Bertram's Blog

My Own True Grit

April 12, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I started watching True Grit today, but had to stop because I couldn’t see the screen for all the tears. My deceased life mate/soul mate and I lived not far from Ridgeway where True Grit (1969) was filmed, and the scenery in the movie made me homesick, not just for the Rockies, which formed the backdrop of my life, but for him. As the movie played, I could almost hear his voice telling me about the filming of the movie, and I could almost feel the soft cool air of Colorado wafting through the open window.

Sometimes I have the urge to settle near there again when my responsibilities to my father end. The air would feel familiar. The light would be soothing to my eyes. The mountains would offer comfort and perhaps protection from harsh winds. But then what? I’d be alone with the mountains, and mountains, no matter how welcome or familiar, can’t offer companionship. Without my mate, I’d still feel lonely, still feel as if I were homeless, because he, of course, was my home.

In Figuring Out Where to Go From Here, I realized I didn’t have to settle anywhere, but could live on the go, writing as I went. It will be possible, at least for a while, especially if I can get some sort of crowd funding. And perhaps I will discover home within myself or even discover that the journey itself is home.

I haven’t been writing about this journey lately because my 96-year-old father is doing exceptionally well, so much so that it seems foolish to talk about my future since I might not be free of responsibilities for a long time. Besides, I don’t want my father or anyone else to think I am hurrying him off this earth. If the universe is unfolding as it should, then my soul quest (or at least the road trip part of the quest) will happen when the universe and I am ready.

Still, it is nice to know what I’m going to do when the time comes — put my stuff in storage and head out on my journey, broadening both my internal and external horizons. Since I want to live by whim, to relearn spontaneity and perhaps find serendipity, there really isn’t a lot of preparation for me to do in the meantime except to continue to get rid of that which is unnecessary so I can hit the road unencumbered by superfluous possessions, outdated issues, and useless notions. Eventually, I will need to prepare various giveaways and promotional materials, perhaps even a marketing plan, for visiting bookstores along the way, but now is not the time for planning but for dreaming.

The beauty of such a quest as the one I’m dreaming of is that if I am particularly homesick for areas where we lived, I could go and stay there for a while, recharge my soul’s batteries, and then continue on when wit, whim, and my own true grit dictated.

***

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.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: Colorado air, finding home, homesick, Ridgeway, Rocky Mountains, soul quest, True Grit. 9 Comments »

Grief Update

April 11, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I haven’t been posting any grief updates lately because I haven’t had much to tell. There has been no great pain or sorrow, no major traumas or dramas, no new adventures to undertake — just living my every day life of quiet sadness and loneliness.

Although I haven’t had any major grief upsurges for a while, I do often think of my deceased life mate/soul mate, even talk to him. Oddly, now that the agony of grief has mostly subsided, it feels as if he is back at home, waiting for me to finish my present tasks and return to him. I know he isn’t there, of course, but without the pain to simultaneously bind us and separate us, he doesn’t feel quite so gone.

I am still very confused by death. How can he be dead? Where is he? Is he? Perhaps he is waiting for me, perhaps he is simply gone . . . deleted. I won’t know until my life is ended, and perhaps not even then. Whatever exists beyond our cloak of materiality and physicality, beyond our brains and our minds, might have consciousness, or might simply be pure energy that returns to the Everything.

I’ve never known where to put his death in my head. I can’t be glad about it, yet at the same time, he couldn’t have continued to suffer. But more than that, if he is in a better place, why I am still here? And if life is a gift, why was it denied him? I’ve held on to the idea that dying relatively young was unfair to him, that he is missing something, and a lot of my grief was on his behalf, but the other night I realized it truly doesn’t matter whether we are alive or dead. Well, his death matters to me, but it doesn’t matter to the universe, and it probably doesn’t matter to him. Nor does my continued life matter in the vastness of life/death. A few years extra of life is but a dandelion seed in the winds of time. Almost totally matterless. Maybe even meaningless. In which case it truly doesn’t make any difference that I am alive and he is dead. (Well, except for the part where I miss him, but this insight wasn’t about that.)

Even if life is largely matterless and meaningless, I am still alive and at least for now, that does make a difference to me and those I am in contact with. But it’s good knowing I neither have to be glad nor sad for him, that I can continue to live without feeling bad that he is dead. Knowing this also makes it easier to remember him, to recall what we had, to celebrate his place in my life. I am still sad, of course, and maybe I always will be. I miss him, wish desperately for one smile, but gradually I am letting go of my worries for him. He doesn’t need them, and they are an unnecessary relic of our life together. And for all I know, he could be perfectly content, sitting by some cosmic lake, two ghost cats purring in his lap.

