I, greengages, writing discussion. 5 Comments »

Happy Bloggiversary To Me!

September 24, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I started blogging two years ago, back when I didn’t even know what a blog was. I’d read about how important blogging was for authors, both as a way of getting known and as a way of connecting with readers. Deciding to “act as if” I were going to be published one day, in the hopes of making it happen, I created this blog. I had nothing to say, no one to say it to, no reason to say anything, but I didn’t let that stop me. I started yapping and haven’t stopped since. Although I intended to blog every day, I’ve only managed 372 posts in those two years. I’ve received 2,003 comments. I’ve posted in 36 categories, and used 1,402 tags. In the past year, I’ve had five times as many views as I did the first year. Not bad for someone who’d never even heard of a blog.

Did acting as if I were going to get published work? Perhaps, though there is no direct connection that I know of. Still, I have had two books published by Second Wind Publishing and a third will be published next month. More importantly — at least blog-wise — I am still blogging, still making connections, still making friends. Still having fun.

It amazes me that anyone wants to read anything that I write here. This is so much a place for just letting my thoughts roam, for thinking through problems, and (I admit it) for pontificating a bit. It’s been a kick, writing this blog, and I want to thank all of you for indulging my whims and whimseys.

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So . . . thank you.

Posted in blogging, internet, life, writing. Tags: acting as if, blogging, bloggiversary, getting published. 5 Comments »

Okay, I Admit It. I’m Jealous.

September 18, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Jealous of whom? Need you ask? I bet if they were honest, most authors would also admit they were jealous of Dan Brown. Whatever one thinks of the man himself, the man as a story steller, the man as a wordsmith, the fact is, he wrote a book that is dazzling the world.

I only read The DaVinci Code because I was curious as to what captured people’s attention when it came to books. Though his prose is supposedly the worst thing since moldy bread, what I noticed were the internal inconsistencies — if the villain was so smart as to stay one step ahead of Robert and Sophie, if he was so smart as to figure out where they were going next and kill the person they wanted to contact, why wasn’t he smart enough just to kill the two of them and put us out of our misery? I don’t like books where the body count rises just to show how smart the hero is to stay alive. Cheap thrills, but apparently they work.

The internal inconsistencies were bad enough, but what drove me nuts were the external inconsistencies — though the cathedrals in France do hide a code, the code predates the cathedrals, predates Christianity even. The cathedrals were all built on ancient mystical sites, as was the Vatican itself. If the cathedrals themselves do contain a code, it is a manifestation of the prehistoric meaning. And then there was Sophie as the direct descendent of Jesus. Puh-leeze. A family tree is exactly that — an everspreading, ever thinning genetic branching. Even if Sophie was a direct descendent, her Jesus genes would be so minuscule as to be indistinguishable from yours or mine. (Go back twenty generations, and we’re all related.) I won’t even mention the possibility that Mary Magdalene never existed as a flesh and blood woman but, together with the other two Marys, was a manifestation of the mother goddess. And then, of course, I kept hearing echoes of a previous book I’d read — Holy Blood, Holy Grail — the book that he didn’t credit for his research.

Still, with all that, he captured the world’s attention, and now with his new book, for whatever reason, he is dazzling the world again. I wonder what that would be like? Must be nice.

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Posted in books, culture, life, writing. Tags: Dan Brown, Holy Blood Holy Grail, Mary Magdalene, The DaVinci Code, The Lost Symbol. 3 Comments »

Aaaarrrgggghhhh!!!!! Now I Have to Write a Review!

September 16, 2009 — Pat Bertram

While most of the world is talking about the new Dan Brown bestseller, Second Wind Publishing, LLC has quietly released a thriller of its own — Staccato by Deborah J Ledford. You won’t find all the elements that have become Brown’s hallmarks: cartoonish characters, amateurish prose, tin-ear for dialogue, internal inconsistencies. What you will find is a well-written, well-constructed story that will keep you enthralled.

The product description on Amazon says it better than I could: Performed against the backdrop of the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, Staccato transports readers to a behind-the-scenes glimpse of professional musicians, the psychological twists and turns of its characters, and in the end, retribution that crashes in a crescendo of notes played at the literary pace of a maestro’s staccato. The only drawback to Staccato is that it doesn’t come with a soundtrack — each meticulously chosen piece of music enhances the mood of the scene it accompanies, and unless you are much more informed about music than I am, you will miss some of the brilliance of this composition.

Readers are in for a treat, and me? Aaaarrrggghhhh!!! I have to write another review! Well, I don’t have to, but the book deserves all the attention it can get. So, I will add it to the stack of other books I’ve promised to review, yet haven’t:

Lacey Took a Holiday by Lazarus Barnhill
The Medicine People by Lazarus Barnhill
Steel Waters by Ken Coffman
Toxic Shock Syndrome by Ken Coffman
Mazurka by Aaron Lazar
Heart of Hythea by Suzanne Francis
and now, Staccato by Deborah J Ledford

Although all these books are much more literate, readable, and enjoyable than Dan Brown’s pap, the best I can come up with as a review for each of these deserving novels right now is, “Good book. I liked it and you will, too.”

