writing | Bertram's Blog

Interview at the Writer’s Chateau

January 19, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I am chatting with Lisette Brodey at her Writer’s Chateau blog about my latest book, my writing, and even a bit about me. I hope you will stop by to visit.

Here are a few teasers from the interview:

How often do your characters surprise you by doing or saying something totally unexpected?

Never. When a story flows, when everything is motivated, it makes sense that some ideas, emotions and themes and even dialogue show up that aren’t planned. If the characters are true, it has to happen. I am not saying that the characters do things that I don’t plan. Their actions are completely planned. But some underlying truths could emerge that I didn’t purposely put there.

Some writers edit excessively as they write; others wait until a novel is finished to do the bulk of the editing. How about you?

I do edit as I go along, but not excessively. Since I’m not a writer who can sit down and let the words flow out of me, I have to choose every word I put on the paper, each one building on the last. If I take a wrong turning, I have to go back and find that wrong turning so I can continue building, otherwise the whole project stalls. Most of the editing is done after I’m finished, though.

Every day brings forth new changes and shifts in the world of publishing. Any predictions about the future?

I don’t know enough about technology to predict changes, but I do know that changes and shifts in technology will be reflected in the world of publishing. For example, people will be reading more on their phones, e-books will eventually become multi-media –- comprising video, social networking, and other elements.

If you could be invisible for a day, what would you do?

My life wouldn’t change much. For all practical purposes, I’m invisible now.

Click here for Lisette Brodey’s CHAT WITH PAT BERTRAM

***

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.” All Bertram’s books are published by Second Wind Publishing. Connect with Pat on Google+

Posted in blogging, writing. Tags: Lisette Brodey, predictions about publishing, the future of publishing, when to edit, Writer's Chateau. Leave a Comment »

Seven by Seven by Seven

January 18, 2013 — Pat Bertram

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

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

A SPARK OF HEAVENLY FIRE

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

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

To her relief, the heater worked.

They headed down the long sweeping driveway.

MORE DEATHS THAN ONE

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

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

LIGHT BRINGER

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

DAUGHTER AM I

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

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

“It’s a storage area,” Bill said.

“Then where’s the door?”

***

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

Why Can’t I Plagiarize Myself?

January 17, 2013 — Pat Bertram

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

Meet Rami Ungar

January 15, 2013 — Pat Bertram

If you’ve read this blog at all during the past five months, you’ve probably noticed the name Rami Ungar, a writer who has been a daily commenter. Well, now you can learn more about Rami and his writings because I’ve interviewed him for my author blog Pat Bertram Introduces . . . Here is an excerpt from the interview:

Hi, Rami. Good to talk to you! What is your book called?

It’s “The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones”, and it’ll be available later this year as an e-book.

Have you always wanted to be a writer?

At least since I first read “Harry Potter”, though I didn’t realize it till I was around ten or so. At that age you want to be a scientist, a superhero, a firefighter, President. But at ten I realized I wanted to write, and I’ve been writing since.

What writer influenced you the most?

I’d have to say Anne Rice, Stephen King, and James Patterson. I discovered the first two when I was in junior high and high school, and they blew my mind. I knew after reading them, horror was what I wanted to focus on. I discovered James Patterson shortly before graduating high school, and I think he was the one who taught me how to write thrillers. To this day, I think of Alex Cross and James Patterson when I think about how I was able to write my thriller novel “Snake”.

How long did it take you to write your book?

I spent about a week for every short story, so about five weeks. Each story had its own challenges in writing it, but I enjoyed writing each and every one of them. I hope people enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

How long had the idea of your book been developing before you began to write the story?

I basically collected a bunch of ideas that popped into my mind all of the Fall 2012 semester, wrote them down, and then picked the five best ones out of those ideas and worked on them over winter break. I was really surprised how easily some of these short stories came to me, like “Addict”, which is about a guy trying to recover from a sex and porn addiction. I managed to get that one typed out in a day, a record for me with short stories.

Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces — The Story Continues

January 13, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing. Seven authors, including me, are involved in the current story — Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces.

Residents of Rubicon Ranch are finding body parts scattered all over the desert. Who was the victim and why did someone want him so very dead? Everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone’s life will be different after they have encountered the Rubicon. Rubicon Ranch, that is.