Someday, as my grief continues to wane, I might even get to the point where I find renewed life, but I still take comfort where I can find it, and for now I take comfort in thinking that life and death are somehow one.

***

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: confused by death, dealing with grief, death, death of a soul mate, grief and loss, life and death, meaning of life and death. 9 Comments »

Foreshadowing and Backshadowing: Making Our Writing Seem Inexorable

April 10, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I’m not one of those authors who are so overflowing with ideas that they can sit down and just let the words spew out of their fingers onto the page. I have to think of everything, which is why beginning a novel or creating a new character is so hard. I am faced with a universe of choices where all things are possible.

What am I going to write? How am I going to write it? First person or third? Sassy, sarcastic, serious? Who is going to be the main character? What does she most desire? Who or what is stopping her from fulfilling this desire? What does she look and act like? What are her internal traits, both her admirable ones and less admirable ones? Who are her allies? Who are her mentors?

And those choices lead to other choices. What does the character need? (As opposed to what she wants.) Is she going to get what she wants or is she going to get what she needs? For example, maybe she wants to be a homebody, to marry the boy next door, but what she and the story need are for her to become a senator and possibly leave the boy behind.

And so the choices continue, each choice narrowing the story’s universe a bit more.

One of the best parts of writing for me is when the weight of those choices become so great that the answer to future choices can be found in past ones. It gives the story a sense of inexorability, as if there were always only one way to tell the story.

For example, yesterday I wrote about creating a new character. Although Lydia was not originally my creation, but instead was an offscreen character created by Lazarus Barnhill in the first book of Rubicon Ranch, the serialization I am writing online with other Second Wind authors, I have adopted her as my own. Even if readers don’t remember who Lydia is, she will still pull the first book into the third, connecting them in a seemingly inexorable way, by making the sheriff confront his past. Ideally, it will seem as if this was our intention all along, with the first book foreshadowing the third when it is actually the third book backshadowing the first.

Lydia being a previously mentioned character narrows my choices, since she already has a name and a past, but there is still plenty of scope for choices. And in the end as in the beginning, writing is about the choices we make.

***

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: creating a character, inexorability, mystery serialization, overflowing with ideas, Rubicon Ranch, writing and choices. 4 Comments »

Creating a New Character

April 9, 2013 — Pat Bertram

J J Dare, author of False Positive and False World, delights in creating evil characters. A fellow collaborator in the Second Wind serialization, Rubicon Ranch, J J Dare created the monstrous victim in Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces, the second book of the series, along with a couple of his offspring. She calls her evil characters Bad Wasps.

We’re starting a new book, Rubicon Ranch: Secrets, and seeing how much fun J J Dare has with her evil characters, I’d considered exchanging my ongoing character for a bad wasp, but my character, Melanie Gray, still has so much to accomplish that I can’t just dump the poor woman. She needs to find out who killed her husband and why, and she needs to resolve her feelings for the misogynistic sheriff.

I considered writing another character in addition to Melanie, and I almost gave up when I couldn’t think of a character I’d be willing to spend the next year with, but then I discovered Lydia Galvin. Or rather rediscovered her.

Lydia was an offscreen character in the first book of the series, Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s story — Sheriff Bryan’s lover. Told from the sheriff’s point of view, she was a grasping woman who wanted him to divorce his wife and marry her, but when he wouldn’t fall in with her schemes, she ended up turning him in to the disciplinary committee.

Here’s the excerpt (written by Lazarus Barnhill):

“Anyway, Lydia Galvin . . . Lieutenant Lydia . . . she and I had an affair. What Lydia wanted was love. And she wanted me. She could not believe I didn’t love her to the extent she loved me. She wanted me to leave Monica. When I wouldn’t, she threatened to tell her. I told Monica first, as a preemptory strike. Lydia had visions of confronting Monica. Boy was she surprised when Monica confronted her. Monica told her to be content with what she had with me, that she was going to mess up all our lives if she kept on.”

Bryan paused for a reaction from Melanie, but her serene face gave no indication of her thoughts.

He took a sip of tea. “Somehow Lydia got the idea that if she came between me and my career, between me and my marriage, I would magically realize how much I cared for her. Once she told the right people on the force what was happening, the disciplinary procedures couldn’t be stopped. And of course discipline issues on the police force become public record. I had been the beloved, fair-haired boy before. It was so totally different to become the pariah. Lydia came to me—even after I had cleaned out my office and watched them paint over my name on my parking space. She came to where I was standing and said, ‘Can’t you understand how much I love you?’”

