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Finding Inspiration From Uninspiring Sources

November 29, 2010 — Pat Bertram

Deserts have traditionally been mystical places where one goes to find inspiration, themselves, the meaning of life, but nowadays people use the desert as a park, a place of recreation rather than re-creation. They whiz by on dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles, they honk their dogs (let the dogs out of the vehicle and and follow along behind, honking whenever the creatures go to far astray), they have drunken parties, and they dump trash, including old furniture.

I used all of these bits to set the scene for the first chapter of Rubicon Ranch: A Collaborative Novel, a novel being written online by me and eight other Second Wind authors, especially the discarded furniture. I do believe I have seen enough old furniture in my walks to furnish a living room, but the piece that most captured my imagination was the television sitting out in the middle of nowhere. No road led to the television, just a footpath. Yet there it was. And so it appears in my chapter:

She turned around to get shots of the trail she’d just climbed and saw a glint of metal reflecting the sun. She squinted. What was that? A television? She found herself smiling—her first smile since Alexander died. She scrambled back down the trail. The television had been dumped a long time ago judging by the creosote bushes that had grown up around it, but footprints leading to the box suggested it had been visited recently. She took several shots from the trail, about fifteen yards from the television, then moved closer. The television had no screen, and she could see that something had been stuffed inside. A doll? She crept closer. Ten feet away, she stopped to take another photo, and the truth washed over her. Not a doll. Crammed inside the console was a child, a girl, her eyes half-eaten by some desert predator.

We’ve now posted the first six chapters of Rubicon Ranch, the latest one by Christine Husom, author of the Winnebago Mystery Series. The most fun of a project such as this is that we do not yet know who killed the little girl (if in fact, she was killed) and we won’t know until all but the final chapter has been written. I hope you will enjoy following our story as we write it.

Chapter 1: Melanie Gray — by Pat Bertram

Chapter 2: Seth Bryan — by Lazarus Barnhill

Chapter 3: Jeff and Kourtney Peterson — by J B Kohl and Eric Beetner

Chapter 4: Dylan McKenzie — by Nancy A. Niles

Chapter 5: Mary “Moody” Sinclair — by JJ Dare

Chapter 6: Cooper Dahling — by Christine Husom

Posted in blogging, books, fiction, internet, life, writing. Tags: collaboration, desert, fiction, mojave green rattlesnake, murder, mystery, novel, photographer, Rubicon Ranch, Second Wind Publishing. 3 Comments »

Don’t Mess With a Grieving Woman

November 11, 2010 — Pat Bertram

This is an excerpt from my NaNoWriMo novel:

Amanda was fumbling in her purse for her keys when a voice said, with low-toned menace, “Give me your purse or I will kill you.”

She jerked her head up. Standing between her and her Corolla were two men who looked barely old enough to shave. One jiggled from foot to foot like a child who needed to go to the bathroom, but the other stood firm, his hands steady on a gun.

The scene didn’t seem quite real. Perhaps she’d wandered onto a movie set? She looked around. No cameras. Just the two men standing before her in broad daylight.

Was there such a thing as narrow daylight? She giggled at the thought. Then stopped abruptly. I really am going crazy.

“What’s with you, bitch?” screamed the man with the gun. “Gimme your purse or I’ll kill you.”

“Promise?” Amanda said, clasping her purse to her chest.

The jiggling man lifted his hands and pointed a finger at her like a gun. “Yeah, we’ll kill you, bitch.”

“Okay.” Amanda stared at them, hope blossoming in her chest. God provides, David had been fond of saying. Maybe God was providing a way out of her grief.

The hand with the gun began to waver.

“Do it, man,” yelled the jiggler.

“Yes, do it,” Amanda said softly.

“I’m out of here.” The gunman took off running.

The jiggler danced in place. “Where are you going?”

“She’s crazy. Or a cop.” The words floated back to them from between a pick-up and a mini-van.

The jiggler looked longingly at Amanda’s purse, hesitated, then trotted after his companion.

Posted in fiction, life, writing. Tags: ficiton, grief, grieving woman, loss, NaNoWriMo, novel, writing. 5 Comments »

Excerpt From My NaNo Novel

November 6, 2010 — Pat Bertram

My grieving woman novel is taking shape. Amanda and her twenty-nine-year-old daughter Thalia are having problems that seem to antedate her husband’s death. I’m not sure why the daughter has such a problem with her mother, but perhaps we don’t need to know. It could just be more of the unfinished business the woman has to deal with.

In the scene I wrote today (keeping to my writing schedule, yay!), the daughter accuses her mother of hastily redoing her old bedroom:

“This doesn’t look at all like my room any more,” Thalia said. “There’s not a trace of me here. You could hardly wait to get rid of me.”