Although some of the characters were introduced in Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story, a previous collaboration, Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces is a stand-alone novel. The first chapter will be posted on Monday, June 11, and one chapter will be posted every Monday after that.

We hope you will enjoy seeing the story develop as we write it. Let the mystery continue! Whodunit? No one knows, not even the writers, and we won’t know until the very end!

Chapter 32: Melanie Gray
by Pat Bertram

Melanie trudged along the left side of the highway, facing traffic, the blister on her heel burning with every step. The sun had come out, and the road was now dry, but her shoes and socks remained wet from slogging through the flooded gutters back in Rojo Duro.

After Sheriff Bryan dropped his bombshell—Why did you do it, Melanie?—he had been called away, leaving the question hanging in the air. Two hours later, he still hadn’t returned, but a kid who looked as if he were straight out of the police academy brought her coffee. She had demanded the use of a toilet, and the young deputy ushered her to the lavatory. He wasn’t waiting for her when she finished, so she had simply walked out of the sheriff’s department. No one stopped her.

She’d now been walking for hours, but was still far from Rubicon Ranch. Maybe she should have returned to the interrogation room and waited for the sheriff, but if he still wanted her, he knew where to find her—at home in about seven more hours.

“See what you’ve done to me, Alexander,” she murmured, tears stinging her eyes. “Not only have you left me alone with only a ghost to talk to, you’ve turned me into an escaped prisoner.” Wearily, she scrubbed away the tears. She was sick of crying, sick of Alexander being gone, sick of the way her life was turning out. Once she’d felt strong, like a warrior, capable of anything. And now? Just a tired widow, at the mercy of her emotions.

A vehicle veered off the right lane, and pulled up alongside her.

“Get in,” Sheriff Bryan commanded.

Melanie wanted to refuse, but oncoming traffic gave her little opportunity to assess the matter, and besides, her blistered heel was throbbing with pain.

She scurried around the tan Navigator and slipped into the front seat. The sheriff stomped on the accelerator. The vehicle shot back into the right lane, narrowly averting a head-on collision with a white Subaru.

“Are you always so reckless?” Melanie asked.

“Are you always so reckless? What do you think you’re doing, walking along the highway like that?”

“Going home, where I would have been all day if your thugs hadn’t arrested me.”

“You weren’t under arrest. I just needed to talk to you, and I couldn’t get away.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look. “So I’m not a suspect? Then why did you tell my publisher I was?”

He grinned. “It got you a bigger advance, didn’t it?”

She slumped in the seat as much as she could against the restraints of the seat belt, and folded her arms across her chest.

“You have to admit,” Sheriff Bryan said in a softer tone than any she had yet heard issuing from his mouth, “you need help.”

Melanie sat up straight and glared at him. “Help? Help? Who says I need help? Is that why you arrested me? To help me?”

“Now that’s the Melanie I know and love.” He must have sensed the indignant response she was about to hurl at him, because he added quickly, “It’s just an expression.”

Melanie dropped her head into her hands. Why did this man keep her so off balance? Was it that her grief made her vulnerable and any attention would send her reeling, or was there something more going on? Either way, she had to get a grip on her emotions. Warrior, she reminded herself.

She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Why did I do . . . what?”

As cryptic as her comment sounded, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand her reference to the question he had asked in the interrogation room.

He sighed as he had done then. “Why did you shut me out when I poured out my heart to you? I was more open to you than I’ve ever been to any other woman. You could have at least told me you understood, even if you weren’t interested.”

She stared at him in total non-comprehension, and though he glanced at her, she couldn’t pick up any clues as to what he was thinking. She could only see herself in the mirrors of his sunglasses. And then all at once she understood.

During the investigation into little Riley’s murder, the sheriff had taken her to lunch and told her his story. How he’d been the fair-haired boy. President of his class in high school. Pledged the best fraternity in college. Dated a cheerleader and married her after graduation. Went into law enforcement. Hired on at the Greene City Police Department. Became a detective. Got his masters. Went up through the ranks like a shot. Became the youngest captain in the history of the force. Was on the fast track to becoming Chief of Police when he had an affair with a junior officer on the force.

