My Aching Breaking Heart

My heart is breaking. I thought when my life mate/soul mate died that the organ had shattered beyond repair, but it must have healed because I feel as if it is breaking again.

When I first entered the world of grief, I was stunned by the constant assault of emotions, physical reactions, mental conflicts and torments because I’d never heard of such grief. Well, there was that one old woman who wore black the whole of her life, celebrating her widowhood, and occasionally there would be talk of someone keening in agony at her husband’s funeral. I thought those were isolated cases of unbalanced women, but I am not unbalanced. (And probably they weren’t, either.)

I wrote about what I was going through so I could try to make sense of the onslaught, and it helped. Blogging about grief also helped because I met many others on the same journey, which brought me comfort, and a few who were years ahead of me, which brought me hope.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought this fathomless grief set me aside from everyone else, and perhaps I even thought I should have special consideration because of my situation. Then others I knew lost someone they loved, and I realized grief didn’t make me special. It just made me . . . bereft.

After three years, I am still sad. I tend to think I’m not making any progress, but then I hear from women who just lost their husbands, and I am drenched in tears, remembering what it was like when grief was new. And I can see how very far I have come. But I also know what these women are feeling and how much they will have to deal with in the coming months and years, and my heart breaks for them.

How is it possible that so many of us have lost our mates and soul mates? It’s like a bizarre dance of butterflies, where those we love flit into our lives, bringing wonder and color and joy, and then they flit away, leaving us devastated. How can the world survive when it is so awash in grief? (Perhaps that’s where the oceans came from — the tears of the bereft. After all, throughout the ages, billions of people have mourned for their dead.)

Sometimes I see a photo of or an article about a couple who has been married for forty or fifty years. They always have helpful advice about how they stayed together for so long, but the truth is, despite all their ways of keeping love alive, the reason they were together so long is that one of them didn’t die. Not every loving couple gets that opportunity.

And my heart breaks for the ones left behind.

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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.

Meet Malcolm R. Campbell and “The Seeker”

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the contemporary fantasies, The Sun Singer, Sarabande, The Seeker, and the satire, Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire. He is also a prolific blogger, posting interesting articles and reviews, and collecting Book Bits, the most fascinating and relevant book-related links on the internet.

I recently interviewed Malcolm to find out more about his new book and his writing practices. The interview is posted on my Pat Bertram Introduces . . . blog, but I’m posting a few responses here to whet your appetite to read more. I hope you will enjoy meeting Malcolm R. Campbell.

Malcolm, What is your book about?

In The Seeker, David and Anne meet while working as seasonal employees at Many Glacier Hotel in Glacier National Park. He comes from the Montana high county where he is at home with totem animals, magic and mountain climbing. She comes from the Florida Panhandle where she is at home with botany, beaches and coastal swamps. Their intense summer romance leads them to believe they’ll be lovers forever. Typically, the realities of college life in separate towns get in the way. Then, when David’s intuition tells him Anne is in danger, he uses ancient magic to rescue her. However, cheating fate brings consequences and misunderstandings that threaten to drive them apart.

What inspired you to write this particular story?

The story was inspired by my work as a summer employee in Glacier National Park as well as my love of both the Rocky Mountains and the Florida Gulf Coast where I grew up. To my Florida friends, my going to Montana for summer work and Colorado for summer school was tantamount to traveling to another planet. The worlds are so different. So, I wondered whether two people from such diverse regions could maintain a relationship once the summer was fading away into the past.

How much of yourself is hidden in the characters in the book?

David Ward is very much like me. We both love climbing mountains, following our intuition, and consorting with totem animals. In the upcoming second and third books of the trilogy, my experiences are somewhat similar to David’s aboard a Vietnam-era aircraft carrier in The Sailor, and my work as a college journalism instructor leads to David’s teaching work in The Betrayed.

Tell us a little about your main characters. Who was your favorite? Why?

David’s grandparents, the medicine woman Katoya, and the sheep rancher Jayee, are very influential in his life. Katoya teaches in magic. Jayee teaches him logic and the practical work labor-intensive jobs. Katoya and Jayee come from different worlds, having married for reasons of necessity, so they’re at odds with each other about almost everything. I had fun writing about their love/hate relationship and how it impacted their grandson. Yet, I don’t let them steal the show from protagonist David Ward, a mountain climber who really would refer working on the railroad to going to college, and Anne who is a very earth-centered, environmentally conscious young woman who doesn’t like what we’re doing to the planet.

