writing | Bertram's Blog

Waiting Quietly For an April Time

June 11, 2013 — Pat Bertram

It’s been three years and two months and two weeks since the death of my life mate / soul mate. It’s been a rough time for me, working through the pain of his death and our separation, adjusting to life without him, learning to think of him with gladness instead of sadness, searching for new ways of being and new reasons for living, realizing that he is he and I am I and we have separate paths in life.

Every once in a while now, beneath the bleak frozen ground of grief, I can feel the first green stirrings of hope, maybe even a promise of new life.

These feelings are right on time. Everyone I have talked to who has dealt with such a grievous loss has said it takes four years to find a renewal of life. (Apparently four years is the half-life of grief.)

As one woman who has been there told me, “Our partners are gone. We can either live in this world without them, experiencing a full, active life . . . or we can half live a life while we are still connected to our dead great loves through the ether, which we can’t navigate or understand this side of death.

It isn’t a choice; you can’t “just get there.” But you will get there. And everything will suddenly feel new again. You will see possibilities as something toward which you want to leap, and you will suddenly feel untethered and able to make that leap.”

In ten months, by next April, I will have passed my fourth anniversary. April. A time of renewal. Maybe a time of my renewal.

In her book The Stillwater Meadow, Gladys Tabor wrote: “People have seasons . . . There is something steadfast about people who withstand the chilling winds of trouble, the storms that assail the heart, and have the endurance and character to wait quietly for an April time.”

And so, I will continue dealing with the upsurges and downswings of grief, with the tears and loneliness, with the uncertainty and confusion, and wait quietly for my April time.

***

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 blogging, grief, life, writing. Tags: an April time, Gladys Tabor, grief at three years, renewal after grief, The Stillwater Meadow. 3 Comments »

Writing (And Reading) On the Edge

June 8, 2013 — Pat Bertram

A friend recently taught a class about writing on the edge — writing at the edge of possibility and freedom; exploring the shapeless, the uncertain, the indefinite and the incoherent; accepting the endless, the multiple, the fragmented, the collaged, the ambiguous, the disjunctive, the long forgotten realms of the mysterious and the wild.

Her point was that we are addicted to easy reading as something to lull our senses and to provide respite from our daily lives, and that challenging ourselves to move beyond that changes our perspective and makes us better able to deal with the increasingly complex world.

I would have liked to take the class since it seemed a good way to discover unreached recesses of my mind, but the 1000-mile commute would have been a killer. Besides, although I would like to explore the long forgotten realms of the mysterious and wild, I’m not a fan of complicated writing. I like books that are easy to read but that have depth or something new for me — a new idea, a new place, a new insight into life or humanity or something. If it’s just a rehash of the same old stories and ideas, I get depressed.

Once a long time ago, I gave my mother a stack of books I had finished reading, and the language in one of them dismayed her. I didn’t know what she was talking about, couldn’t remember any such passages, and said so. She gave me an appalled look and responded, “I’d hate to think that any daughter of mine was so naïve as to not know what the words meant or so jaded that they didn’t bother her.” I just shrugged and said, “I don’t read words.”

That really shocked her, and I could never make her understand the truth of it. I don’t read words when I read a novel. I read by some sort of osmosis. Reading words is dreary task, especially if the passages are complicated and not easy to understand.

The truth is, as my friend suggested, I do read to lull my sentences. (I mean senses, but I left the typo because . . . what a cool faux pas!) For me, the whole point of books being easy to read rather than convoluted and incomprehensible is not so much to find a respite from daily life but a way of running toward the truth, toward real life, and the lull provides a space so the hard work can go on beneath the surface. (The story and words keeps my conscious mind busy and frees me for the important task of inner exploration and assimilation.)

During one horribly depressing time in my life back in my late twenties, I couldn’t stand to read anything that didn’t have a happy ending, so I descended further and further into easy reading — ending up with Harlequin romances. And then I really got depressed! It took me about three months to make the correlation with the books I was reading and my suicidal thoughts, and when I did make the connection, I gave up reading for several months until I found a bit of equilibrium. Now, all books give me that same “harlequin” feeling, which is why I can’t read any more. There is nothing in books but the easy reading. There is nothing to fill the space created by the lull.

Maybe someday when grief is no longer defining my life, I’ll be able to read again, but for now, I’m finding that the lull created by not reading is as important as the lull once created by reading.