“What did you say to her?”

“I said, ‘I’m still licensed to carry a sidearm in California and if you come near me again I’m going to shoot you between the eyes.’”

On rereading the passage, I realized how much of a philanderer’s point of view it portrayed. In trying to see the situation from Lydia’ Lydia s side, I got the impression of a woman, perhaps a bit lost, perhaps hard used by the sheriff who obviously wanted only one thing from her, and it wasn’t the love she so desperately craved. It must have hurt her deeply to try one last time to connect to the man she loved, and to have him threaten to kill her. Might this (and whatever in her background that made her so desperate for love in the first place) have turned her into a stonehearted woman willing to kill to serve her ends?

I’ll find out in the coming months as I develop the character. It should be fun to discover if she’s a bad wasp or merely a woman who’s had too much pain in her life.

f you have not yet checked out Rubicon Ranch, you can do so here: Rubicon Ranch.

***

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: developing a character, mystery series collaboration, online novel, point of view, Rubicon Ranch, Rubicon Ranch: Secrets, Second Wind Publishing. 1 Comment »

Rubicon Ranch: Secrets — The Story Begins!

April 8, 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. The very first chapter of the very first book (Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story) was posted on October 24, 2010, and we are still going strong! In fact, we are getting better and better. Seven authors, including me, are involved in the current story — Rubicon Ranch: Secrets, which is shaping up to be a psychological thriller.

The body of a local realtor is found beneath the wheels of a blow-up 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.

Although some of the characters were introduced in Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story, the first collaboration in the series, and further developed in Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces, Rubicon Ranch: Secrets is a stand-alone novel, so don’t worry if you are new to Rubicon Ranch. A new chapter will be posted every Monday on the Rubicon Ranch blog. I’m posting the first chapter here, but 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.

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 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 1: Melanie Gray
by Pat Bertram

Sunday, December 22; 7:05pm

Melanie Gray typed THE END, then sat back and studied the words on the computer screen. She’d found no satisfaction in telling the story of famed horror writer Morris Sinclair’s macabre life and death, and she felt no elation now that she’d finished the task. The evil man should have been buried in unhallowed ground and left to rot rather than be immortalized in a book, but she’d needed the money her publisher had offered. With the generous advance, she would be able to devote herself to finding out who killed her husband five months previously and, more importantly, why the murderer wanted Alexander dead. Morris had wooed death his whole life, so it was no surprise that death had come for him, but Alexander’s murder could not be so easily dismissed.

Tears stung Melanie’s eyes. She scrubbed the tears away, furious at herself for still grieving. She’d always considered herself a strong woman, up to any task, and yet she couldn’t write “the end” to her grief.

Damn you, Alexander! How could you do this to me?

She rose stiffly, stretched to get the worst of the kinks from her body, and tottered to the front closet for her coat. Except for a few hours of fitful sleep each night during the past nine weeks, she’d spent all her time at the computer, and she was sick of it. Sick of Morris Sinclair. Sick of death. Sick of Rubicon Ranch.

She opened the front door and blinked at the shadowy figures gliding through the darkness. Morris’s fans had descended on the neighborhood when news of his demise had hit the airwaves, and they had stayed when they learned that not all of Morris’s body pieces had been recovered. Dressed as vampires and zombies and ghouls of every imaginable—and unimaginable—ilk, they roamed the neighborhood and the nearby desert looking for necropieces in some sort of grisly treasure hunt.

Melanie hesitated, wondering at the wisdom of going out so late in the evening, but the twinkle of Christmas lights adorning a nearby desert willow made her set aside her caution.

Alexander had always loved Christmas, and no matter where in the world they happened to be living, he managed to find a tree and decorate it. If Alexander still lived in her memory, he’d want her to wander through the neighborhood so he could see the lights.

Smiling at the whimsical thought, she locked the door behind her and strolled down the driveway to Delano Road. Even with half the houses lit up with holiday decorations, the neighborhood seemed dark. Too many people had left the area, temporarily abandoning their homes, though the flickering of candlelight through closed curtains hinted that squatters had taken up residence in some of the empty houses.

Melanie stood at the curb, trying to decide whether to go right or left. “It’s your fault, Alexander,” she murmured. “Until you died, I never had a problem making decisions.” But now, it didn’t make any difference whether she went north or south, whether she left Rubicon Ranch or stayed. Without Alexander, everything seemed uniformly bleak.

A house across the street all at once came ablaze with thousands of small white lights. Melanie cut across the road and headed for the brightness, wishing Alexander could see the decorations for real. Lights outlined the driveway, every bush, every rock, and dripped from the eaves like dazzling falls of lace.