Click here to read the rest of the interview: Malcolm R. Campbell, Author of “The Seeker”

You can find Malcolm on his website at http://www.malcolmrcampbell.com as well as on his Facebook author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/Malcolm.R.Campbell.Author

Is There Life Without the Internet?

I spent most of yesterday updating my virus protection software. For some reason known only to the computer gods and gurus, simple tasks that should be done in a matter of minutes take hours upon hours. I ended up downloading the program and removing it twice, talking to several different billing and tech people (and some I’m not even sure work for the company — if you google “Trend Micro contact”, you get all sorts of phone numbers, only some of which go the to actual company.) And because they couldn’t simply credit my account with a refund and use that money for the second download I had to pay twice (though they did promise a refund for one of the downloads. Wink. Wink.).

Although I could write a whole post (perhaps even an amusing one) about my experiences with the update, mentioning it is by way of a prologue. I’ve used Trend Micro from the beginning, and it’s been good protection, so I’ve been sticking with them, but yesterday, halfway through the process, I told them I was so unhappy with their service, I was ready to throw away my computer. For just a second, I meant it, and I felt free. And then the truth hit me.

My life is almost all online. Sure, I could take walks, but who would I tell about my insights? I could write my thoughts, but who would read them? Who would talk to me about Is Introspection Possible? and What Is Luck?, my Soul’s Journey and Living Light and Free? This blog has seen me through some terrible times in my life, and some good ones. It was here that I first announced I’d found a publisher, first promoted my books, first talked about the agony of my grief, had my first inklings that there might someday be happiness for me again. I cannot imagine my life without it. But this is not the only thing I’d have forego.

Without the internet, I’d have no life as an author. I could still write books, but who would talk to me about them? I could perhaps still check with bookstore owners and see if I can do book signings, but what if I wanted to publish another book? Book files are all digital now. How would I get the manuscript digitalized so I could send to my publisher?

There is too much of my life I’d have to do without. I have friends in the real world, which is nice, but I also have friends in the cyber world — people from all around the world — that I’d never get to talk to or email again. I’d never get to check in Facebook again. Well, maybe that wouldn’t be such a loss, but still, it is a part of the online experience, and I’d miss all the people I’ve friended and those I haven’t yet met.

And Rubicon Ranch — the collaboration/serialization I’m writing with other Second Wind authors — I’d have to give up on that, too, just when all the authors are learning to have fun with it and run with it.

Every day online offers the possibility of something wonderful happening. So, after my whole online life flashed before my eyes along with the vision of what my life would be like without the internet, I girded my loins, gritted my teeth, stepped once more into the fray, (feel free to add whatever other clichés you wish), and finally got the job done. Now I just have to wait to see if they follow through on their side with the refund.

Either way, I’ll still be here.

***

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.” All Bertram’s books are published by Second Wind Publishing. Connect with Pat on Google+

A Great Blog to Check Out

Recently there have been some fascinating articles posted on the Second Wind Publishing blog that are worth checking out. All the articles on the blog are great, of course. These are just the most current ones.

The Importance of Locations by Deborah J Ledford. Deborah describes the wonder of her childhood summers spent in North Carolina, and how they have colored her writing.

Spring by S.M. Senden. Sue talks about the importance of spring cleaning, cleaning out the old, clearing out closets as well as old notions that no longer work, in order to make room for the new.

Air Travel in the 1950′s, a kid’s memory by Juliet Waldron. A fascinating look back at the way air travel used to be. This was of particular interest to me, considering my recent flight via “Sardine Airlines.”

The Day of the Trickster by J J Dare. J J muses on the origins of the April Fool, postulating that perhaps it originated in the old days of Rome. As she said, “these guys and their mythological gods loved to party.”

Headed for adventure by Nichole R Bennett. Nichole tells us about the life of an active-duty military couple. But now she and her husband are headed for adventure by themselves.

Peaches Peppers & Pork Chops by Ginger King. Who would have thought that peaches, peppers, and pork chops would have made a good combination? Ginger King, that’s who! Sounds like a great recipe. I’ll have to try it some day.

Writing a Collaborative Mystery Serial — by Pat Bertram. I wasn’t going to include this since it’s a reprint of an article I did for this blog, but I am proud of our collaborative efforts and the authors who are participating, and couldn’t bypass the opportunity to shout about it.

Deborah J Ledford, S.M. Senden, Juliet Waldron, J J Dare, Nichole R Bennett, Ginger King, and Pat Bertram all have books published by Second Wind.