Meantime, I’ll see if I can find my own edge and then figure out how to write beyond it to see what lurks in the wilds of my mind beyond the lull of daily life.

***

Posted in books, culture, life, writing. Tags: books and depression, reading by osmosis, reading to lull our minds, reading words, writing on the edge. 7 Comments »

What to Do When You’ve Finished Writing Your Book

June 7, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Someone asked me what to do once they have completed their book and gone over it and fixed everything that needed to be fixed.

The first thing you do is celebrate. You’ve accomplished something wonderful!

After that, what I suggest (and what I do) is let the book lie fallow for six weeks or so, then go over it one more time, looking at every single sentence, every bit of dialogue, checking to make sure each is important to the story and are the very best sentences possible. This is especially important with dialogue. In real life, we often can’t think of the perfect thing to say until the opportunity is long past, but o champagne ur characters don’t have to be so tongue-tied. We have hours — days — to come up with the perfect response for them to make.

Since you’ve spent so much time on the book, you know what you are trying to prove. For example, in a mystery, you are often trying to prove that someone is a killer, has a good motive, but deserves to get caught by your hero; in a romance, that the two main characters belong together. Go through the book and remove all stray commentary and side stories that do not show who your characters are and do not help prove whatever it is you are trying to prove.

If you are a first-time novelist, get rid of your first chapter. When people start out writing a book, they tell much about the characters at the beginning under the assumption that readers need all that information to understand the story. They don’t. I bet you will find that everything in the first chapter shows up later in the story when it’s important for the reader to have that particular bit. If not, you can always add a sentence or two at the proper moment. By deleting that first, probably redundant chapter, it puts readers right smack dab in the middle of the action and makes them a part of the story.

Next, even if you aren’t a first-time novelist, go through the book and get rid of your weakest scene. This will make your story tighter and more powerful.

Then read the story aloud, paying attention flow, bad grammar, typos, anything that makes you (or the person you are reading to if you managed to corner someone) pause or that pulls you out of the story. Make those changes.

Now you are ready to decide what you want to do. Self-publish? Find an agent? Submit to small independent presses? If you want to self-publish, sorry, I can’t help. I don’t have any interest in such matters, and so never bothered to figure out how to do it.

If you want to try for an agent or a publisher, learn how to write query letters. That’s your basic tool for getting them interested in your work. Then search for agents and publishers and pay attention to their requirements. Don’t send more (or less) than they ask. Preditors and Editors is a good place to start, as is Association of Authors’ Representatives.

When your book is published, however it happens, I bet you think you can finally relax now that the hard part is behind you. Wrong! Now the even harder part of promotion begins.

Best of luck, whatever you decide to do.

Rubicon Ranch: Secrets — The Story Continues!

June 6, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the fictional desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing.

In the current story, the body of a local realtor is found beneath the wheels of an inflatable figure of a Santa on a motorcycle. The realtor took great delight in ferreting out secrets, and everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Could she have discovered a secret someone would kill to protect? There will be suspects galore, including a psychic, a con man, a woman trying to set up an online call-girl service, and the philandering sheriff himself. Not only is the victim someone he had an affair with, but he will also have to contend with an ex-wife who has moved back in with him and a jilted lover, both with their own reasons for wanting the realtor dead.

We hope you will enjoy seeing the story develop as we write it. Let the mystery begin! Whodunit? No one knows, not even the writers, and we won’t know until the very end! If you don’t want to miss further chapters, please go to the blog and click on “sign me up” on the right sidebar to get notifications of new chapters.

(If the Christmas theme seems unseasonal, well . . . considering how long it takes to write a book at the rate of a chapter a week, in a few months, the season will catch up to us!)

Chapter 9: Melanie Gray
by Pat Bertram

Monday, December 23, 9:15am

Melanie stood in the center of her living room and tried to empty her mind of all thoughts. She lunged forward with her right leg, bent her right knee, arched her back, reached high with her hands, and breathed slowly and deeply. Usually this yoga warrior pose made her feel strong and invincible, as if the power of the universe were coursing down her arms and throughout her body, but today she felt only disbelief.

Could I have killed Nancy Garcetti?

