Daughter Am I | Bertram's Blog

What’s in a Name?

October 13, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I finally found out the name of a mountain that I see almost every day when I go out walking — Mount Lamborn. (I’d be able to see it from my house, but the view is blocked by a neighbor’s haystack and the haystack is blocked by the lilac bushes we planted to keep from having to look at the dang haystack.) I was excited to put a name to the peak until I realized that the name was bestowed by a human (probably by some guy named Lamborn) and was not at all what the mountain calls itself. Does knowing the name tell me anything about the mountain I cannot see during my daily walk? Does the name give me a clue to its origins, its character, its life?

Humans have a penchant for naming things, which I suppose is a good idea. A name is a shortcut to communication. Calling a mountain Mount Lamborn serves as a shortcut to communicate about the mountain, but it says nothing about the mountain itself.

Character names are the same. We give our characters names so that we can identify them. In fact, I have gone so far as to give some of my characters very pointed names for that reason. Bob Stark in More Deaths Than One was so named because he was supposed to seem an “everyman,” hence the common first name. He was also supposed to be stark of speech and action, and so the surname was a reminder to make sure he didn’t get too flowery. Despite his name, Bob Stark turned out to be rather wordy at times and not the silent, uncommunicative loner I had planned. Greg Pullman in A Spark of Heavenly Fire was named after Bill Pullman in While You Were Sleeping to remind me that Greg was good-looking and very nice. Did these characters become their names, or did I simply become so used to them that when the names outlived their usefulness, I found it impossible to change? I wonder what our characters call themselves. Even more, considering the hell we put the poor characters through, I wonder what they call us!

(This was supposed to be a post inviting you to my book launch party to be held on October 15 here on this blog, but finding out the name of the peak sidetracked me. With or without an invitation, you are still invited to my cyber party.)

Daughter Am I, my young woman/old gangsters coming of age adventure, will be available from Second Wind Publishing in two days!

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Posted in blogging, books, life, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, Bill Pullman, Bob Stark, cyber party, Daughter Am I, More Deaths Than One, Mount Lamborn, naming characters, Western Kingbirds, While You Were Sleeping. 5 Comments »

Your Cyber Sins Follow You Everywhere

October 11, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Daughter Am I is going to be published in just a few days, and Amazon is in the process of getting it up on their site. There’s no cover image yet, no blurb, no “look inside”. Nor does the book show up on my Amazon author page. Imagine my surprise then, when I checked the Daughter Am I page and found two editorial reviews. What????

Two years ago I entered the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition and ended up as a semi-finalist. The “prizes” for having reached the new level were reviews by Publisher’s Weekly and two top Amazon reviewers. I only received one Amazon review, and it said simply: Mary didn’t know she had Grandparents till the lawyer called to tell her that she’d inherited everything from them. Turns out, the pair were murdered together. Her father won’t talk about his parents and the more she digs, the more she wants to find out what happened to her mysterious family. That “review” is simply a rewording of the description I wrote for my submission, and to be honest, mine was better!

The PW review said: A group of spunky octogenarians joins a woman on a search to discover the truth about the grandparents she never knew she had. After inheriting the farm of her estranged, murdered grandparents, Mary Louise Stuart discovers photos and an address book in the Colorado farmhouse and becomes obsessed with finding out who her grandparents were and who would want them dead. With each question, another senior citizen joins the quest – former friends and gangsters with names like Crunchy, Iron Sam, Happy, Lila Lorraine. The mystery deepens with each stop in their whirlwind tour of the Midwest: who’s following them? A love interest ensues between Mary and Tim Olsen, whose grandpa was good friends with her great-grandfather. While the author certainly researched the history of the Mafia, too many of the numerous historical asides – and subplots – are tacked on under the guise of story time, making the story drag with detail abut Wyatt Earp, the JFK assassination and bootleggers. But underneath the relentless bouts of story time is a delightful treasure-hunting tale of finding one’s self in a most unlikely way.

It’s not a bad review, all things considered, but the book that is now being published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC has been rewritten, edited, tightened up, and is much better than the version I entered in the contest.

That’s not the point, though. The point is that the reviews have been lurking in cyberspace all this time, and now they have found me again. Makes me what other of my youthful peccadilloes (writely speaking) will come back to haunt me.

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Posted in books, fiction, internet, life, writing. Tags: ABNA, Amazon, Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, bootleggers, Daughter Am I, JFK assassination, Publishers Weekly review, Second Wind Publishing, treasure-hunting tale, Wyatt Earp. 13 Comments »

Help! I Need Topics for My Blog Tour!!