He’d said that his wife knew about the other woman, that she stayed with him because he was the favorite son of Greene City, but when the affair came to light, he lost his job, his status, and his wife—at least temporarily. He claimed that though he was through with her, she wouldn’t give him a divorce because she still believed that one day he was going to be a major police chief, maybe in LA, and she was waiting to get a piece of that large salary in alimony payments.

What Melanie had taken to be a come-on—his letting her know that even though he was married, he was available—he’d apparently meant as a way of opening up to her. And she had run out on him.

But not because of the supposed come-on. Because of Alexander.

“You lied to me,” she said. “You told me you went to the scene where my husband died and came to the conclusion that it had not been an accident. The cops told me it was a hit and run, that someone had rear-ended the car with such force that Alexander crashed head-on into a concrete abutment, but when I went out the scene right afterwards, I didn’t see anything to indicate that another car was involved, so how could you have seen anything weeks later? It’s possible someone had tampered with the car as Riley said, but the only way to find that out was to investigate the vehicle itself. And you didn’t care enough to check it out.”

“Repeat that.”

“You lied to me,” Melanie said.

The sheriff held up a hand. “Not that. Riley.”

“It’s hearsay.”

“This isn’t a court of law. Just tell me.”

“Supposedly, Riley told Moody that she’d seen someone messing with our car.”

“Did she say who?”

“No. Morris accused me of killing Alexander. He said that Riley told Moody she’d seen me messing with our car. When I asked Moody about it, she told me Riley hadn’t mentioned any name, just that she had seen someone. Moody said she didn’t believe that Riley really saw anyone. But she believed it enough to mention it to her father.”

Melanie waited for the sheriff to say, “Aha! So you’re the one who murdered Morris!” But he didn’t say anything. Just rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“And since we’re talking about Alexander,” Melanie said, “You never returned his cameras to me. I want them back.”

The sheriff turned his mirrored stare toward Melanie. “Cameras?”

“Yes. All of his cameras were in the car. Six of them. I want them back.”

“There were no cameras.”

“Where are they? They were in the car when he left that day. I put them there myself.”

“Ms. Gray, no matter what else you might think of me, I am a great law officer. I know my job. There was no indication in the report of any officers seeing cameras in the vehicle. And the report does not state that Alexander was rear-ended. It was a merely a surmise by one of the state troopers, and he had no business telling you that. Riley was right. Someone did tamper with your car. Someone very knowledgeable and very skillful. The brake lines were cut and the steering wheel loosened. I suspected that when I checked out the scene of the accident and found no skid marks. The car simply plowed into the abutment at a high speed.”

“Maybe the flex lines were worn through. That happened to me once.”

“The car was new. We sent the vehicle to a lab down the hill since we don’t have an automotive lab up here in the high desert, and I just got the results, which is why I wanted to talk to you today. All four metal brake lines were cut so precisely that when Alexander slammed on the brakes, he instantly lost hydraulic pressure in both the front and rear brakes at the same time. With today’s vehicles, cutting the brakes like that is almost impossible for a professional to do, and completely impossible for an amateur.

Melanie clutched her stomach, feeling the same sort of visceral grief as when she heard that Alexander was dead. Alexander . . . murdered? By a professional killer? An assassin?

“It’s not possible,” she said aloud.

“Alexander must have traveled a long way after his brakes failed—the closest brake fluid stain I found was about a mile and a half from where Alexander went off the road.”

“But supposedly when he died, he was texting a woman he was having an affair with. How could he have been texting her if his brakes broke more than a mile away from where he crashed? Wouldn’t he have dropped the phone and tried to control the car?”

“Yeah. I’m having a problem with that scenario, too. We need to talk to the woman, but the number Alexander was texting is out of service. It feels to me as if the phone with the texts was a plant to make everyone think exactly what the official report said—that Alexander lost control because he was texting while driving.”

Melanie put her hands on her head, trying to still the roiling thoughts. “I can’t deal with this right now. Take me home. Please.”

“I’m sorry,” the sheriff said in a soothing tone that might have been practiced but still managed to sound sincere.

For just a second Melanie wished he would stop the vehicle, put his arms around her, and hold her. “There’s just so much death. Alexander. Riley. Riley’s father. The Petersons. Morris.”

“That’s the other thing I need to talk to you about,” Sheriff Bryan said in his official voice. “Morris.”