Yesterday morning, she’d gone outside to do a few stretches in the bitter pre-dawn air to wake her sluggish mind and prepare for her last marathon day of writing. Shivering from the cold and still groggy from a mere three hours of sleep, she made the unforgivable mistake of not paying attention to her surroundings.

A hand touched her shoulder, and a woman’s voice whispered in her ear. “I know you killed your husband.” Without thinking, Melanie spun around, leading with her elbow, and caught the woman beneath her chin. The woman’s head snapped back. She staggered. Fell.

Melanie stood over her, breathing hard and trembling from the adrenaline rush. When she got control of herself, she held out a hand to help the woman up. The woman ignored the offer of assistance, staggered to her feet, and hissed, “You’ll be sorry.” By then Melanie’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and she recognized the real estate agent.

Melanie took another breath and tried to focus on her warrior pose, but she couldn’t get Nancy out of her mind.

The last time she had seen Nancy alive, the woman had been tottering up the street. Could she have managed to get as far as the house with the Santa, then crawled against the blow-up figure for protection against the quickening winds, and died there?

Melanie hadn’t struck the woman with the full force of her strength, so that jab couldn’t have killed her. But perhaps Nancy hit her head on one of the rocks lining the driveway and bled into her brain. She wished Alexander were there so she could ask him about the possible effects from such an injury, but he if were still alive, she wouldn’t have had the brief and possibly deadly altercation with Nancy.

Oddly, last night when she found the body, she hadn’t made the connection to her tussle with Nancy, but had assumed the real estate agent’s death had been outright murder. It wasn’t until she woke at three o’clock after a short fitful sleep that the horrible thought took hold. Could I have killed Nancy Garcetti?

Melanie lowered her arms to her side, straightened her knee, and pulled her left leg even with her right. She stood still, feeling lost. Alexander was dead. She’d finished her book about Morris Sinclair’s ignoble life and gruesome death. She’d even finished the book about the Mojave Desert Alexander and she had been working on when he was killed. Now the only thing left for her to do was to find out who had assassinated him. And she didn’t know where to start.

The sound of a distant voice caught her attention. The voice sounded tinny, as if from a cheap radio. As it grew louder, she could make out the words. “We are coming up on the house of Morris Sinclair, but first you will see where Melanie Gray lives.” By then the voice was blaring, sounding as if it were right outside her door. Melanie ran upstairs to look out her office window. A bus idled in the middle of the street, a banner draped across its side—DESERT DEATH TOUR. Bland faces peered through the windows.

The tour guide continued, “Melanie Gray has a talent for finding dead bodies, and maybe even for making them dead. As you know, Melanie was married to Alexander Gray, the award-winning photographer. It is alleged that this Black Widow murdered her husband for his wealth. They say she is so deadly, she could have killed him with a single blow.”

Melanie gasped. Black Widow? Is that what they were calling her? Did people really believe she killed Alexander for his wealth? What wealth? He had no money. In fact, after he was gone, their publisher had insisted she finish the desert book by herself since Alexander had spent their advance. And he hadn’t died by her hand. Someone skilled in the ways of death had cut all four metal brake lines in his car so that when Alexander slammed on the brakes, he instantly lost hydraulic pressure in both the front and rear brakes at the same time. The sheriff had told her that with today’s vehicles, cutting the brakes that way is almost impossible for a professional to do, and completely impossible for an amateur. She certainly couldn’t have done it.

But she could have killed Nancy.

Her gaze followed the road to the house where she’d found Nancy’s body, and she saw a wisp of smoke. She wondered if the people who lived there had made a fire to cozy up to. If she had a fireplace, that’s what she would do today. This was a perfect weather for sitting in front of a fire, watching flames dancing, thinking of nothing.

Then she realized the smoke was coming not from the chimney, but from the house itself. And flames glowed in the windows.

She ran down the stairs, fumbled for her cell phone, and tried to call 911, but she had no signal. She dashed outside. The tour bus was idling in front of the Sinclair house and the guide was giving a surprisingly ungarbled version of Morris’s death. Of course, the truth—that the horror writer had been killed and dismembered in a way that mimicked his stories—was hard to top.

“Call 911,” she screamed, trying to make herself heard over the guide’s recitation.”

A little boy pressed his face against the window, mouth open, tongue out, and stared at her.

“Where’s your mother?” Melanie shouted.