October 9, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I decided to do a virtual book tour for Daughter Am I, and now I have about four weeks of guesting on blogs, which means lots and lots of articles to write in a very short time.

I did not intend to commit to such a long tour, but the first blogger who agreed to be a host chose November 12 and the second chose October 18, so I’ve been trying to connect the dates to make one tour instead of two. I will need approximately thirty different blog articles or activities to make sure that each stop is different. (Actually, I will need sixty, since I will also have to post something on my own blog each day.) A few bloggers are going to send me interview questions. One wants me to send photos of my work space. Another wants an article about the challenges of writing with a focus on research. And yet another wants an article about writing dialogue for a group. The remaining twenty or so are trusting me to come up with something interesting. So — what would be some interesting topics? You can suggest a general topic about writing or you can take this opportunity to ask whatever you’d like about me, about my books, and especially about Daughter Am I. Either I’ll combine the questions into an interview or, if the response is long enough, I’ll use it as a stand-alone post.

Sheila Deeth, who will be my host on November 9, said, I’ve never hosted before, and I’m nothing like as experienced at blogging as you, so I’m reluctant to suggest a topic. I know what I’d really like to read would be how you got from where you were before to where you are now, and what advice you would give those of us dreaming of following.

Now that’s a good topic. It’s personal, and it’s something she wants to know the answer to. And it’s something I would never have thought of since I know the answer. Sort of.

So, what do you want to know?

Also, if you’d like to be part of my blog tour, please leave your blog address in a comment. I still have a few scattered dates to fill, so don’t be shy. (Yes, I mean you.)

Daughter Am I is a young woman/old gangsters coming of age tale that is being sold as mainstream, though it could just as easily be classified as a mystery.

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.

Daughter Am I, my young woman/old gangsters coming of age adventure, will be available from Second Wind Publishing in one week!

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Posted in blogging, books, fiction, internet, writing. Tags: blog topic, blog tour, coming of age novel, Daughter Am I, virtual book tour. 8 Comments »

Daughter Am I Is Finished!

October 3, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I received my final proof copy of Daughter Am I, my young woman/old-time gangsters coming of age adventure, and I’ve reluctantly agreed to let it go to the printer. There is always that moment when you realize this is it — you have to live with any mistakes that end up in the book. If there are any, though, it will be sheer accident. The novel went through several good editings, including a final scrubbing by Deborah J Ledford, fellow Second Wind author and editor extraordinaire. It was also scrupulously copyedited by Donna Russell, (creativemuse1(at)aol(dot)com) a treasure I found on Facebook. So my reluctance is more imaginary than real — the book is as perfect as I can get it.

When I received the final copy edits from Donna, she enclosed a note:

Thank you for the opportunity to edit your book, Daughter Am I. You certainly put a lot of time and effort into researching all of the historical elements, and did a good job incorporating them into the plot without overwhelming it. I learned several new things — Hegelian dialect, terms such as “lamster,” and a lot about guns, cars, and the Mafia. I personally enjoy it when an author sends me to the dictionary or encyclopedia (or Google). There were also many excellent lines in the book. I thought these were especially good:

“The loss of something that never was can be as devastating as any other loss.”

“They thought they could rule by fear, but when fear is around every corner, people lose their fear of the fear.”

“They worked in silence, their excitement so great it seemed to shimmer in the air like a heat mirage.”

“It’s odd—I never used to be aware of old people as real persons. I’m not stupid. I know they weren’t born old, but it didn’t occur to me that heroes and villains, killers and great lovers could be hidden in those feeble bodies.”

I also enjoyed your use of humor, and the way you developed the characters. It was nice to see Mary grow into a more confident woman, see her influence on the old gangsters, and the way she and they came to genuinely care for one another. You made me care about the characters. Have you considered a possible sequel? I can see the potential for more “adventures.” Anyway, just a thought.

Hmmm. A sequel. Could be interesting, but first I have to sell the original. Luckily, it will be released soon — maybe in two weeks. Sounds like a good excuse for a party!

