A Spark of Heavenly Fire | Bertram's Blog

Action Scene from “A Spark of Heavenly Fire”

November 26, 2011 — Pat Bertram

Here is an action sequence from A Spark of Heavenly Fire. I worked hard on this particular scene. Rewrote it about a dozen times. Took out all extraneous words. Removed most of the character’s thoughts. Condensed the descriptions. Shortened the sentences. I wanted the action to zing! And maybe I accomplished my goal. Today a woman told me that A Spark of Heavenly Fire was so intensely emotional and so tightly written that she had to pause to rest while reading it. She said was glad of the breaks because it stretched the book out longer. Made me feel good to know the book meant that much to her.

Pippi watched the two boys come nearer. With their eyes alit with laughter, they looked young and innocent, like children playing a game.

The larger boy stopped, raised his rifle to shoulder height. All at the same time, she felt something whizzing by her face, heard the crack of the rifle, and saw a piece of bark flying off the tree next to where she stood.

She stayed rooted to the spot. She knew she should run, wanted desperately to run, but her body refused to cooperate.

Jeremy grabbed her coat and yanked her behind a thicket of bushes, where they stood ankle-deep in leaves.

“Listen,” he said urgently. He tugged at her coat. “Are you listening?”

With robotic jerkiness, she turned her head to look at him.

“Yes,” she answered, marveling at how far away her voice sounded.

He lay face down on the ground. “Cover me with leaves.”

She gazed at him, not comprehending.

“Cover me with leaves,” he said harshly. “Now! Do it now.”

She dropped to her knees.

As she scooped the wet, soggy leaves over him, he said, “As soon as you’re done, I want you to start running. Zigzag through the trees. Make a lot of noise so they think we’re both running away. And whatever you do, don’t look back.” He turned his head and looked up at her. “Got it?”

Pippi nodded, but refused to meet his eyes. How could he talk to her like that? Blinded by tears, she finished covering him with leaves, then took off running.

The binoculars banged against her chest, branches tore at her hair, rocks tripped her, and still she ran.

She stopped for a moment to massage a stitch in her side. To her horror, she saw the boys up ahead, coming straight at her.

She looked around in confusion. Seeing the thicket of bushes and the mound of leaves covering Jeremy, she realized she had come full circle.

She glanced at the boys; they leered at her and licked their lips.

Her skin prickled.

The smaller boy, whose hair had been dyed a deep crayon blue, thrust his pelvis forward and cupped his crotch with his hand. The larger boy, blond ponytail swinging, flailed his arms and legs in a gross burlesque of a woman running.

The boys convulsed with laughter.

Still laughing, the blond boy raised his rifle. With his finger crooked on the trigger, he aimed it at her.

Suddenly the mound of leaves at the base of the bushes erupted. A creature—barely recognizable as Jeremy, with his tensed body and his rage-distorted face—sprang toward the young blond rifleman.

The boy didn’t even have time to turn his head.

Dressed in camouflage clothes as Jeremy was, it looked as if the very leaves reached out, grabbed the blond ponytail, pulled the boy close, and made three rapid sawing motions across his throat.

Blood spurted in a bright red arc from the boy’s neck.

It happened so fast that when Jeremy tossed the blond aside, the blue-haired boy was still cupping his crotch and laughing.

Jeremy turned to confront him. The grin slid off the boy’s face. He dropped his rifle and raised his hands. His eyes, the irises rimmed with white, were riveted on the bloody knife.

Read 30% free at Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1842

Kindle Edition $4.99 http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Heavenly-Fire-Pat-Bertram/dp/1935171232/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, action scene, excerpt, rewriting. 5 Comments »

Can Characters Really Change?

November 19, 2011 — Pat Bertram

A couple of days ago I wrote a blog postulating that Without Changes, You Have No Story, and I stick to that premise. Characters need to change, the relationships of the characters to each other need to change, story expectations need to change, the direction of the story (and each scene) needs to change. But there was a discussion on that blog post centered on what degree it is possible for characters to change, and if they truly do change, and that made me think.