The youthful gargoyle crossed his eyes and disappeared beneath the window.

The bus let out a belch, then moved on down the road. It stopped in front of the burning house, and the occupants craned their necks toward the spectacle.

A few minutes later, a woman wearing a pink lace-trimmed top tucked into fitted jeans jogged up to Melanie, and said breathlessly, “I called 911. What’s going on?”

It took Melanie a moment to recognize her neighbor. Moody Sinclair had cut her long dark hair and dyed the shorn locks a strawberry blonde. Chandelier earrings dangled from her ears and eyeglasses perched on her nose. She looked pretty and normal and very young.

“Fire.” Melanie said absently, listening to the siren in the distance.

“Stucco houses with tile roofs don’t burn.” Moody walked silently besides Melanie for a moment. “Arson maybe?”

The siren grew louder as the fire truck turned onto Delano Road. The driver honked the horn as it sped up the street. All the dogs in the neighborhood added their howls to the cacophony. Melanie scrambled to the side of the road, losing track of Moody, who had dashed to the other side of the street.

Now that the firefighters had arrived, there was no reason for Melanie to continue toward the scene, but she found herself drawn to the action.

As Moody had said, the structure of the house wasn’t burning, but flames bursting through the windows made it seem as if the place were wrapped in fire. Even standing apart from the crowd, Melanie could feel the heat.

The blow up figure of Santa on the motorcycle slowly melted, then dissolved into a puddle of red, white, and black. Whatever remained of the crime scene after the sheriff’s department had finished with it was now gone. Could the house have been torched for that very reason—to destroy evidence? But in that case, why not just burn the Santa and his environs?

Melanie backed away from the inferno. This really didn’t have anything to do with her. If she had killed Nancy, the real crime scene lay several houses down Delano Road.

She headed back to her rental house, wishing she could leave this benighted area.

Then suddenly she stopped short. She could leave. She had money enough to go anywhere. The real problem was figuring out where to go. If her reputation as a Black Widow followed her, then what difference did it make where she lived? At least in Rubicon Ranch, she was just one of many stops on a desert death tour. Besides, Alexander had been killed not far from here, so this is where she needed to begin her investigation into his murder.

She trudged up her driveway, and stopped to see where Nancy had fallen. She saw no
blood on the rocks, but that didn’t prove her innocence. It only meant no one could find any evidence against her.

Unless someone had seen her hit Nancy?

She looked around. Everyone in the neighborhood—residents and squatters alike—seemed to have congregated up by the fire. Only one woman trudged past her house, looking as if she could handle anything or anyone. Hefty, with biceps like hams poking out of a sleeveless top. Bleached blonde hair that looked heavily permed. Cigarette dangling from a bright red mouth.

Melanie smiled to herself. Compared to all the necorphiliacs and vampire-wannabes on the loose in the neighborhood, this woman seemed almost elegant.

But then, perhaps she really was a fine lady on the downward swing of life. Who knew what lay behind anyone’s façade? Everyone had secrets. Everyone had things they wanted to hide from view.

Even me.

But still, if Nancy had died because of her, who had stolen the real estate agent’s purse, and who had set the fire?

***

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: mystery series collaboration, online novel, Rubicon Ranch, Rubicon Ranch Necropieces, Rubicon Ranch: Secrets, Second Wind Publishing. Leave a Comment »

I’ve Been Published in Urdu!

June 3, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Well, I myself haven’t been published in Urdu — three of my 100-word stories were.

In February, Mubashir Zaidi, a Pakistani writer and journalist, contacted me and said he was planning on publishing a book of 100-word stories. He selected one hundred such stories from different sources and books to convert into Urdu, and asked permission to use a few of mine. I told him that as long as he listed me as the author, he could use the stories. He promised me he’d send me a couple of copies of the finished book, and on May 2nd, he sent them. It took one day to get from Dubai to New York and an entire month to finally get to me. (Don’t know what the problem was, but it took many phone calls to “speed” the books on their way.)

The book is called “Namak Paaray” after a crunchy salty snack of Pakistan and India, indicating that you can finish reading a story in the time it takes to finish a ‘Namak Para.’ (The snack is featured on the cover.)

So, here it is, “The Kiss” by Pat Bertram in Urdu. (According to Mubashir, Urdu is written from right to left. It has same alphabets as Arabic and Persian but all three languages have different words. Hindi, on the other hand, has a different script but same words as Urdu.)