Amanda opened her mouth to reply, but for a few seconds, no words came out. She’d completely forgotten that when they first came to this parsonage, Thalia had been a sulky thirteen-year-old. Trying to put a smile on her daughter’s face, she’d promised Thalia she could decorate the room any way she wished. Amanda hadn’t expected pink paint and eyelet ruffles, but she’d been appalled by the black walls and red curtains that gave the impression of dripping blood. The posters of movie vampires and band members who looked as if they’d crawled out of a crypt seemed almost cheerful by comparison.

When Thalia went to college, David claimed the room for a den, but it had been Amanda who been cajoled into doing the work. “Shouldn’t we at least wait until Thalia’s out of college?” Amanda pleaded. For once, David had not been thinking of their daughter. “I need a place to work here in the house. We can put in a sofa bed. Thalia can use it during the summer.” But Thalia had never come back, and secretly Amanda had not blamed her.

“I wish this house were bigger,” Amanda said. “Then we could have kept your room for you.”

“Yeah, right.” Then, sounding like the little girl she had once been, she added, “couldn’t you have turned the parlor into Dad’s den? Nobody has a parlor and a living room anymore.”

“I wanted to, but Dad said he needed a place for receiving visitors. He always thought it was important to keep the living room for us, so we could have some privacy as a family.

“I’m glad he had a place to get away from you.”

Amanda flinched at her daughter’s words, but didn’t bother to correct them. When David had moved out of their shared bedroom into this room after his diagnosis, it had been to spare her his relentless pacing and allow her to sleep undisturbed, not to get away from her. Or so he said.

Could Thalia be right? Maybe he’d mentioned something to her that he wouldn’t say to Amanda. The two often excluded her from their conversations. She used to worry about feeling jealous of her daughter, but she hadn’t been jealous, not really. She’d liked that David and Thalia got along so well. She and her father had been virtual strangers.

Posted in fiction, life, writing. Tags: excerpt, fiction, grieving woman, mother's and daughter's, novel. 4 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!

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

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.

Posted in blogging, books, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, fiction, novel, outtake from novel, romance, Second Wind Publishing, smashwords, thriller. 7 Comments »

A Spark of Heavenly Fire Outtakes #1

December 1, 2009 — Pat Bertram

A Spark of Heavenly Fire takes place during the month of December. Originally, the story began on the first with the climax at Christmas, but during one of the rewrites, I got rid of most of the first chapter. So, oddly, the story now begins on December 2. I could have have changed December 2 to December 1, but that seemingly innocuous change would have rippled throughout the book, and I didn’t want to make inadvertant mistakes. I make plenty of vertant ones! It may not have mattered so much if it were any other month, but the Christmas activities needed to take place on the 25th.

To celebrate A Spark of Heavenly Fire‘s 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:

Greg was idly running his finger around the rim of the empty beer mug when Jim appeared in the seat opposite him.

“Jeez, you startled me,” Greg said.

If Greg looked like a matinee idol, Jim was surely a stock Hollywood villain — big and black, ugly and menacing. But one who could move as quickly and as silently as a jaguar. Cat or car, take your pick.

A hefty waitress with a rose tattoo peeping out of her considerable cleavage brought Greg’s second beer, slamming it down on the table so hard that some of the liquid sloshed out of the mug.

“Bring me a coke, will you, Joyce?” Jim said.

Joyce glowered at him, then trudged off, perhaps to get his drink.

“Still on duty?” Greg asked.

“A cop’s always on duty.”

“You know what I mean.”

Jim massaged the back of his neck. “I’ll have to go back to the station, probably have to work all night.”

“What’s up?” Greg could smell a news story — a big story — and wanted a piece of it.

“Off the record?”

Greg hesitated a second. “Okay.”

“I don’t know if it amounts to much, but the brass want it kept quiet. Afraid of starting a panic, I guess.”

“Over what?”

“There’s been a lot of deaths from something the medical examiner called ‘projectile hemorrhagic vomiting, cause to be determined.”

Greg hunched his shoulders. “That’s it?”

“If you’d seen the bodies, you wouldn’t ask that. In all my years on the job, I’ve never seen so much blood. Some of the younger guys are spooked. Can’t say I blame them. It’s truly gruesome. And when you consider that most of the victims were driving when they died, you can imagine what it was like out there.”

“Bumper cars.”

“Right.”

Greg studied his friend’s grim face. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Jim let out his breath in a loud whoosh. “You’re right. Did you hear about the woman who was bludgeoned to death and left lying in the street in a pool of her own blood?”

“I heard about it, but someone else at the paper was sent to cover it.”

“I talked to the pathologist assigned to do the autopsy. She said she won’t know anything for several days, but form a cursory look, the beating was post mortem.”