Daughter Am I will be available soon (!) from Second Wind Publishing, LLC

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Posted in books, fiction, life, writing. Tags: coming of age novel, copy-editing, Daughter Am I, Deborah J. Ledford, Donna Russell, editing, Mafia, old-time gangsters. 12 Comments »

Researching Gangster Lore for Daughter Am I

September 30, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I have notebooks full of gangster lore that I collected when I researched Daughter Am I, my young woman/old gangsters coming of age novel. (I keep calling it that, but it’s so much more — a murder mystery, a treasure hunt, a romp through the middle of the United States with a young woman and a busload of irrepressible octogenarian rogues. “Snow White and the Seven Old Farts” as one of the villains called them.) As usual, I am digressing. Someday, perhaps, I will learn that just because I use parenthesis, it doesn’t give me the right to meander off topic. Or maybe it does.

Anyway, the point is, I was able to use only an iota of my notes. So many real-life characters never even got to be reborn in the person of one of my “elders.” (There’s a topic for discussion — what does one call a busload of aged men and women? I despise the term “senior citizens,” I have no fondness for “old folks” — the term, that is — and “golden- agers” is too nauseating. So I settled for “elders” with its nuance of wisdom.)

One such character I never used for my book was Jake “The Barber” Factor, who stole millions from people through stock market swindles and investment fraud. He worked as a bootblack when he was a boy, shining shoes outside of a barbershop. The price of a shine was two cents, but he’d tell unwary customers that he’d give them a “steamboat shine” for one cent. If the customer agreed, he’d polish one shoe until it gleamed, then he’d say, “There’s your steamboat shine, Mister. For a dime, I’ll shine the other shoe.”

Oscar Wilde once said, ” The Americans are certainly great hero worshippers, and always take heros from the criminal classes.” Well, perhaps not always, but most of us bear a grudging admiration for con men and women, mostly because they seem so much smarter than the rest of us. Or maybe they just have fewer scruples.

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

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Posted in books, culture, life, writing. Tags: "steamboat shine", con men, Daughter Am I, gangsters, history/myth, Jake "The Barber" Factor, Oscar Wilde. 2 Comments »

When Did the Realization “I Am an Author” Hit?

September 28, 2009 — Pat Bertram

A few months ago, another Second Wind author posted a question on a discussion group: When did the realization “I am a writer” hit?

I responded (incidentally, the answer still holds true): The realization that I am a writer hasn’t hit, and I’m not sure it will. I’m very involved with writing — I belong to various groups; I talk a lot about writing; and even when I’m not writing creatively, I’m writing: blogs and articles, comments and emails. But I don’t define myself as a writer. When you consider all that being a published writer entails — promotion, engendering good will, etc — writing is a small very small part of the whole.

If you were to ask the question: When did the realization “I am an author” hit? I can tell you exactly when it hit. It hit this afternoon.

The realization has nothing to do with a feel-good, puffed-chest, now-I-belong-in-the-ranks-of-the-published jubilation, and everything to do with . . . work.

Yep. Work. I’ve been spending most of the past week querying book bloggers to see if they would host my Daughter Am I virtual book tour, setting up a schedule for the few who responded, figuring out enough exciting (or at least undull) activities for the tour, planning my online book launch party, filling out an author interview, preparing articles about writing for a new ezine, checking the final proof copy of Daughter Am I, waiting for the edits of Light Bringer my fourth novel so I can turn it in, helping plan a celebration for the latest releases from my publisher (sorry, Daughter Am I isn’t included in this batch). And, oh yeah, trying to keep up with my blog, my discussion groups, and my emails.

Now, that makes me feel like an author — doing so much authory work. Too bad there’s no time for writing. But I’ll start again soon. After my tour, perhaps.

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Posted in blogging, books, internet, life, writing. Tags: "I am an author", blog tour, Daughter Am I, Second Wind Publishing, virtual book tour. 9 Comments »

My Fruitful Summer

September 25, 2009 — Pat Bertram

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s talk.

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

Research: When Good Books Go Bad

September 23, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Many good books go bad when the authors refuse to let go of any of their hard-won research and so dump it all in the novel, making the story drag. I have a tendency to put in a lot of information — though I don’t use all my research, not even most of it. In A Spark of Heavenly Fire, I talk (or rather my characters do) about biological weapons, biowarfare, bioengineered organisms because I thought the reality was more frightening than my 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!

But I digress. Daughter Am I, which will be released in October, was conceived as a way to combine two of my interests at that time — early gangster history and the mythic journey. (You might not recognize the similarity between Daughter Am I and Star Wars or The Wizard of Oz, but all three are based on the same mythic journey template.) In 2007, I entered the book into the first ABNA (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award) contest, and my prize for being a semi-finalist was a review from Publishers Weekly. After giving a summary of the plot, the reviewer ended with:

While the author certainly researched the history of the Mafia, too many of the numerous historical asides — and subplots — are tacked on under the guise of story time, making the story drag with detail abut Wyatt Earp, the JFK assassination and bootleggers. But underneath the relentless bouts of story time is a delightful treasure-hunting tale of finding one’s self in a most unlikely way.