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Posted in books, fiction, life, writing. Tags: Aaron Lazar, book reviews, Dan Brown, Deborah J. Ledford, Heart of Hythea, Ken Coffman, Lacey Took a Holiday. Lazarus Barnhill, Mazurka, Second Wind Publishing, Staccato, Steel Waters, Suzanne Francis, the Medicine People, Toxic Shock Syndrome. 4 Comments »

My Brand New Cousin and My Brand New Book

September 12, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I love the internet. I never know from day to day what will happen, who I will meet, who will become part of my future. I’ve made many new friends, some I have no doubt who will be in my life for years to come, and I also made a new cousin.

Another Bertram contacted me on Facebook and wanted to know if we were related. Since I have very few Bertram relatives that I know of, I told him regrettably that we probably weren’t related, though we could be. He lives in Hamburg, and my great-grandfather came from Appen, which is nearby. Since Dirk (I hope he doesn’t mind my mentioning his name) also has few Bertram relatives that he knows of, we decided to become each other’s cousin. And who knows, we could be related. We’re both creative — I write novels, he’s a musician who produces book trailers. He says he’ll make the book trailer for my soon-to-be released novel, Daughter Am I. How cool is that!

He wanted an excerpt which shows the spirit of the book, and I finally sent him this one, though I don’t really know how he can make a trailer from it since nothing really happens, but it does show the spirit of the book, or at least the spirit of the characters.

The old man stopped bouncing and let his arms drop to his sides. Now that he was standing relatively still, Mary could see that he was even skinnier than she had first thought. A gray slouch hat was tilted toward one eye, but the jaunty effect was marred by the baggy pants cinched high above his waist and the bright flowery shirt that was several sizes too large. His hands were shaking uncontrollably. Parkinson’s disease?

“You must be Happy,” she said.

Frowning, Happy patted his torso. “Must I be happy?” His voice deepened to what Mary assumed was his normal tone. “Can I be happy? Can anyone truly be happy?”

“His name is Barry Hapworth,” Kid Rags said, flicking a bit of lint off his navy pinstriped suit jacket. “For several obvious reasons, everyone calls him Happy.”

Mary glanced from the bus to Happy. “Were you driving this thing?”

Happy puffed out his meager chest. “Sure was.”

“And did you almost run over Mrs. Werner’s cat?”

“I’ll take the fifth.” Happy paused for a fraction of a second. “A fifth of bourbon.”

“Did someone say bourbon?” Kid Rags removed his flask from his hip pocket, took a swig, and passed it around.

“Who are all these people?” Bill asked from behind Mary.

Mary turned, wondering how she was going to explain the situation, but Teach saved her the trouble and made the introductions. Arms still folded across his chest, Crunchy nodded to Bill, then stepped close to Mary. Happy punched the air, but stopped when Bill showed no inclination to fight.

Kid Rags shook Bill’s hand. “You’re a lucky man.”

“What are you all doing here?” Mary asked. “I was supposed to pick you up. And why is Happy here?”

“Happy is a friend of Kid Rags,” Teach began, but Kid Rags interrupted him, saying hastily, “Not a friend. Just a fellow I know.”

“Anyway,” Teach continued, “Happy knows someone who knows Iron Sam, and since we knew your car wasn’t big enough for all of us, we took Happy up on his offer to drive us in his bus.”

“Who’s Iron Sam?” Bill asked, sounding plaintive.

“Butcher Boy,” Kid Rags said.

Bill’s eyebrows drew together. “Butcher Boy? Mary, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Mary laughed, suddenly feeling lighthearted and carefree. “I haven’t a clue.”

Daughter Am I will be released in October by Second Wind Publishing.

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Posted in internet, life, writing. Tags: book trailers, Daughter Am I, Second Wind Publishing. 3 Comments »

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 »

Writing, Blogging, Promoting — My Aha Moment

August 25, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Fellow author Dale Cozort recently returned from agent Donald Maass’s High Tension Workshop. (Okay, it wasn’t recently — it was back in April, but who’s counting?) Cozort reported that according to Maass, the keys to keeping modern readers’ interest are finding something fresh — a different way of looking at events — and finding ways of getting the reader to identify with the character or with the scene.

According to The Everything Blogging Book by Aliza Sherman Risdahl, the key to keeping blog readers’ interest is “Taking hobbies and interests and finding a different way of looking and talking about them.”

In a recent comment, blogger extraordinaire and my marketing guru Sia McKye wrote, “There’s only so many ways to market things. If you observe, market and promotion tend to follow certain patterns. That’s because those ways work.” This seems a bit depressing to me. If everyone is doing the same things, then how does anyone ever stand out in a crowd?

Then I had my aha moment. If the key to writing is to find a different way of looking at things, and if the key to blogging is to find a different way of looking at things, then obviously, the key to promotion is to find a different way of looking at things. I know this syllogism would never pass muster in a logic class, but there is little logic to be found in writing, blogging, and promotion. Hence, at least in my mind, the conclusion works.

I am aware that those of us who are published by small independent presses are at a disadvantage when it comes to selling books. The publishing corporations and the major independent publishers use resources to which we have no access. Still, I have never been one to let such minor considerations get in the way of my dreams, and I intend to do everything I can to become unobscure.

So the question arises — how does one find a different way of looking at those promotion and marketing patterns? I’m sure you will be as glad as I am when I hit upon the solution. At least you won’t have to listen to my constant yammering about finding ways to promote.

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Posted in blogging, life, writing. Tags: blogging, book marketing, book promotion, Dale Cozort, promoting, Sia McKye, The Everything Blogging Book, writing. 10 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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