Some psychologists say we never change in any basic way, that our characters and essential personalities are our foundation, that we can only change in small ways, such as changing our habits or changing our focus. This is at odds with books about writing, which claim characters must do a complete about face, a 180° turnaround to show how the events of the story affected the characters. I thought I’d created strong character arcs for each of my characters, with my characters ending up different from the way they began, but now that I consider it, I don’t see that my characters change in any fundamental way. They become more of who they were, perhaps, but not recognizably different.

In More Deaths Than One, we see a gradual change in Bob Stark, the hero, see his current concept of himself eroded until he becomes what he once was and now will always be. (A bit cryptic, I know, but since this is the crux of the story, I don’t want to spoil it in case you haven’t yet read the book.) But he didn’t really change. He only seemed to change.

In A Spark of Heavenly Fire — which was inspired by a Washington Irving quote: “There is in every true woman’s heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.” — Kate Cummings seems to change in response to the red death and the resulting martial law that is destroying Colorado, seems to kindle up and beam and blaze in the dark hour of adversity, but there are hints in the story that she was always like that. Her spark of heavenly fire — her generosity — was merely hidden from herself and from us until a life-altering event stripped her to the core.

In Daughter Am I, Mary Stuart never truly changes, though she also seems to change. She was unsure of herself, unsure of what she wanted, unwilling to make a commitment of any kind even to a job, until she set out to discover who her grandparents were, who wanted them dead, and why her parents lied about their existence. It wasn’t out of character, perhaps, for her to drive halfway across the country in search of the truth because she only went along with what others wanted. At least in the beginning. As the journey progressed, she learned the truth she was seeking, and an even greater truth — who she is. She is granddaughter, daughter, and herself. Mostly herself. But that isn’t a change. It’s a discovery. A coming home.

In Light Bringer, neither Becka nor Phillip change. Again, they just discover who they are, a truth that had been kept from them their whole lives. In all my books, but Light Bringer especially, what changes is the reader’s perception of who the characters are. The truth is slowly revealed, and each revelation seems to show a change in the characters, but in the end they simply become what they always were.

How very odd to learn this so long after having written the books.

(Click on a title to read the first chapter of the book.)

Posted in books, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, character arc, Daughter Am I, do characters change, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, story change. 1 Comment »

Kindle Sale! Get Any of My Books for Only $1.99!!

November 1, 2011 — Pat Bertram

Have you been wanting to get one of my books? Well, now is the perfect time! The Kindle edition is only $1.99 on Amazon from now until November 8, 2011. Happy reading!

***

In quarantined Colorado, where hundreds of thousands of people are dying from an unstoppable disease called the red death, insomniac Kate Cummings struggles to find the courage to live and to love. Her new love, investigative reporter Greg Pullman, is determined to discover who unleashed the deadly organism and why they did it, until the cost — Kate’s life — becomes more than he can pay. This is a story of survival in the face of brutality, government cover-up, and public hysteria. It is also a story of love: lost, found and fulfilled.

Click here to read the first chapter of: A Spark of Heavenly Fire by Pat Bertram

$1.99 Kindle sale! Click here to buy: A Spark of Heavenly Fire by Pat Bertram

***

Bob Stark returns to Denver after 18 years in Southeast Asia to discover that the mother he buried before he left is dead again. He attends her new funeral and sees . . . himself. Is his other self a hoaxer, or is something more sinister going on? And why are two men who appear to be government agents hunting for him? With the help of Kerry Casillas, a baffling young woman Bob meets in a coffee shop, he uncovers the unimaginable truth.