Since I’m sure you’re no more able to read Urdu than I am, here is a translation:

The Kiss

When Jack entered her flower shop, all Jen could do was stare. It had been years since she’d seen him, years she’d spent regretting their final quarrel, yet she still felt the same attraction. His heavy-lidded gaze told her he felt it, too.

He held out a hand, and she let him draw her close for a kiss that spanned the years. She snuggled into his embrace. Everything would be perfect now that they were together again.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked.

“I didn’t. I just came in to buy flowers.”

“For me?”

“For my wife.”

***

Posted in books, culture, fiction, writing. Tags: 100-word story, Pat Bertram in Urdu, The Kiss by Pat Bertram, Urdu. 23 Comments »

A Barebones Kind of Writer?

May 29, 2013 — Pat Bertram

As a project for a writing group, we were supposed to post the last sentence of a couple of our chapters, but it was hard for me to find last sentences that say much. It’s usually my second and third to last sentences that have the meat, with a final, very short sentence to deliver the punch, such as these chapter endings from Light Bringer.

She thrust the magazine at Mac. “This isn’t a picture of my parents.”
But the frantic beating of her heart told her it was.

She turned around slowly, and clutched at her chest.
The ghost cat was inside the house.
And so was something else.

Wisdom lay stretched out on the borrowed couch, eyes closed in feline bliss. The skin on its belly rippled gently as if being caressed by unseen fingers. A chuckle reverberated in its chest.

“Shakespeare was right,” Emery said. “‘Hell is empty. All the devils are here.’”

Still, I did manage to find several ending sentences that were a bit longer than most and even made a sort of sense by themselves:

Lying awake, staring at the dust motes dancing in the moonlight, he thought he could hear voices murmuring in the wind.

After the sun set, they headed home in a rich, warm alpenglow that turned the world to gold.

A skinny, hairless cat with luminous silver eyes sat on the porch and stared at them, a quizzical look on its face.

Could it be that they were all following a script of someone else’s devising?

They were met with a burst of color, a song of pure joy that seemed at odds with the harsh environment of the laboratory they had entered.

Hugh shot them a disgusted look, then he and Keith plunged into the light.

Hmmm. I might have to change my opinion about my writing. I always thought I was a barebones kind of writer, but there seems to be a bit of poesy to my descriptions, especially with longer passages, such as this one:

She looked just as he remembered. The lithe body that moved as gracefully and effortlessly as a song wafting on a breeze. The shoulder-length brown hair that glimmered red and gold in the sunlight. The smile, big and bright and welcoming. Only her clothes—a pale green blouse and cotton shorts—struck a discordant note, as if he were used to seeing her in more exotic attire.

“Hello,” she said when he neared. The single word sounded as musical as an entire symphony.

“Hello,” he said, a goofy grin stretching his face. He felt a harmonic resonance and knew, once again, they belonged together.

After several seconds, her smile faded. “Do I know you?”

“Of course. We met . . .”

He gazed at her. Where had they met? Though it seemed as if he had always known her, they must have met somewhere, sometime; but when, in his pathetic little life, could he have met anyone so special? It slowly dawned on him he couldn’t have—not until this very moment.

Ducking his head, he whispered, “I’ve made a terrible mistake. We don’t know . . . We’ve never . . .”

***

Where to buy Light Bringer:

Second Wind Publishing

Amazon

Barnes & Noble Nook

iStore (on iTunes)

Palm Doc (PDB) (for Palm reading devices)

Epub (Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo)

***

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: Colorado, fiction, Light Bringer, mystery, novel, search for identity, Second Wind Publishing. 5 Comments »

Embracing the Play of Writing

May 24, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I watched Talent for the Game the other day, and one of the points made in the movie was that baseball is big business. It seemed ironic to me that in our world play becomes business, and business, such as the business of writing, becomes play. (Most writers nowadays write for the love of writing, with always the dream of making a living at it as a goal, a dream that is slowly being eroded by the sheer masses of books, especially ebooks, on the market, so for most writers, the business has become play.)