She walked leisurely, savoring the radiant display on Alexander’s behalf, then hurried past the next dwelling, which was dark, and slowed again at the following house to look at the whimsical blow-up figure of Santa on a motorcycle.

After the brilliance of the lights at the first domicile, she had to wait a moment to let her eyes adjust to the relative dimness of this scene. And then she wished she hadn’t hung around to get a better look. Santa, with a wide grin and an upraised hand, seemed to be gleefully running over the prone body of a woman. A mannequin, it looked like.

Melanie drew in a sharp breath. Who would create such a morbid tableau for Christmas? But then, seeing a vampire with glowing teeth run past her, she sighed. Anyone in this insane neighborhood could have done it. After Morris Sinclair’s demise, Rubicon Ranch had become a bacchanalia of death, a celebration of the worst in humanity.

A car moved along the street behind her. The headlights illuminated the scene as clearly as if it were day, and suddenly something seemed wrong. So very wrong.

The woman being run over by the cheery Santa looked stiff in the way of death, not stiff like a mannequin.

Melanie told herself to continue on, to forget the gruesome sight and enjoy the rest of the decorations, but her leaden feet refused to do her bidding. Finally, wishing she were anywhere but here, she crept closer to the scene.

She caught a faint whiff of death—like meat just beginning to go bad—and her heart beat faster.

No. No. She’d had enough of death. Alexander. Poor kidnapped little Riley Peterson. Morris Sinclair. How could so much death be associated with a community as small as Rubicon Ranch?

Melanie bent over the body and touched a finger to the side of the woman’s neck to check for a pulse, though she already knew the truth.

She fumbled in her coat pocket for her cell phone and wondered if the sheriff would continue to believe in her innocence. Hell, she didn’t believe it herself. Maybe she was some sort of Typhoid Mary when it came to death. She’d been the one who found Riley Peterson’s body out in the desert, stuffed in a television console. She’d been the one to lead the sheriff to the desert where they’d found the body of Riley’s birth father. She’d been the first one to come across a necropiece—a dismembered foot—after Morris was killed. And now once again she had found death.

She punched in 999, but when the call didn’t connect, she realized she’d used the emergency number for Britain. She cleared the number, then punched 119. Crap. Wrong again. That was the emergency number for Mozambique. Where was she? She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

Rubicon Ranch. Rojo Duro County. Mojave Desert. California. USA. Ah, yes. 911.

Melanie made the call, gave the information to the dispatcher, then pulled her coat more firmly around her to protect her from the chill of the high desert winter night.

She’d expected to wait a half an hour or more until the sheriff or his deputies could make the thirty-mile trip from Rojo Duro, but only ten minutes had gone by when a dark SUV pulled up to the curb, and Deputy Kelvin Midget slid out from behind the wheel more nimbly than seemed possible for such a massive man.

The SUV didn’t have official county plates, so Melanie supposed the vehicle was the deputy’s private ride. She felt a spasm of guilt at cutting into the man’s personal time, but then she remembered what Deputy Midget had once told her—that he’d lost his wife to pancreatic cancer about three year and a half years ago, and had come out west to start over so he could heal. Maybe, like Melanie, he had no real life but was just going through the motions of living.

“What seems to be the trouble, Ms. Gray?”

Shivering, Melanie pointed to the body.

Midget picked his way through the xeriscaping, got down on his haunches to check the woman’s neck as Melanie had, then rose to his feet without using his hands to shove himself upright.

“Did you see what happened?”

“No. Just found her lying here is all. Checked her pulse. Called it in.”

Midget walked around to the other side of the body, scanning the ground, his dark brow furrowed. “Did you find her purse?”

“No, but I didn’t look for it.” Melanie wondered about the deputy’s concern for the woman. It seemed more than simply a law enforcement officer’s professional interest in a crime scene. “Did you know her?” she asked.

“Didn’t you?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know many people in the neighborhood.”

“Seth—Sheriff Bryan—thinks you notice everything.”

“Well, the sheriff thinks a lot of things that aren’t true.”

Midget made a small sound that might have been a chuckle. “Hit a nerve, did I?”

More to get away from the uncomfortable topic of the Sheriff than because she wanted to identify the woman, Melanie circled the body so she could get a better look. The woman did appear familiar at that. Aquiline nose, close set eyes, coiffed hair, manicured fingernails with a shimmering design painted atop the polish, high heels, tailored business suit.

Melanie backed away from the body. “I think she might be a real estate agent. I’ve seen her around the neighborhood.”