Click here to read the first chapter of: More Deaths Than One by Pat Bertram

$1.99 Kindle sale! Click here to buy: More Deaths Than One by Pat Bertram

***

When twenty-five-year-old Mary Stuart learns she inherited a farm from her recently murdered grandparents — grandparents her father claimed had died before she was born — she becomes obsessed with finding out who they were and why someone wanted them dead. Along the way she accumulates a crew of feisty octogenarians — former gangsters and friends of her grandfather. She meets and falls in love Tim Olson, whose grandfather shared a deadly secret with her great-grandfather. Now Mary and Tim need to stay one step ahead of the killer who is desperate to dig up that secret.

Click here to read the first chapter of: Daughter Am I by Pat Bertram

$1.99 Kindle sale! Click here to buy: Daughter Am I by Pat Bertram

***

Becka Johnson had been abandoned on the doorstep of a remote cabin in Chalcedony, Colorado when she was a baby. Now, thirty-seven years later, she has returned to Chalcedony to discover her identity, but she only finds more questions. Who has been looking for her all those years? Why are those same people interested in fellow newcomer Philip Hansen? Who is Philip, and why does her body sing in harmony with his? And what do either of them have to do with a shadow corporation that once operated a secret underground installation in the area?

Click here to read the first chapter of: Light Bringer by Pat Bertram

$1.99 Kindle sale! Click here to buy: Light Bringer by Pat Bertram

Posted in fiction, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, Daughter Am I, Kindle Sale, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, Pat Bertram's books, thrillers. Leave a Comment »

On Writing: Ruling Passions

April 5, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I once read the whole of Danielle Steele’s oeuvre as a research project. I wanted to see what in her books made her so popular. It was the most excruciatingly painful reading experience of my life. Her writing style is surprisingly amateurish, her characters are not well drawn, she tells and explains instead of showing, and she repeats herself as if she can’t remember from page to page what she’s already said.

But I did learn her secret. Her characters are passionate. They never like or dislike anything. They love and hate, but mostly love. “She ate a piece of cherry pie, and she loved it.” “They had sex, and they loved it.”

She also picks issues people are passionate about, and wraps her story around that, so not only do her characters have a ruling passion, so do her readers. When passions are all consuming, as they often are in her books, they create collateral damage. Maybe that is what makes her characters compelling — readers keep waiting for the train wreck.

And yet . . . all-consuming passions are not the only way to tell a story. Most of my characters aren’t particularly passionate about their ruling passions, but they do have strong motivations, such as a need to discover the truth, whether their particular truth or a more universal truth.

In A Spark of Heavenly Fire, all Kate wants is a good night’s sleep, but first she has to deal with the death of her husband, and then she has to contend with a state-wide epidemic. Although the forces that drive her are fairly tame, many of the characters in that book have stronger passions. Jeremy is consumed with getting out of quarantined Colorado. Pippi is first passionate about Jeremy, then passionate about escaping with him, and finally passionate about returning home. Dee is passionate about helping the homeless. Greg is consumed with the need for truth. The villain is passionate about his deadly little organism. Turns out the only non-passionate person is my heroine! Yet the story revolves around her.

In How to Write a Damn Good Mystery, James N. Frey tells us that our main characters, both the hero and the villain, should have a ruling passion. Alexander Pope, perhaps the first person to use the term “ruling passion,” wrote: “The ruling passion conquers reason still.”

Seems like an interesting conundrum here — a character must have a ruling passion, and a character should be smart (or at least working to the best of his or her abilities) yet the ruling passion overrides that. Should make for a good inner conflict.

(This article was compiled from comments I made during a live chat. If you’d like to see the entire discussion, you can find it here: Ruling Passions — No Whine, Just Champagne Discussion #146)

Posted in books, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, Alexander Pope, Danielle Steele, How to Write a Damn Good Mystery, James N. Frey, motivations, ruling passion, writing. 2 Comments »

What Do You Do With A Bad Review?