Then it dawned on me that maybe writing, like baseball, has always been about play. Sure, both fields have their mega stars who make most of the money, but still, there are sandlot games and town leagues (mostly those leagues are softball, but let’s not let technicalities get in the way of a great analogy). Generally, anyone who wants to play baseball or softball can, but not everyone manages to turn the fun into profit. Writing is much the same. Anyone who wants to play can, but only a very small percentage ever makes a living at it.

I know people who won’t watch professional sports because they say the pros play for money and not for fun, that the players don’t seem to enjoy themselves, which takes the joy out of the game. In the same way, some of the major authors, the ones who are best at the business of writing, write the worst books. Obviously, most people don’t agree with me since they snatch the books up as soon as a new one comes on the market, but for me, after more than two or three books in a series, the authors lose their sense of play, and the books lose their luster.

Like baseball, writing is an inherently frivolous pursuit, made important only because of our frivolous lives. Okay, maybe our lives aren’t frivolous, but most of us don’t spend our days out in the wilderness gathering nuts and berries, hunting for meat to put on the table, chopping wood to keep warm, finding cover when it snows or rains. Writing in itself can’t do any of that, but wouldn’t it be nice if it could? I’d write a feast for us all, where we could come together and enjoy good food and good company at only the cost of a few words.

And no, I’m not advocating we junk civilization and go back to primitive times. I’m not much for the outdoors (except for walking) and frankly, I prefer indoor plumbing. But you have to admit, no matter how you look at it, writing is not a serious activity. It’s about making believe. Playing dolls and building worlds. We use words instead of toys, but basically, it’s the same thing.

Maybe we’ve been looking at writing all wrong. Maybe instead of celebrating the folk who embrace the business of writing, we should be celebrating those who embrace the play of it.

***

Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: baseball as business, baseball as play, baseball is like writing, Talent for the Game, writing as business, writing as play. 1 Comment »

Paeans to Teachers, Mothers, and Ancient Civlizations

May 23, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Mike Simpson, chief editor of Second Wind Publishing, posted a blog today about the heroism of the teachers of Moore Oklahoma using their bodies in an effort to protect their students from the wrath of nature, and teachers of Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, trying to shield their students from a gunman. He says, “Can you imagine such fierce love, such a totally unreserved willingness to perish for the children they taught? Servicemen and women go to combat knowing that they may be killed or desperately wounded. In the face of that, our nation recognizes their courage and lauds them with high honors—rightly so. Yet when a teacher goes into a classroom intending to impart a daily dose of education to a group of children and ends up putting herself or himself in the path of death for the sake of those kids, I ask myself: is there any individual anywhere who should be more highly honored? In moments of crisis and tragedy, our truest selves emerge. And if we ever wanted to know the “stuff” of which the teachers of Moore and Newtown are made, we found out with perfect clarity.”

“Where the Wind Comes Whistling Down the Plains, Teacher” by Mike Simpson is a blog post worth reading.

While you’re at the Second Wind blog, check out Mother’s Day 2013 by J. Conrad Guest and A Day in Turkey with the Hittites by Mickey Hoffman. Mickey’s travelogues are among the best I have seen/read, making me feel as if I were in these exotic places with her.

And, what the heck, while you’re there, you might as well also check out What is Your Character’s Favorite Color? — by Pat Bertram. It’s an older post, doesn’t really fit in with the theme of this article of paeans, but it is a perennial favorite of the Second Wind blog readers, so that’s sort of a paean.

***

Posted in blogging, internet, writing. Tags: heroism of teachers, J. Conrad Guest, Mickey Hoffman, Mike Simpson, Second Wind blog. 1 Comment »

Dreaming My Life into Being

May 21, 2013 — Pat Bertram

JJ Dare, friend, fellow author and sister in sorrow, wrote a blog post today about Floating in the Sea of Dreams that got me thinking . . . again. . . . about how I am dreaming my life into being. The Sea of Dreams is like a primordial ooze where ideas and hopes rise up and evolve and then sink back into the deep only to ascend once more in a different guise. And every permutation of these dreams changes us, makes us grow, helps us reach our destiny.

A few months ago when my 96-year-old father (my current responsibility) seemed near death, the idea of living on the go appealed to me. I worry about settling down and stagnating somewhere, and moving from place to place would vanquish that worry, though of course, other worries would take its place. Weather, for example. It’s one thing to think of such a life in the stillness of a warm desert spring day, and another thing to consider the possibilities of snow and tornadoes, hurricanes and ice storms.