“Nancy Garcetti,” Deputy Midget said. “She sold me my house. Poor woman. She was such a terrible judge of character. Looked at the superficial and assumed she knew what the person was about. Kept notes of everything. You sure you didn’t find her purse?”

“Maybe the person who murdered her took it.”

“What makes you think she was murdered?”

“What else could it be? Nancy got tired, so she decided to take a nap by the wheels of Santa’s motorcycle and froze to death?” Regretting her caustic tone, Melanie huddled deeper into her coat. Had she become so used to murder that all death seemed so unnatural? But death was unnatural. A deletion of life. A void.

“People die from many causes,” Deputy Midget said. “It’s possible she had a heart attack. A stroke. Some sort of accident. A mugging gone wrong. Could be anything. We won’t know until the ME gets here.”

A tan Navigator parked behind Midget’s SUV, and Lieutenant Rosaria Frio stepped out of the vehicle.

The lieutenant looked even more like an Hispanic Barbie doll than when Melanie first met her. No emotion showed on the law enforcement officer’s beautiful face, and the dim light made her skin look plastically perfect. Only the glitter of the lieutenant’s dark eyes and her easy stride confirmed her humanity.

She greeted Deputy Midget with a nod. “You got here fast.”

“I just bought a house here in Rubicon Ranch over on Adobe Pobre Court. I told you about it. Got an awesome deal from a couple who could hardly wait to get away from the area. They said there was too much crime.”

“Imagine that.” Lieutenant Frio turned to stare at Melanie. “And here is our one-woman crime spree herself. Or maybe cadaver dog would be a better description.”

Melanie returned the Lieutenant’s gaze, but refrained from answering in kind. Lieutenant Frio seemed to have taken her in dislike when they met after Riley’s murder and her manner had only grown colder with the passage of the months. Melanie didn’t entirely blame her. If their places were reversed, she’d probably be just as skeptical as the lieutenant about her penchant for finding corpses.

Lieutenant Frio walked to body and stood over it for a moment, then slanted a glance toward Melanie. “Sheriff Bryan will be here shortly. He and his wife were dining out, and he needs to take her home first.”

Melanie remained impassive. She already knew the sheriff and his wife were back together. Melanie had talked to him a couple of times to get details for her book, and he had told her his wife had decided the celebrity-ridden area might not be such a backwater after all. He’d sounded apologetic, but other than behavior that bordered on unprofessionalism, he had nothing to apologize for. They hadn’t had an affair, not even a fling. Just a little bit of flirtation and a lot of anger.

“Can I go?” she asked.

“I’ve questioned Ms. Gray,” Deputy Midget said. “If we need her again, we know where to find her.”

Lieutenant Frio turned her implacable gaze toward Melanie. “Don’t leave the county.”

If anyone else had deadpanned such a remark, Melanie would have assumed it was either a friendly suggestion or possibly a joke, but coming from the lieutenant, the command sounded like a jail cell slamming shut.

Melanie wanted to run back to her place, but she forced herself to walk since she was sure the lieutenant would see haste as a sign of guilt. She tried not to look at the houses she passed. The joyful decorations suddenly seemed obscene.

She didn’t believe Deputy Midget’s suggestion that Nancy had died of natural causes. The missing purse hinted that something grimmer was going on. What secrets Nancy had kept in her purse? Everyone in Rubicon Ranch seemed to have something to hide. And someone—perhaps someone in one of these very houses—might have a secret they would kill to protect.

***

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: mystery series collaboration, online novel, Rubicon Ranch, Rubicon Ranch Necropieces, Rubicon Ranch: Secrets, Second Wind Publishing. 2 Comments »

Fight Scenes and Motivations by David Lucas

April 7, 2013 — Pat Bertram

The internet truly is an egalitarian place. Where else would I be able to meet someone like David Alan Lucas, a writer, poet and martial artist who is an expert in the arts of physical and psychological combat?

David belongs to my Suspense/Thriller Writers’ group on Facebook, and he has been discussing fight techniques with the group. I asked if I could post part of his discourse, and he kindly said yes. Thank, you, David!

Fight Scenes and Motivations by David Lucas

This might be a bit of a ramble, but let’s talk about fight scenes. We all have our areas of expertise. Do you ever feel thrown out of a story or movie when “they” get it wrong? I know I do. I have closed those books and never picked it up again. If I go to a movie by myself, I will walk out of it. When I am with others, they can usually tell from my facial expression that I am biting my tongue. (I’m polite and don’t ruin it for them—there is always the after movie drive to talk about it.)