March 20, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been getting mostly good reviews for my books, so it came as a shock when I noticed that one woman on Goodreads downrated them. She rated more than 100 books, giving all of them five stars except for a couple of 4-star ratings and three 3-star ratings. And guess whose books were all rated three stars? Mine. I couldn’t understand it — first, because most people who have read my books like at least one of them, and second (and the point that really bothered me), if she didn’t like my writing, why read all three? Why not stop after one or two?

I’d never met the woman, only know of her because we have an acquaintance in common — someone I met because of my books, not a pre-publication friend. “I doubt she read the books,” this acquaintance told me, “she couldn’t possibly have read them and not liked them; your books are fabulous,” which made the whole thing even more incomprehensible.

Until . . .

I got a really bad 2-star review for A Spark of Heavenly Fire, which made those three stars seem benign:

Not a bad story…but but but. I love post-apocolyptic stories – but a common mistake authors fall into with it is to immediately lose the sense of horror – their characters hardly react to dead bodies piling up around them – Bertram did this from the get-go. And this book was so badly edited that it is astonishing. Someone made the author chop this up without any concern for the reader’s ability to follow the story and understand the characters…fortunately, I didn’t care enough about any of them to worry about it.

Made me doubt myself. Did I lose the sense of horror? But I never intended there to be a sense of horror (or at least not a sense of ghoulish horror). Nor did I intend to write a postapocalyptic story, which shows you the danger of genre expectations. The whole point was the lack of bodies. After the first dying, when people died in their cars causing a city-wide traffic jam, people stayed in their houses, so that is where they succumbed to the red death. The only way my characters knew of the continued dying were the orange fluorescent markings appearing on the doors of houses where people had died. To me, that was even more horrible than bodies piling up — just this one simple reminder that people were still dying. Even more horrific was the silent city with soldiers patrolling the streets. That would spook the hell out of me! And no, people would not continue to react to the horror. They would become inured to it. It would become the new normal. And how could the reviewer have missed the hellish scene when two of my characters discovered what was being done with the dead human bodies . . . and the bodies of beloved pets?

Besides, the story was seen through the eyes of a soul-dead nurse, a gung-ho reporter, a self-centered, world-famous actor, and a woman who had that star in her eyes. Would any of them have continued to react to the dying? I doubt it. Still, I did wonder. Should I have shown more bodies piling up?

Then . . .

I was out walking along a residential street yesterday, and there was not a single other person in sight. Not a single vehicle on the road. And I knew I was right. No one would see the bodies if all the people in those houses suddenly died. And maybe they had expired — I had no way of knowing.

So, what does one do with a bad review? Blog about it, of course!!

See also: A Spark of Heavenly Fire book trailer

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Posted in blogging, books, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, bad review, fiction, horror, postapocalytic story, review, the red death. 13 Comments »

A Spark of Heavenly Fire Outtake #6

December 16, 2009 — Pat Bertram

A Spark of Heavenly Fire takes place during the month of December. To celebrate, I am posting outtakes from the book. Like movie outtakes, these are scenes that were deleted from the final version. Posting them is not as easy as it sounds. Since the original version is no longer in my computer, I have to retype the pages from my handwritten draft copy. Still, it’s fun being able to revisit some of my original scenes. Hope you enjoy this look at my characters. Oh, and if you’d like to see a photo of the handwritten book, you can find it here: A Spark of Heavenly Fire Pre-Anniversary.

Traffic on I-25 was bumper to bumper, so Jeremy took side streets to get to the private airfield on the outskirts of Denver. While he was still almost a quarter of a mile away, he could see that his white jet was not positioned at the head of the runway, ready for take-off.

He refused to let this setback interfere with his holiday mood, but he did intend to let Rick Jones, the owner of the airfield, know that he, Jeremy King, did not appreciate such slip-shod service.

At least Rick would not be hard to find. He was standing at the entrance to the airfield, talking to two men in their twenties who were wearing army uniforms and carrying rifles.

Jeremy pulled up alongside the three men and opened his window.

