Sharp Writ Book Awards | Bertram's Blog

Bad Luck?

April 26, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I’ve never considered myself especially lucky. I don’t win contests, though occasionally I do come in second or third. (Most recently, I was a runner-up for the Sharp Writ Book awards in the category of science fiction for my novel Light Bringer.) In group gift exchanges, I always get the gift that no one quite seems to be able to identify or figure out what it does. I seldom win a door prize, and I’ve never won a raffle of any kind.

Today I attended a fundraiser with friends. There were a couple of dozen gift baskets being raffled, and we got to choose which basket(s) we would like to win. I found one basket that only one other person had chosen, so I used all of my raffle tickets for that basket, thinking to up the odds. When I didn’t win, I laughed with my friend about my bad luck, but then on the way home I reconsidered.

Bad luck?

I’d driven to the event center in a 42-year-old car that still runs well, spent the day with good friends and other congenial people, shared smiles and laughter, ate a nice lunch, danced a bit, enjoyed playing with the raffle tickets, and on top of all that, got to help support a good cause.

Seems to me as if I’m very lucky!

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in life, relationships, writing. Tags: bad luck, fundraiser, good friends, good luck, raffle tickets, Sharp Writ Book Awards. 4 Comments »

30 Second Book Trailer For GRIEF: THE GREAT YEARNING

January 10, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Grief: The Great Yearning is a finalist in the memoir category for the Sharp Writ Book Awards, and they asked me for a 30 second introduction to the book for their “awards ceremony” video. A couple of days ago I posted a draft of this video and here’s the finished video blurb.

After I put this video together, I realized an interesting coincidence: All the photos were taken in August, around the 15th.

The first photo might look like the desert, but it’s a photo of him in Colorado at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a few months before he died. I didn’t even know I had the photo, but I found it in a computer file after he was gone, and it shattered what was left of my heart. It looked as if he’d already been moving away from me toward eternity. Oddly, though I didn’t plan it, the three photos I used in the video were all taken within a few minutes of each other on that excursion. The gnarled tree with the stormy clouds, the profound depth of the canyon, the photo of him looking to eternity all now seem to be signs of my unconscious grief.

The photo on the cover of the book is taken in the very same place, exactly a year earlier. The photo of the two of us together (the only photo ever taken of the two of us together) was taken exactly thirteen years earlier than the three photos. And we met exactly thirty-two years before that last trip to the Black Canyon. I had no idea August was such a significant month for me.

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