Besides being a writer, I am a fighter. I am a 3rd degree Black Belt in a Black Art (Black=War Art instead of a sport style). I have been in more hand to hand (or bare hand vs armed) fights than I even want to contemplate. Fight scenes are hard to write, even for me. But when someone gets it wrong I shake my head. But when they get it right, I want to jump up and dance (I almost did that when the 2009 Sherlock Holmes came out and they actually got into the Holmes’ head as he planned the fight before it began).

As a result of being a fighter and a writer, I have been writing about fight scenes and have given a few seminars. While I would imagine there is a book on how to write a fight scene, I haven’t seen it. So, I am going to tear apart the process as best as I can over the several months. Before I begin to outline it, let me be very clear: Writing is an art. Martial Arts is an art. There is no one way to do anything. Take from this what works for you, knowing that, like all writers and marital artists, we all walk our own path.

The first thing I do with writing a fight scene is to understand who is involved. When people fight in real life, everyone has a set of skills, a way they think, and a motive to be in the fight. Let’s work this backwards and start with motive. Why does your character want to fight?

Let’s face a few facts about fights. On film they can look exciting. But the truth is that in every fight (even among friends) there is a risk—even if it by accident—that you can lose your life. Let me use a real life example.

Have you ever been there when someone yells, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” People gather around cheering it on. They are stupid. No I am not holding back punches. Here is the true story that happened in one such case and why I called them stupid. One of the fighters in such a case—it was at a bar—took a glass bottle and broke it. He swung wildly at his opponent. His wild swings cut the throat of a guy I knew in the crowd who had stupidly thought he was going to see a fight. His funeral was a few days later.

All fights are dangerous—being in one, seeing one, etc. It doesn’t matter if it is in a ring where people are trying to be sure that no one is harmed in the long run or on a battlefield somewhere—and they are painful. What were the two drunks I talked about above fighting over and what had been worth so much for someone to die?

Someone can be beaten to a proverbial pulp or lose their lives over trivial issues–like a pair of shoes, a spilled drink, or (as a guy I once knew discovered) looking at someone’s girlfriend the wrong way. In St. Louis, Missouri a game among teens has developed where they go up to complete strangers and try to knock them out. Fights can start over imagined slights, being drunk, forced to protect yourself or a loved one, property and so forth.

Why is your character willing to fight?

Before you decide to turn your character into a super hero or the next Jet Li, let me break down the motivation a bit. There was a story my Master Instructor once told me that I have never forgotten.

A man, who was studying Martial Arts and had grown so confident that he felt like he was bullet proof, was once asked what he would be willing to fight for. He was asked, “If ten men were leaning on your car and causing trouble, would you fight them?”

He replied with confidence, “Of course I would beat the . . .” You can fill in the words.

His instructor then asked, “What if they all had chains and baseball bats and you were unarmed?”

The student thought about it and agreed he would not fight them.

The instructor then asked one final question, “Take these same men, armed the same way, and now they are raping your wife. Would you fight them?”

His answer changed.

The circumstances in real life and in our fiction writing are what will determine if someone will be willing to risk their lives in a fight. What are you willing to fight for and lose your life over? If you answer that quickly, I personally ask–plead with you–to think about it a little more. What is your character willing to fight for? What is their line in the sand?

How do they fight? More importantly, how do they think about fighting?

If you have questions about writing fight scenes or about how various characters might act in a fight, please feel free to ask. I will do my best to answer your question. Your question’s response may even lead to a blog entry in my blog relaunch on The Writer’s Lens.

David Lucas’s blogs: http://davidalanlucas.blogspot.com/ and http://www.thewriterslens.com/

David Lucas’s website: http://www.davidalanlucas.com/

David Lucas on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Owlkenpowriter

Posted in culture, How to, life, writing. Tags: David Lucas, fight scenes, fighter and writer, motivtions for fighting, Suspense/Thriller Writers Group on Facebook. 3 Comments »

Is There Life Without the Internet?

April 6, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I spent most of yesterday updating my virus protection software. For some reason known only to the computer gods and gurus, simple tasks that should be done in a matter of minutes take hours upon hours. I ended up downloading the program and removing it twice, talking to several different billing and tech people (and some I’m not even sure work for the company — if you google “Trend Micro contact”, you get all sorts of phone numbers, only some of which go the to actual company.) And because they couldn’t simply credit my account with a refund and use that money for the second download I had to pay twice (though they did promise a refund for one of the downloads. Wink. Wink.).