“Someone beat up a corpse?”

“Yep.”

“Jeez, how weird is that! Where does one get a corpse anyway?”

“Unfortunately, tonight there’s no lack of dead bodies lying around. The perp must have stumbled across a woman who died from the hemorrhagic disease and decided to have a little fun. The pathologist said it looked as if the woman had been run over by a semi — just about every bone in her body was broken. At first we thought the beating was done by a gang of teenagers, but we found only one weapon — an eighteen-inch-length of metal pipe.”

“Wow. This is great stuff.” Greg pulled a small notebook and a pen out of his pocket and began scribbling. “The guy who covered the story didn’t get any of this.”

“We’re still off the record,” Jim warned.

“I know, I know. But I can be prepared, can’t I? The proverbial lead pipe! I thought that only showed up in detective novels.”

“Not lead. Galvanized iron.”

Greg looked up in surprise. Jim was either very tired or very worried to have let the detective novel remark pass. A real-life detective, Jim considered most of the books to be simplistic or cartoonish, and he was usually quick to voice his opinion.

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

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, novel, outtake from novel, Second Wind Publishing, smashwords. 6 Comments »

Writing Discussion With Cliff Burns — Part I

October 20, 2008 — Pat Bertram

When I asked Cliff Burns, author of So Dark the Night, if he’d like to guest host my blog, he responded that he’d rather have a discussion. I was thrilled. I enjoy talking about writing, but even more than that, I love learning how other writers approach the craft.

BERTRAM: For me, writing is like the world’s longest crossword puzzle, one that takes a year to complete. I like playing with words, finding their rhythm, and getting them to behave the way I want. I like being able to take those words and create ideas, characters, and emotions. What is writing like for you?

BURNS: I think your analogy is very good. Each story or novel is a puzzle, as you say, an enigma, a conundrum, a locked door mystery that demands great intelligence and ingenuity to solve. Finding the exact right combination of words (out of half a million or so) in common English usage that will perfectly express the mood or feeling you’re trying to get across . . . and then doing it again and again for ten or twenty or four hundred pages. It’s a miracle when we manage to get it right. Which is why I ended up dedicating So Dark the Night “to my Creator”. There were times when I thought that novel would never get written, I’d never finish it. But something kept me going, supplied the word or image I needed at a crucial moment. Often, the impetus or inspiration seemed to come from outside. I know that sounds weird and creepy but it’s the truth. Have you ever experienced anything similar?

BERTRAM: Many times. And it was usually more than just inspiration. For example, when I began researching my current work and needed to know about relatively unknown extinct animals, every day when I opened my email, there would be an article about one of them on the today’s news page. And when I needed a reason for some gold to be hidden for another story, I happened on a book about the killing of the gold standard in the USA. And when I needed a place for my aliens to come from (and a reason) I happened upon a mention of the Twelfth Planet by Zeccharia Sitchen. Someone, I don’t remember who, called such serendipitous offerings “gifts from the library gods.”

BERTRAM: Writing, editing, and promoting are all time- and mind- consuming occupations. How do you manage?

BURNS: Barely. And my heavy work schedule is one of the reasons I’m just getting over a severe lung infection — my body was over-worked, my immune system screwed and so I was really knocked on my ass. I’m going to make some adjustments, see if I can find a hobby or some mode of relaxation to take a portion of the strain off. I’ve reached middle age and I just can’t maintain my punishing routine without doing lasting harm to myself. How about you? What’s your routine like and how do you cope with the pressure of creating?

BERTRAM: I have no routine. I used to write every day until I got a computer and the internet (about a year ago) and then my words got used up writing articles and commenting. But I was never one who was consumed by inner demons. I wrote because the publishing companies stopped releasing the books I liked to read — ones that couldn’t easily be slotted into a genre, yet not written with a “literary” style, and I figured if I wanted to read that kind of book, I’d have to write them, so I did. I say I don’t write every day, but I’m either thinking about the story and characters, researching, or editing. And now promoting. But come winter, my creative juices start flowing, and that’s when my novels get written.

BERTRAM: Are there any particular themes that repeat themselves in your work?

BURNS: Hmm . . . I’m not sure. I suppose many of my characters have been rendered powerless by the circumstances of their lives and are struggling to hang on by their fingernails. Robert Runte (an academic and nice fella I met at a convention years ago) commented along the lines that my characters seem to come from lower class backgrounds and that’s a rarity in spec fic. I agree with Nicholas Christopher (excellent author) when he says that each new work presents fresh challenges and one must learn to write all over again. If you’re doing it right. I never want to fall into the formula trap . . . that’s the death of art and the beginning of commerce.

Writing Discussion With Cliff Burns — Part II

Writing Discussion With Cliff Burns — Part III