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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.” All Bertram’s books are published by Second Wind Publishing. Connect with Pat on Google+

Writing a Collaborative Mystery Serial

I’m collaborating with several other Second Wind Publishing authors to write a series of mystery novels online. We are posting the chapters on a blog so everyone who wants to can follow the serial as we write it. Actually, collaboration is a bit of an over-statement. Rubicon Ranch is more of a cross between a role-playing game and round robin or campfire tale, with each of us authors taking turns adding to the story without knowing where we are going except toward the solution of the murder. We each create and control a POV character, show who s/he is, what relationship s/he has with the deceased, and why s/he might want the victim dead.

I have it easy — my character, Melanie Gray, is a photographer/writer who wanders the desert taking photos for the coffee table books she used to write with her dead husband. (He wasn’t dead when they were working together, of course.) He died in a one-car accident while texting his mistress, though there are suspicious circumstances leading investigators to think that perhaps he was killed. Melanie has a talent for finding strange things in the desert, such as the child’s body stuffed in an abandoned television console in the first book, Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story, and the scattered body parts that were found in the second book, Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces. Her presence at these crime scenes is all that leads the sheriff to suspect her, though I do try to add a bit of intrigue to make it seem as if she could be guilty.

The other authors, however, have to simultaneously prove that their characters are the murderer, yet also have a plausible explanation for why the characters acted guilty if they weren’t the murderer. (That’s because we don’t know whodunit until all the end of the book. So not only do readers of the ongoing story not know who the villain is, neither do we.)

In the first book, the authors solved the problem of simultaneously setting their characters up to be murderers while allowing for the possibility that they were innocent by giving their characters strange characteristics, such as sleepwalking, to keep the characters themselves from knowing if they were the killer.

In the second book, there was no way the killer could be unaware of having killed the victim. Even if by chance the character killed in some sort of fugue state, the character was still faced with a dead body, which he or she cut in small pieces and distributed around the area. The authors created some wonderfully devious characters with strong motives for killing the evil man who damaged them for no reason other than because he could. Any of them could be the murderer. And any of them could simply be innocent (or not so innocent) red herrings.

We are through with the second book and are in the process of organizing the third installment of the series. In this one, Melanie won’t find a body in the desert since understandably she’s a bit leery of walking in such a deadly place, so she will have to find it elsewhere, perhaps beneath the wheels of a blow up figure of a Santa Claus on a motorcycle.

We have a victim — a real estate agent, the same one who found the disembodied head of the victim of the second book inside the house where the victim of the first book once lived. Apparently she likes to snoop, and since so many residents of Rubicon Ranch have a secret they are willing to kill to protect, it sounds like the potential for a lot of mayhem!

I’m looking forward to seeing what the other authors come up with. I hope you will follow along with us as we continue this innovative crime serial.

Meantime, if you haven’t checked out Rubicon Ranch, and wish do so, click here: Rubicon Ranch.

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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+

Finding My Place in the Publishing World

I’ve been reading promotional materials (again!) looking for ways to increase book sales, and one of the articles, in a rehash of the idea of positive thinking, said that if you’re not satisfied with the way your writing career is going, don’t ever let it be known but speak and act as if you were a bestselling author.

In other words, don’t ever let people know the truth, and that goes against the spirit of this blog. I suppose it isn’t smart of me to talk about my struggles to find my place in the publishing world because it probably does show me in a negative light. In fact, one friend emailed me and said, “If you want to stop writing and pity yourself because you think you are a failed author, go ahead. That’s your choice.”

Regardless of how I come across, I am not negative or pessimistic. I have every intention of making my living as a writer, and if I thought claiming I were a bestselling author would get me there, I’d do it. Or maybe not. There are so many authors out there claiming to be more than they are that the world doesn’t need another one.

Despite the contention of my friend, I do not consider myself a failed author. In fact, I am a successful author. I’ve written five books that I’m proud of and that many people love. I just haven’t been able to turn them into financial successes yet.

I see myself on a writer’s journey, though I admit I’m going through a crisis of faith, struggling to find reasons to write. (I’m also struggling to find reasons to live, but that doesn’t make me a failed human being.) For some writers, writing is their reason for living, but although that isn’t my reason for living (I am not compelled to write; it’s something I choose to do), I have a hunch that my reason for living is tied up somehow with my reason for writing. (Writing fiction, that is. I do write every day for this blog, partly for the discipline of it and partly to help me figure out my place in the world, the world of grief, and the publishing world.)