Although I could write a whole post (perhaps even an amusing one) about my experiences with the update, mentioning it is by way of a prologue. I’ve used Trend Micro from the beginning, and it’s been good protection, so I’ve been sticking with them, but yesterday, halfway through the process, I told them I was so unhappy with their service, I was ready to throw away my computer. For just a second, I meant it, and I felt free. And then the truth hit me.

untiled My life is almost all online. Sure, I could take walks, but who would I tell about my insights? I could write my thoughts, but who would read them? Who would talk to me about Is Introspection Possible? and What Is Luck?, my Soul’s Journey and Living Light and Free? This blog has seen me through some terrible times in my life, and some good ones. It was here that I first announced I’d found a publisher, first promoted my books, first talked about the agony of my grief, had my first inklings that there might someday be happiness for me again. I cannot imagine my life without it. But this is not the only thing I’d have forego.

Without the internet, I’d have no life as an author. I could still write books, but who would talk to me about them? I could perhaps still check with bookstore owners and see if I can do book signings, but what if I wanted to publish another book? Book files are all digital now. How would I get the manuscript digitalized so I could send to my publisher?

There is too much of my life I’d have to do without. I have friends in the real world, which is nice, but I also have friends in the cyber world — people from all around the world — that I’d never get to talk to or email again. I’d never get to check in Facebook again. Well, maybe that wouldn’t be such a loss, but still, it is a part of the online experience, and I’d miss all the people I’ve friended and those I haven’t yet met.

And Rubicon Ranch — the collaboration/serialization I’m writing with other Second Wind authors — I’d have to give up on that, too, just when all the authors are learning to have fun with it and run with it.

Every day online offers the possibility of something wonderful happening. So, after my whole online life flashed before my eyes along with the vision of what my life would be like without the internet, I girded my loins, gritted my teeth, stepped once more into the fray, (feel free to add whatever other clichés you wish), and finally got the job done. Now I just have to wait to see if they follow through on their side with the refund.

Either way, I’ll still be here.

***

Posted in blogging, culture, internet, life. Tags: cyber friends, cyberspace, internet, online experience, online life, virus protection. 13 Comments »

A Great Blog to Check Out

April 5, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Recently there have been some fascinating articles posted on the Second Wind Publishing blog that are worth checking out. All the articles on the blog are great, of course. These are just the most current ones.

The Importance of Locations by Deborah J Ledford. Deborah describes the wonder of her childhood summers spent in North Carolina, and how they have colored her writing.

Spring by S.M. Senden. Sue talks about the importance of spring cleaning, cleaning out the old, clearing out closets as well as old notions that no longer work, in order to make room for the new.

Air Travel in the 1950′s, a kid’s memory by Juliet Waldron. A fascinating look back at the way air travel used to be. This was of particular interest to me, considering my recent flight via “Sardine Airlines.”

The Day of the Trickster by J J Dare. J J muses on the origins of the April Fool, postulating that perhaps it originated in the old days of Rome. As she said, “these guys and their mythological gods loved to party.”

Headed for adventure by Nichole R Bennett. Nichole tells us about the life of an active-duty military couple. But now she and her husband are headed for adventure by themselves.

Peaches Peppers & Pork Chops by Ginger King. Who would have thought that peaches, peppers, and pork chops would have made a good combination? Ginger King, that’s who! Sounds like a great recipe. I’ll have to try it some day.

Writing a Collaborative Mystery Serial — by Pat Bertram. I wasn’t going to include this since it’s a reprint of an article I did for this blog, but I am proud of our collaborative efforts and the authors who are participating, and couldn’t bypass the opportunity to shout about it.

Deborah J Ledford, S.M. Senden, Juliet Waldron, J J Dare, Nichole R Bennett, Ginger King, and Pat Bertram all have books published by Second Wind.

***

Posted in blogging, internet, writing. Tags: Deborah J. Ledford, Ginger King, J J Dare, Juliet Waldron, Nichole R Bennett, publisher's blog, S.M. Senden, Second Wind Publishing blog. 2 Comments »

Grieving for the Dead

April 4, 2013 — Pat Bertram

The conventional wisdom is that we grieve for ourselves, not the person who died, but as with any other idea most people have about grief, it is only partly true. When it comes to a soul mate, we often grieve for him as much as we grieve for ourselves. During our shared time, we cared as much about him, his well-being, his happiness as we did about our own, and that caring does not stop with death.

Many people still feel their soul mate’s presence, sometimes in a beneficial way, as a blessing or as a helping hand, but others feel their mate’s unhappiness. One woman, whose husband spend his last months connected to gastric tubes and other painful devices, continued to feel his anger long after he died. He’d been furious with her for agreeing to procedures that prolonged his suffering, and she was ridden with guilt because of it. (Though what other decisions about his care could she have made? He could not talk, and the doctors assured her he would get better if they performed those operations.) For more than a year after his death, she could still feel waves of anger directed at her. Perhaps the anger was a symptom of her guilt, but perhaps part of him still harbored those feelings. We hope our loved ones are at peace, but what if they’re not?

