love in all its guises | Bertram's Blog

The Kind of Fiction I Grew Up On

November 6, 2012 — Pat Bertram

On Malcom Campbell’s blog post yesterday, BOOK BITS: ‘Black Beauty,’ Plagiarism, Donna Small, Larry McMurtry’s ‘Custer,’ Book stories for the election, he described “traditional fiction” as the kind of fiction we grew up on before novels started getting whittled down to novella-lengths and forced into marketing categories. Dare I say, literary fiction is what’s left after publishers and booksellers have sliced and diced readers and books into every possible pigeonhole, slot and category they can possibly imagine? We are, I think, so scared of making our own decisions about what we read these days, that we cannot pick up a book without knowing how it’s been tagged, labeled, categorized and genrefied.”

Ah! Now I have a term for the sort of fiction I write, and it’s the perfect term — traditional fiction. My novels are not genre fiction in any way, and those who try to fit the stories into such pigeonholes end up not liking them. There is not enough romance for the romance readers, not enough horror for the apocalyptic crowd, not enough villainry for the thriller lovers, not enough grue for the horror aficionados, not enough science or fantasy for the scifi folks.

Each of those elements has a place in my books, of course, since each aspect is part of the story’s big picture (in the same way those elements make up the big picture of our lives), but none overwhelms the basic intent of my stories, which is to tell a satisfying tale with archetypal characters and classic themes that can last beyond the fads of the day. In other words, a traditional novel.

In A Spark of Heavenly Fire, for example, there is plenty of horror, such as the gruesome end of those afflicted with the red death, but generally the horror is more subtle than visceral — empty streets instead of bodies piled everywhere, struggles to maintain a semblance of normality instead of rioting. The experiments done on humans during both the hot wars and the cold wars twentieth century are not experienced first hand by the characters, but the slow reveal of those old horrors affect them deeply nonetheless.

A Spark of Heavenly Fire explores the theme of love in all its guises, not just romance, but friendship, caring, trust. There is love mixed in the villainry, too, because someone had to have lovingly created the organism that caused the red death. Unlike genre stories, there is no hero trying to stop the villain before he can release his “baby.” The deed had been committed before the story even began. We don’t see the story from the villain’s eyes as in a thriller, and it’s only at the end that we realize with what love and glee the villain had set his creation free.

More than horror or history, romance or mystery, A Spark of Heavenly Fire is the story of ordinary women who found only failure in the ordinary world where everyone else seemed to find success, but when the world turned upside down, they found their place and their worth, and they came alive. As Washington Irving wrote, “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.

This is the kind of fiction I grew up on as a reader, the sort of traditional story that digs deep so that what affects the characters also affects the readers, the sort of ungenrefied story I have always loved. And it’s the kind of fiction I grew up on as a writer. It was halfway through writing A Spark of Heavenly Fire that everything clicked and I became a writer.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the conspiracy 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 books, culture, fiction, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, love in all its guises, story themes, traditional fiction, Washington Irving quote. 2 Comments »

Writing a Book I Didn’t Know I Was Writing

January 4, 2012 — Pat Bertram

In Style: Writing as the Discovery of Outlook, Richard M Eastman says: “You don’t begin to write with a complete message or experience already imagined, which is then to be wrapped in language as a means of sending it to your readers. Writing isn’t so much communication as creation. In a real sense, you don’t have an outlook on anything without first having written on it. This outlook comes into being through the dozens of tests, choices, and unexpected chances which turn up as you write on some engaging topic; and most writers agree that the final creation isn’t anything you could have precisely anticipated when you first set pen to paper.”

Eastman’s discovery of outlook holds true for my fiction. I know the story when I begin, I know the ending, and I know a few important scenes, which should mean that I know the whole story, but I don’t. I am not the same, my outlook is not the same, when I finish writing the story as when I began, so the story is not exactly as I intended. The creation process itself creates the change in outlook. Writing is all about the choices we make, and continue to make, all through the creating, editing, proofing. Sometimes I find that I’ve written a book I didn’t know I was writing. A Spark of Heavenly Fire was supposed to be the story of women who could barely cope during times of prosperity when everyone else was doing just fine, but they came alive and dazzled during dark times when everyone else could barely cope. That story is still there in A Spark of Heavenly Fire, but the overriding story is the story of love in all its guises: self-less love, self-love, friendship, romantic love, parental love, obsession. This theme of love came about through the various elemental choices I made during the course of the book, and it makes novel strong, much stronger than it would have been if it remained simply the story of women who come alive in times of hardship.

And Eastman’s discovery of outlook especially holds true for my non-fiction. I wrote a book about grief, a book I didn’t know I was writing. After the death of my life mate/soul mate twenty-one months ago, I found solace in writing about his death and my grief, in blogging about it, in writing letters to him. And now, some of those writings have coalesced into a book that people have called “exquisite,” “profound,” “raw and real.” I wrote to help me come to terms with the soulquake I experienced after he died and with my continued grief. But what the book ends up being is a great love story, the story of a love that transcends time and physical bonds. He might be dead, my love for him is still strong.

I know what you’re going to ask, but no, the book isn’t published yet, but it should be released in March 2012. I’m putting the finishing touches on the book now, adding the few photos I have to further illustrate our life, and then it heads back to my publisher so they can add a cover and get it published.

One unintended benefit of getting the book published is that afterward, this blog will not be quite so schizophrenic. Part of the time I write about writing, the rest of the time I write about grief. The book will pull both parts of this blog together, and it will become a cohesive whole. I wonder if the book will do the same for me, help pull me together somehow, bridging two very different parts of my life — the part where I once shared a life, and the part where I’m left alone to pick up the pieces of that shattered life.