My father is doing well, so much so that it’s possible he could outlast me, and the thought of living on the road was subsumed into the Sea of Dreams. I’m back to taking life one day at a time, not thinking about the future, not making any long-term plans.

The other phase of my original idea of living on the go was to do an extended bookstore tour in an effort to introduce my books and my publisher to the offline literary word. That idea, as I have discovered, seems to be another overly rosy daydream. Since I couldn’t go on the road, I’ve been doing my bookstore tour via mail. Sending out letters, gift certificates, offers to interview booksellers.

There’s been little interest in my mailing, and unfortunately, it makes sense. Bookstores are in the business of making money, and since I am not a big name in the literary world (hard though it may be for you to believe), they have no incentive to stock my books. Of course, if/when I do become a big name, they will be interested in my books, but by then, I won’t need them. (If you are a bookstore owner and reading this, and you are interested in my books, let me know and I’ll send you a gift certificate. Or if you are interested in my interviewing you, you can find the interview questions here: Bookseller Questionnaire.)

So this dream of becoming an offline author, like many others I’ve had, is slowly sinking back into the depths, but already, some dreams are beginning to arise. I’m getting inklings of a desire to finish my works in progress. And the idea of being on the go is slowly evolving into something I can do now. I’m considering shutting off the internet one day a week (gasp!!) and taking myself on a fishing trip. (Not to fish for fish, of course, since such a hobby is only peaceful for the one fishing. The poor fish are scared, hurt, and fighting for their life.) My idea is to go fishing for life. Just take off for a day. Go wherever. See what I can see.

Meantime, I’ll continue floating on the Sea of Dreams, dreaming my life into being.

***

Posted in being me, culture, life, writing. Tags: booksellers, dreaming life into being, dreaming of the future, fishing for life, reaching our destiny, sea of dreams. 4 Comments »

Giving Readers What They Want

May 19, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Writers are often told not to write what they want, but to write what readers want, but some of us couldn’t do that even if we wanted to. We haven’t a clue what readers want or how to give it to them.

I always thought readers were like me — they liked well-written stand-alone novels that didn’t so much pull them into the story as that they pulled the story into them and somehow made them greater than they were. The books didn’t have to be literary. In fact, I have never been a fan of literary novels, but books did need enough intelligence and depth and character to find a place in my inner self. So those are the novels I wrote — seemingly simple stories that take on a complexity when readers bring themselves to the book.

People do seem to masses like my books (unless they are romance readers who accidentally stumble into the wrong story), but I’ve never reached “the masses” and I never will for the simple reason that I don’t know what “the masses” want. (Normally I don’t use terms such as “the masses” because who among us ever sees him or herself as one of the masses? But still, when you are talking about 80 to 100 million readers, as some notorious writers have gained, those are massive numbers.)

Going by the books that reach vast numbers of people, what readers want is bondage with some S&M, and lots of raw sex, all pulled together with childish writing. Or they want simplistic stories with a lack of logic, poorly constructed sentences, faceless characters and lots of action with some cultural references thrown in to make them think they are in the know.

Okay, I admit, I’m being a bit simplistic myself and maybe even peevish. Sometimes good books with good writing do appeal to millions upon millions of people, but I don’t know why those books appeal to masses of readers anymore than why gray sex and brown symbols do. (I’m trying to be clever here, and probably failing miserably.)

It would be nice (maybe) to sell millions of books, but I can’t give readers what they want if I haven’t a clue. And I can’t get a clue. It’s like cilantro.

I never could understand why people liked cilantro. To me, it tastes like soap. Cilantro contains chemical compounds called aldehydes, which are also present in soaps and other cleaning agents, and apparently I don’t have the enzyme that breaks down the soap-like compounds of the herb into a tasty seasoning, so I get the full soap taste. Yuck.

And maybe I’m lacking the book “enzyme” that could help me understand what readers want. Heck, I don’t even know what I want anymore!

That said, I do write with readers in mind. Good writing, lack of typos, well-constructed sentences, interesting characters in vivid settings, hooks, conflicts, all keep my stories flowing smoothly and easy to read. I try to remove any hiccup that would pull the reader out of the story, or to pull the story out of the reader. And who knows. Maybe someday massive numbers of readers will discover that after all, I did give them what they want.

It could happen.

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