One of the great agonies of losing one’s soul mate is not knowing where he is, how he is, if he is. I found comfort in believing that my life mate/soul mate wasn’t suffering any more, that he, at least, wasn’t having to deal with the pain of our disconnect, but then one day it struck me that I didn’t know that for sure. Since I had no sense of his continued presence in my life, I had no conception of what he might be experiencing. What if he were feeling just as lost and lonely and bereft as I was?

I had to put such thoughts out of my head because I truly could not bear to think of him in pain. I was still grieving for all the suffering to which he’d been subject during his final days, weeks, months, still grieving for his hopes that never came to fruition, still grieving for the dreams that died with him. Perhaps it was silly of me to grieve for him, since it’s entirely possible he wasn’t grieving for himself, but still, those thoughts were there, complicating my grief.

It’s been a few days more than three years since he died, and sometime during those grief-filled months, I began to disconnect from him, to understand that whatever relationship we had, however much we shared, no matter how much it felt as if we were cosmic twins, we were still two separate people on two separate journeys. This is an important realization and a necessary step to mental health and eventual happiness, but the habit of thinking of him is still strong, and I wonder where he is, how he is, if he is.

I hope he is happy, fulfilled, challenged, radiant. I wish those things for myself, and I can wish no less for him.

***

Posted in culture, grief, life, relationships. Tags: death of a soul mate, do the dead feel grief, grief and loss, grief and love, grieving for the dead. Leave a Comment »

Is Introspection Possible?

April 3, 2013 — Pat Bertram

You learn something new every day, or at least that’s what the cliché would have us believe, and today I learned that I should be more careful about choosing words. A few days ago on Facebook, I posted an affirmation/resolution, saying: Today I will be . . . introspective.

mind A friend sent me an email in response: I was about to make a comment on introspection but hesitated when I remembered a “strange” entry about the topic in the “Oxford Companion to the Mind.” They had a short paragraph that began by judging the entire psychological technique of introspection as being in danger of misinterpretation. They then stated “It has, however, become clear that very little that goes on in the brain associated with the mind is accessible to conscious introspection, and “we” regard the mind as a much broader concept than awareness, consciousness, or what is known by introspection” (Pg. 389). Was the “we” the editors? Isn’t that odd that they would sidestep something that I think of as quite positive and I’m certain you do as well.

Huh? I was under the impression that introspection was a synonym for contemplation or reflection, so I emailed her back: Fascinating. I thought a bit of introspection was a good thing. Don’t be surprised if a blog post on this topic shows up. I do most of my “introspecting” via blog, and this certainly needs a bit of thought.

Today I finally got a chance to research the word, and it turns out that introspection is a particular type of contemplation — the contemplation of one’s own thoughts.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, introspection “is generally regarded as a process by means of which we learn about our own currently ongoing, or very recently past, mental states or processes.” To be classified as introspection, thoughts need to meet three conditions:

1. The mentality condition: Introspection is a process that generates, or is aimed at generating, knowledge, judgments, or beliefs about mental events, states, or processes, and not about affairs outside one’s mind.

2. The first-person condition: Introspection is a process that generates, or is aimed at generating, knowledge, judgments, or beliefs about one’s own mind only and no one else’s, at least not directly.

3. The temporal proximity condition: Introspection is a process that generates knowledge, beliefs, or judgments about one’s currently ongoing mental life only; or, alternatively (or perhaps in addition) immediately past (or even future) mental life.

In other words, (at least I think these are other words that explain the situation), to be introspective, you must be thinking about your current thoughts. Some people, however, debate if this is even possible. Can the brain know itself? Can the mind know itself? Which brings us back to the email from my friend. Apparently (at least according to the Oxford folks), very little that goes on in the mind is accessible to conscious introspection.

Confusing the issue of whether introspection is possible, there is something called an introspection illusion, where we tend to believe we have direct insights into the origins of our thoughts, but treat everyone else’s insights as unreliable, so everything we do or think is biased in our own favor.

Introspection might seem impossible to scientists who need non-biased input, but on a personal level, introspection is possible — those of us with a contemplative bent do pay attention to how we think, but to be honest, from now on, I’m going to sidestep the whole issue and simply use the term “reflection.” That would cover everything — thoughts about my thoughts and thoughts about everything else. And who knows — maybe someday I’ll even bypass reflection and go straight to awareness.

***