Rick poked his head inside. “Sorry, Mr. King, but no planes are allowed to fly today. Something about restricted airspace.” He gestured to the other two men. “These guys are privates in the National Guard. The black guy is Marvin and the redhead is Bill.”

Jeremy motioned for Rick to move back. He got out of the car and confronted the privates “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, sir,” Bill said. “You’re Jeremy King. But we still can’t let you take off. Even if you were the president, we couldn’t let you go up today. Our orders are to make sure all planes remain on the ground.”

“We’re to detain anyone who resists.” Though Marvin’s tone was mild, his stance imparted a definite threat.

Jeremy looked longingly at the runway, remembering a movie he had done about a guy who had made a run for it in an airplane. The airplane chase scene had been acclaimed for it’s realism, but now he could understand how silly that scene really had been. Only in the movies could someone his age outrun two young guys with rifles, hop into a small jet that was still in the hangar, taxi to the runway, and take off, all without sustaining so much as a scratch.

He glanced at Marvin and Bill, who now had their rifles trained on him.”

“Don’t try anything, Mr. King,” Marvin said.

Jeremy held up his hands. This was America, for cripes sake, and he was Jeremy King. Who the hell did these guys think they were?

“How much would it take to let me go up,” he asked. “A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand?”

Bill looked as if he might be considering the offer, but Marvin poked Jeremy in the stomach with the rifle and said, “We have our orders.”

Jeremy managed a lighthearted laugh. “Just kidding.”

Marvin stared at him for a moment, then shouldered his rifle.

“Can I have your autograph, Mr. King?” Bill asked.

“Sure.” Jeremy pulled a wallet-sized publicity photo out of his pocket, signed it, and handed it over. “You want one, too?” he asked Marvin.

Marvin hesitated, then he nodded. “For my mother. She thinks you’re great.”

“Your plane is ready to go,” Rick said. “We refueled and did the pre-flight check.” He grinned sheepishly. “My guys were so thrilled to be working on Jeremy King’s jet that they gave it a thorough going over. As soon as the restriction is lifted, you can take off on a moment’s notice.”

Jeremy started to get back into his car, then stopped abruptly. “You never told me what’s going on. Why the restriction?”

Marvin squared his shoulders. “Need to know basis, Mr. King.”

“We don’t know. No one told us,” Bill said at the same time.

“Do you know how long the restriction is going to last?”

“Sorry, don’t know that either,” Bill said, “but I don’t think it will last long. How can it? I mean, it’s one thing to restrict small planes, but the airliners? Those companies are too big. They won’t stand for it.”

Rick looked shocked. “You mean DIA is shut down, too?”

“Didn’t we tell you?” Bill said. “All air traffic is being curtailed.”

The unmistakable sound of fighter planes filled Jeremy’s ears. He looked up to see six jets flying in formation.

Marvin repositioned his rifle. “Except for military traffic, of course.”

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, epidemic, fiction, mystery, novel, outtake from novel, romance, Second Wind Publishing, thriller. 3 Comments »

A Spark of Heavenly Fire Outtake #5

December 9, 2009 — Pat Bertram

The mansion on Seventh Avenue that housed the Bowers Clinic had stood empty for many months before Dr. Bowers discovered it.

Though the simple classical lines of the façade had promised large, airy spaces, the rooms had actually been small and dingy with few windows. Full spectrum fluorescent lights, pale gold paint, and a forest of greenery, however, had transformed the dreary interior into an elegant medical establishment.

The Bowers Clinic had been a place of refuge for Kate, but now, walking up the curved driveway, butterflies filled her stomach. No, nothing as gentle as butterflies. Death’s head moths, perhaps.

She felt as if she were a heroine in one of the gothic romances she had relished in her youth. Here was the requisite brooding mansion, the glowering skies, the looming trees.

What was that? She lifted her head. There is was again — the sound of long, yellowed fingernails clawing at a window.