Too many historical asides? Eek! That was the whole point of the book! I tightened up the story, got rid of the asides that didn’t go directly to character or plot, but still felt a bit uncomfortable with the situation. When I mentioned my concern about the “info dumps” to fellow author Malcolm Campbell, he responded:

Your book is wonderful. Looking into one’s past is powerful stuff, but getting tangled up with a lot of lovable scam artists is a really fresh approach. Your wonderful characterizations—that’s another thing for discussion. It’s a challenge having lots of characters while keeping them from all sounding like oneself.

The “info dumps” as you call them add a lot of depth to the book and are informative and entertaining in their own right. They support the character telling the story. But also, they provided periods of “calm” in what is a frenetic quest that zooms from one unexpected thing to another without pause. We’ve seen “these gangsters” in dozens of movies, and for me, the archetypes are those of the 1940s films my generation grew up on—and that’s appropriate since these guys are elders. They’re a much different breed of cat than we see on modern, street-wise TV shows like, say, DARK BLUE which takes us undercover right into the worst of today’s gangs and thugs.

Whew!

(The first chapters of my books are included in the mystery sampler available as a free download from Second Wind Publishing. Click here: Free Downloads.)

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Posted in books, writing. Tags: 1940s gangsters, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, archetypes, Daughter Am I, free download, gangsters, Malcolm Campbell, Publishers Weekly, Second Wind Publishing, Star Wars, Wizard of Oz. 8 Comments »

Do Blog Tours Live Up to The Hype?

September 20, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Daughter Am I, my latest novel, will soon to be released by Second Wind Pubishing, so I have to start planning a blog tour if I’m going to do one. I hear so much about how great they are — mostly from the major publishers who don’t want to spend the money to send their authors on an unvirtual tour — that I wonder if blog tours do anything for an unknown author. I know the most popular book blogs do help get the word out, but if one can’t get a guest spot on those blogs, is it still worth doing a tour? And is there any real difference between doing a formal tour and doing guest spots on a few blogs?

In case I decide that a blog tour is worth all the work, would you be willing to be a host?

Daughter Am I is a young woman/old gangsters coming of age tale that is being sold as mainstream, though it could just as easily be classified as a mystery.

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.

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Posted in blogging, internet, writing. Tags: blog tour, Daughter Am I, gangster story, mainstream fiction, mystery, Second Wind Publishing. 3 Comments »

How to Tell When Your Novel is Finished

September 19, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I finally turned in what might be the final proof of Daughter Am I. At least I hope it’s the final one. People often ask how you know when a book is finished — well, if you’re to the point where seeing one more word of the manuscript makes you want to throw it against the wall (or bang your head against the wall, though the first hurts less) then you’re finished. And I passed that point months ago.

I have a rocky relationship with my books — not exactly love/hate, more of an enjoy/disenjoy relationship. (I realize disenjoy is not a word, but it should be.) Sometimes I read what I’ve written and am amazed that I enjoy it so much. Other times I can’t believe how boring it is. (To be fair, any bit of writing, no matter how great, does pall after the hundredth read through.) Daughter Am I is no exception. I like the story:

I like the beginning. I’ve been told that the first sentence is too long and introduces too many characters, but it’s the only possible beginning since it states the book’s main premise and it foreshadows the end:

“Who were James Angus Stuart and Regina DeBrizzi Stuart?” Mary asked, trying to ignore the mounted heads of murdered animals staring down at her from the lawyer’s wood-paneled walls.

I also like my characters, though I do wonder about the long-windedness of a couple of them. The eighty-year-olds that I know, however, aren’t as quick with one-liners as are younger folk, and they do tend toward loquaciousness, so I hope readers are as forgiving of my octogenarians as they are of their own.

Still, after all these years of researching the Mob, of writing the book, rewriting it, editing it, copyediting it, I am a bit tired of the whole thing and will be glad to see the end of my work.

So why am I telling you this? Well, it is a painless way of doing a bit of pre-publishing publicity (painless for you, too, I hope). There is also a moral: when you decide to write a book, make sure it’s one that you can live with for a very, very, very long time.

Daughter Am I will be released by Second Wind Publishing in October, 2009.

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