***

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: grief and loss, online novel, Rubicon Ranch, Rubicon Ranch Necropieces, Second Wind Publishing. Leave a Comment »

January 12, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Pat Bertram Introduces . . .

Tell us a little about A Spark of Heavenly Fire.

A Spark of Heavenly Fire tells the story of insomniac Kate Cummings who gathers her courage and strength to find new a new life and a new love when all around her people are dying of a bioengineered disease.

What inspired you to write A Spark of Heavenly Fire?

In A Spark of Heavenly Fire, I talk (or rather my characters do) about biological weapons, biowarfare, and bioengineered organisms because I thought the reality was more frightening than fiction. For example, The World Health Organization spent years and a heap of money to eradicate smallpox, yet smallpox in ever more virulent forms is stockpiled in labs all around the world. Spooks the heck out of me! I thought it was an important topic, but mainly I wanted to tell the story of ordinary people who become extraordinary in a…

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30 Second Book Trailer For GRIEF: THE GREAT YEARNING

January 10, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Grief: The Great Yearning is a finalist in the memoir category for the Sharp Writ Book Awards, and they asked me for a 30 second introduction to the book for their “awards ceremony” video. A couple of days ago I posted a draft of this video and here’s the finished video blurb.

After I put this video together, I realized an interesting coincidence: All the photos were taken in August, around the 15th.

The first photo might look like the desert, but it’s a photo of him in Colorado at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a few months before he died. I didn’t even know I had the photo, but I found it in a computer file after he was gone, and it shattered what was left of my heart. It looked as if he’d already been moving away from me toward eternity. Oddly, though I didn’t plan it, the three photos I used in the video were all taken within a few minutes of each other on that excursion. The gnarled tree with the stormy clouds, the profound depth of the canyon, the photo of him looking to eternity all now seem to be signs of my unconscious grief.

The photo on the cover of the book is taken in the very same place, exactly a year earlier. The photo of the two of us together (the only photo ever taken of the two of us together) was taken exactly thirteen years earlier than the three photos. And we met exactly thirty-two years before that last trip to the Black Canyon. I had no idea August was such a significant month for me.

***

Posted in books, grief, relationships, writing. Tags: August, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Grief: The Great Yearning, Sharp Writ Book Awards, significant month. 15 Comments »

Making a Video Blurb

January 8, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Grief: The Great Yearning is a finalist in the memoir category for the Sharp Writ Book Awards, and I need to put together a 30 second book trailer for their “awards ceremony” video. Thirty seconds isn’t long enough to do a real book trailer, so I’m doing a few photos and text pages — more like a video blurb. I found a thirty second piece of Beethoven’s music — since it’s the last completed piano piece Beethoven ever wrote, it seems fitting — and I have been working on the pages. Do you think these will work? Is it a bit over the top with the title on each page? Do the photos fit with the theme? Any suggestions for improvement?

Posted in books, How to, writing. Tags: Beethoven's last piano piece, Grief: The Great Yearning, Smart Writ Book Awards, video blurb, video book trailer. 4 Comments »

Dead Darling From DAUGHTER AM I

January 6, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Faulkner advised us to kill our darlings, those bits of our novels we love that don’t advance the story. I had way too many darlings in Daughter Am I, but I did steel myself to remove some of them. Today, for your edification, I am posting one dead darling that made it through all the edits except the very last one. You won’t find it in the book (well, except for the last paragraph or two. I wanted to make sure what you read here made sense so I added a bit that was included in the novel).

“The Cleveland Syndicate was dominated by four Jews,” Teach said, “Moe Dalitz, Samuel Tucker, Morris Kleinman, and Louis Rothkopf. An Italian, Chuck Polizzi, and an Irishman, Tommy McGinty, achieved near equality.”

“Chuck Polizzi wasn’t Italian,” Spaghetti said. “His parents were Jews from Russia. When they died, he was adopted by the Polizzi family.”

Teach arched his eyebrows. “I didn’t know that.” Pointedly ignoring Kid Rags’ chuckle, he stroked his chin. “I often wondered how a non-Jew got so high up in that organization. I did know the Polizzis belonged to the Mayfield Road Mob, which became part of the Cleveland Syndicate. While the Mayfield Road Mob, composed of both Jews and Italians, had a reputation for utter ruthlessness, the Syndicate believed the bribe, as a general rule, was more effective than the bullet. Families like the Polizzis, who accepted the new way, lived to become old as well as rich.”