She scanned the front of the building, but saw nothing amiss. She stopped to listen. The eerie rhythmic sound was coming from behind her.

She looked back. An old homeless woman was laboriously pushing an overflowing shopping cart along the sidewalk. For one endless second, Kate stared into the woman’s eyes, then the old woman smiled — a sly, knowing smile.

Panicked, Kate raced up the driveway and into the clinic. While struggling to catch her breath, she surveyed the plant-filled reception room. Everything looked shockingly normal.

Two of the patients glanced up at her; the others continued to leaf through magazines or gaze into the distance. All had the resigned, almost shell-shocked look of refugees, but that, too, was normal. Though the doctors at the clinic prided themselves on their efficiency, they still kept their patients waiting much too long.

A little too melodramatic? Just a touch! I had fun writing this bit but it really had no place in the story.

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, fiction, novel, outtake from novel, romance, Second Wind Publishing, thriller. 2 Comments »

A Spark of Heavenly Fire Outtake #4

December 8, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Only a few hardy souls had braved the frigid early morning air: joggers in bright warm-up suits, an elderly couple swaddled in layers of heavy clothing, a scantily clad young man running as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Kate frowned. Shorts and a tee shirt in this weather? Oh, well. He was young and obviously in good shape; probably no harm would come of it.

The runner neared, moving so swiftly and lightly his feet barely touched the ground. As he passed her, Kate caught a glimpse of a rapturous smile.

And bright red eyes.

She whirled just in time to see the runner spewing blood and swiftly, like a mannequin, toppling into his vomitus. Heart pounding, Kate ran to help. She knelt down beside him to take his pulse. Prickles of fear crept up her spine when she realized he was dead.

First Rachel Abrams, now this young man.

For just a moment Kate felt disoriented as if the earth had slipped on its axis.

Another jogger, a middle-aged man with well-groomed hair, joined the growing crowd of spectators. Kate caught a whiff of aftershave. What kind of man shaves before jogging? She eyed him curiously. The same kind of man who wears designer sweatpants with creases ironed in them, she noticed.

Kate thought it odd that such a fastidious person would stoop so low as to gawk at a corpse; then she saw the look on his face. Fear, maybe. And recognition.

“Dead?” the man asked quietly.

“Yes,” Kate answered. “Did you know him?”

“No.” He tugged at a nonexistent beard. “Yesterday, a colleague of mine died the same way. What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

The man nodded. “I know what you mean. It’s too bizarre, like something out of a horror movie. The colleague who died was a quiet, unassertive man, but yesterday he showed up for work dancing and jiggling as if he were hopped up on amphetamines. He charged around the office, ranting that the Broncos really stink again this year, and if they didn’t make it to the Super Bowl, he’d never buy another ticket. When I asked him if he felt all right, he beamed at me and said he felt great, had never felt better in his life. Then he vomited blood, and fell down. Dead.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

I thought this jogger was a well-drawn character, but since he added nothing to the book besides an iteration of how people were dying from the red death, he really served no purpose, so out he went. The dead runner made it into the final version, but instead of the second death, he turned out to be the first death Kate experienced — and experienced physically. He toppled into her arms. Rachel was moved from the first scene of the book to an unimportant second scene. Poor Rachel. Like the colleague in the above story, Rachel felt great for the first time in years, and then she died.

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, fiction, novel, outtake from novel, romance, Second Wind Publishing, thriller. 2 Comments »

A Spark of Heavenly Fire Outtake #3

December 4, 2009 — Pat Bertram

One of Hollywood’s highest paid actors, Jeremy King had a tendency to take himself and his status too seriously, but here, on his vast Montana ranch, he felt centered. A man, not an icon.

After a satisfactory day riding fence, he crawled into bed so blissfully drowsy he felt no need to take a sleeping pill.

His wife Nora rolled over into his arms, enveloping him in her inimitable scent: jasmine, cinnamon, woman. He felt a momentary tug of arousal, but it dissipated when she didn’t respond to his exploratory kiss. Before he even had time to register a flicker of disappointment, he fell asleep.

To his annoyance, he woke an hour later. As he started to get out of bed, Nora grasped his wrist.

“Don’t go,” she said, still half asleep.

“I have to. This damn prostate.” He gently disengaged her fingers and headed for the bathroom.

When he returned, Nora was sitting up, the heirloom quilt clutched to her throat.

“Don’t go,” she repeated.

“I won’t.” He laughed humorlessly. “Not for an hour or two, anyway.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“It’s late, honey. Go back to sleep.”

“I had a dream.”

Jeremy yawned. “Can’t it wait? We can talk tomorrow before I leave.”

“I don’t want you to go to Denver,” Nora said. “Something terrible is going to happen to you there.”

“I’m only going to be gone two days, just long enough to shoot a few exterior scenes. That’s all.”

Jeremy’s latest film, Cry of Hope, was the story of a Colorado cattleman who, while trying to survive a severe drought, discovers that his son has leukemia.

Test audiences had been singularly unmoved. In an effort to rescue the movie, the producers had decided to shoot a few more scenes showing the rancher’s despair. Jeremy had readily agreed to take the extra work; he was at that age where one disappointing film to could an end to a long career.

Nora knew this too, so why was she giving him grief? Maybe she was lonely now that their two children were away at college.

“Why don’t you come with me?” Jeremy said. “Go shopping at Cherry Creek Mall, eat at some fancy restaurants.”

“You think that’s what this is about?”

“Look, it was just a suggestion.”

“Oh, never mind.” Nora flopped down on the pillow, pulled the covers up to her chin and turned her back on him.

Jeremy had just about drifted back to sleep when Nora sat up again and turned on the light.

He squinted at her in the sudden brightness. For just a second he wondered who the worried old woman was. What had happened to the slim, raven-haired beauty he had married twenty-five years before?

With a pang of compassion, he sat up, put his arms around his wife and pulled her close. “What is it, honey?”

Nora started to cry, loud gulping sobs like a child.

Jeremy patted her back and made soothing noises.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said after she had calmed down.

“You’re not going to lose me. What can happen in Denver? There’s no earthquakes, no hurricanes, no tornadoes, no tidal waves or flash floods. There’s an occasional blizzard, but eh weatherman says it’s going to be clear this week-end.”

She pulled away from him to study his face. “You’re making fun of me.”

“No, I’m not.” He smiled at her. “Well . . . maybe a little.”

She snuggled back into his arms. “The dream really scared me. You and someone else — a girl, I think — were alone in a very desolate place. There were a few skeletons of buildings in the background, and some trucks and bulldozers parked haphazardly around an immense smoking pit, but that was all. The sun was just setting. Because of the smoky haze, the sun was red, like the sun of a dying planet, and it made everything else look red, too. Blood red.”

Jeremy felt Nora shudder. “It’s just a dream,” he said. “Remember when I was doing The Sultan’s Pride? You called me in Mozambique, all frantic because you dreamed I was going to be tortured. You were right. I was. But it was just a scene in the movie. And that time you dreamed I was going to be hit by a car and end up in a coma? Another scene from one of my films.”

“I still feel terrible about accusing you of having an affair with your co-star while you were making Mesa Grande — what was her name? Janet Richards? — but I did see the two of you in a dream.” Nora sighed. “You must think I’m a foolish old woman.”

When he opened his mouth to speak, she kissed him, stifling his protests. “You’re a good man, Jeremy King,” she said, then she turned off the light.

Within minutes, she was sound asleep. Jeremy, however stared up at the ceiling, unable to get her words out of his head.

His affair with Janet Richards has been very discreet, so it had come as a shock when Nora had confronted him with it. He had managed to sidestep a battle by swearing the affair was nothing more than a protracted love scene that had been cut from the movie, but he had never understood how she had found out about it in the first place. Could she really have seen it in her dreams?