“So how did an Irishman get so high-ranking?” Mary asked.

“Tommy McGinty—Thomas Jefferson McGinty—was the circulation manager for one of the Cleveland newspapers. Contrary to the legend that gangs and gangsters were a product of prohibition, many of the principals of the Syndicate-to-be were assembled and trained in violence years before by the newspapers in their fight for local monopolies. Tommy McGinty and his counterparts on the other newspapers would recruit thugs to beat up their rivals’ employees, particularly the newspaper boys, especially those on lucrative corners.

“In the early prohibition years, McGinty became one of Cleveland’s most powerful bootleggers.

“The Cleveland Syndicate was truly formidable. Moe Dalitz, probably the smartest guy in the business next to Meyer Lansky—”

“You said Johnny Torrio was the smartest,” Mary objected.

“So I did.” Teach smiled at her. “It’s nice to know I haven’t been talking to myself. In point of fact, all three men were smart. Always looking to expand. Always looking for new venues.”

“You sound like you admire those people,” Mary said.

In the silence that greeted her remark, she could hear Spaghetti and Lila Lorraine murmuring softly to each other. Looking around to check on the rest of the group, she noticed that Iron Sam, Crunchy, and Journey all appeared to be sleeping. Kid Rags and Happy were passing the hip flask back and forth. Tim had his head cocked while he drove, as if he were listening for Teach’s response.

“Not at all,” Teach said finally, his voice harsh. “People tend to romanticize prohibition, to romanticize the so-called Mafia, but they don’t get it. It’s about the unholy trinity—criminals, politicians, and businesspersons—all working together to sell out the little people. And make no mistake about it—no matter how rich and successful we might be, the vast majority of us are the little people.”

***

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Posted in history/myth, writing. Tags: Chuck Polizzi, Cleveland Syndicate, Johnny Torio, Mayfield Road Mob, Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz, Morris Kleinman, Tommy McGinty. 2 Comments »

Facing Off With Facebook

January 1, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday’s accidental New Year’s resolution was to spend less time promoting books I don’t like and would never read by authors I don’t know. (For the past few years, I’ve been posting book excerpts from any author who sent me one, and then promoting it via Twitter and Facebook.) Today’s accidental resolution is to spend less time on Facebook. This resolution isn’t accidental — I’ve been giving a lot of thought to where I want to go with my online life. What’s accidental is the timing. What was supposed to be simply a resolution has accidentally become a New Year’s resolution.

Like many authors, I joined Facebook as a way of promoting my books, and I “friended” as many people as possible to get the word out. When I realized I wasn’t getting the results I’d hoped for, I started going for quality — trying to get to know the people I was connected with. That worked to a certain extent — I’ve met wonderful people and have had interesting discussions with them — but now the site has lost its luster. Or maybe I am growing beyond what the site has to offer. I never did like the games that keep so many people occupied, but I liked the feeling that something was always going on, that there was always a chance for an incredible encounter.

A growing problem is that for me there are two Facebooks running concurrently. There is the professional side, where I meet and connect with other authors, and there is the personal side. I’ve tried separating out the two — I have both a personal profile and an author page — but I’m still connected to more than a thousand people on my personal profile that I don’t know, and the constant flow of their personal tragedies and triumphs is beginning to weigh me down.

I don’t know which is worse — the brags about how many books people have sold, how many pages they have written, what awards they have won, their ratings on Amazon, or the announcements of anniversaries, illnesses, hospitalizations, accidents, and deaths of relatives and pets. (Actually, I do know what is worst — the happy announcements of wedding anniversaries. They remind me of what I have lost.)

I sound curmudgeonly, don’t I? In a cosmic sense, what happens to each person affects us all, but in a microcosmic way, knowledge of these events can add an immeasurable burden. Yes, I’m glad of people’s triumphs. (Or at least I want to be.) Yes, I’m sorry about their tragedies. But how do my feelings make a difference to their lives? I’m a stranger to them as they are to me. And if I turn off my computer, they no longer exist. (Ah, such power!)

I can’t completely get rid of Facebook, nor do I want — it’s a good way of connecting with people and getting to know them — but I can curtail my time on the site, and that I will do.

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