An hour later, still wide awake, Jeremy took two sleeping pills.

I always liked this scene. It put a different slant on Jeremy’s flirtation with the gorgeous Pippi O’Brien, and it foreshadowed the terrible sight that greeted them when they fled Denver, but too much of Jeremy at the beginning pf the book overwhelmed the story and made it drag. I can’t believe I had the courage to eliminate it.

Read the first chapter of the published version here: A Spark of Heavenly Fire
Free download: get the first 30% of A Spark of Heavenly Fire free at Smashwords
Read blurb at Second Wind Publishing: A Spark of Heavenly Fire
Blatant hint: Books make great Christmas gifts!

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A Spark of Heavenly Fire Outtakes #2

December 2, 2009 — Pat Bertram

A Spark of Heavenly Fire takes place during the month of December. To celebrate, all month I will be posting outtakes from the book. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Since the original version is no longer in my computer, I have to retype the pages from my handwritten draft copy. Hope you enjoy this behind the scenes look at my characters. It’s a continuation of the scene posted in here: A Spark of Heavenly Fire Outtakes. Oh, and if you’d like to see a photo of the handwritten book, you can find it here: A Spark of Heavenly Fire Pre-Anniversary.

The waitress brought a Coke, which Jim drank in one long gulp. He hauled himself out of the booth.

“I’d better be going.” He started to leave, then turned back. “I almost forgot. When we talked earlier today, you said you had some news.”

“It can wait,” Greg said. “You have more important things to worry about.”

Jim sat back down. “Tell me.”

“I asked Pippi to marry me.”

A big grin softened Jim’s forbidding face. “Hey, that’s great! I’ll bet Pippi’s thrilled. She’s had that look in her eye for quite a while now.”

“What look?”

“You know—that ticking biological clock look.”

“She’s only thirty. I didn’t think their biological clocks started ticking until they reached thirty-five, at least.”

Jim shrugged. “Depends on the woman. Letisha’s clock started ticking when she was only twenty-four. Just think, if she hadn’t proposed to me, I would have been a swinging single, too.”

Greg ignored the comment. Jim always pretended to lament the loss of his bachelorhood, but Greg knew the truth—Jim loved being married.

“Have you set a date yet?” Jim asked. “Letisha will feed me leftovers for a month if I can’t give her all the details. It’s only fair to warn you, she’ll want at least one of out kids in your wedding party.” He stopped and peered at Greg. “Hey, you okay? You don’t look too happy.”

Greg tried to smile, but his face refused to cooperate.

“Don’t worry, kid,” Jim said, sounding as if he were twenty years older than Greg instead of just eight. “Everyone gets pre-wedding jitters.”

Greg shook his head. “It’s not that.”

“Then what? Pippi didn’t say no, did she?”

“Not exactly.”

“Did she say yes?”

“Not exactly.”

“Hell, kid, you’ve got me so confused I don’t know whether to slug you or congratulate you.”

Greg toyed with his beer. “You’re confused? What about me? I thought she wanted to get married—she’s been hinting at it for months, so I finally decided to ask her. Know what she said?”

“What?”

“She said she’d think about it.”

“Ouch.”

“I asked her what there was to think about and she said she wasn’t sure if I knew what love was. Then she said that even if I did know what love was, she wasn’t sure if I was capable of loving her the way she wanted to be loved.”

“Sounds to me as if it’s herself she’s unsure about.”

“Could be. I don’t get it though. Marriage, I mean. It’s not like it’s forever any more, so what’s the big deal?”

Jim raised his eyebrows. “Very romantic.”

“I didn’t tell her that. I may be unromantic, but I’m not stupid, you know. And I do love her.”

When Greg was alone once more, however, it was not his would-be fiancé who occupied his thoughts, but the unknown woman whose corpse had been so savagely mutilated.