I began writing fiction more than a decade ago as a means of bringing my dying life mate/soul mate in close. Someone who is dying drifts away until finally he begins to disconnect himself totally from life, and I couldn’t bear to let the disconnect from me happen sooner than it needed to. For several years, until he drifted too far away, I wrote at night, then read the passages to him in the morning, and he’d let me know if I nailed the scene, usually with a small, impish smile. If I didn’t get a passage quite right, I didn’t get a smile, but I got help figuring out where I went wrong.

That’s why I used to write — to see his smile. And that’s why writing has become such an angst-ridden subject for me. My reason for writing died when he did.

A friend (the same friend mentioned above now that I think of it) once sent me a snippet of a poem:

A voice calls, “Write, write!”
I say, “For whom shall I write.”
And the voice replies,
“For the dead whom thou didst love.”

—John Berryman

Maybe someday writing for the dead whom I didst love will be reason enough to write, but for now, I’m still searching for my place in the world and the publishing world. And if the search — or my angst — comes across as negative, so be it. Besides, when I start acting as if I am a bestselling writer, I want it to be for real.

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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+

Grief and Lingering Feelings of Resentment

During the past three years, I have chronicled my journey through grief, trying to make sense of the myriad emotional and physical stresses one has to deal with after a major loss, such as the death of one’s child or life mate/soul mate. I’ve explained that grief is not the simple and almost clinical state that Kübler-Ross’s five (or seven) stages of grief seems to indicate. Instead, there seems to be an infinite shading of emotion in the process we call grief.

Some of us do feel shock, denial, anger, guilt, sadness, depression, and acceptance, but most of us also feel anxiety, frustration, loneliness, confusion, despair, helplessness, panic, questioning (both as a need to know why and as a cry of pain), loss or gain of faith, loss of identity, loss of self-esteem, resentment, bitterness, isolation, inability to focus, suspended animation, waiting for we know not what, envy of those who are still coupled or who have yet to suffer a loss. And we suffer myriad physical symptoms such as queasiness, dizziness, sleep problems (too much or too little), eating problems (too much or too little), bone-deep pain, inability at times to breath or swallow, exhaustion, lack of energy, restlessness, and seemingly endless bouts of tears.

Except for sadness, I thought I’d pretty much dealt with most of grief’s effects, but recently I’ve become aware of lingering feelings of resentment. I’m mostly over the resentment of those who are still coupled, with only an occasional twinge of self-pity when I see couples out walking together, and I thought I’d come to terms with my resentment of his long illness and his leaving me here to deal with grief alone, but apparently a pool of resentment still lies deep within.

I am thin-skinned, taking offense at things that were not meant to be offensive, feeling hard done by when things do not turn out my way, railing against real or imagined unfairness. Of course, we all feel this way at times, but grief seems to take minor faults and magnifies them into major stumbling blocks. The death of the one person who connected us to life also makes us (well, me anyway) feel as if life should be granting us special privileges to make up for that great loss, but life doesn’t work that way.

I’m not proud of this resentment, but there it is. The good thing is that grief’s effects are now mostly making themselves known one at a time rather than all at once in a horrifying and cloudy kaleidoscope of feelings so that I can pay attention to the resentment, and perhaps get beyond this stage to a more even-tempered state.

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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+

Is Blogging Dead? Do You Care?

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of articles that talk about blogging being dead. These are blog articles, mind you, which seems to prove the point that blogging is not dead. I don’t even know what that means: “blogging is dead.” I have a hunch it refers to long form blogging, since Twittering and Facebook status updating are short form blogging, and posting photos or videos is visual blogging. Maintaining a web log is all about making a presence on the internet, keeping a record of one’s progress or ideas or everyday life. The form the log takes is constantly changing, but the need people have to tell the world “I am here and I matter” will always find a voice.

People do seem to be losing interest in reading long form blogs. Supposedly they don’t have the attention span it takes to read five hundred or so words. Supposedly they prefer snippets of information they can scan, photos they can glance at, videos they can watch, especially if those posts are funny. The sort of thing that goes viral is not a lengthy dissertation on why blogging is dead but a short video of cats trying to figure out the meaning of a treadmill, or a humorous caption on a photo of a singing dog.

Me? I have no interest in such things. I don’t like videos — it’s much easier for me to scan an article to pick out the salient points than to watch one or two people discussing something for five minutes only to find the relevant issue buried in bantering, small talk, or hype. I don’t particularly like photos, either, partly because I am verbally rather than visually oriented, and partly because . . . (dare I admit it?) . . . I have no interest in sappy pet photos or photos of people I don’t know doing things I don’t care about.

Perhaps the sky-is-falling attitude about blogging stems from the way mobile devices are changing how people connect with others and the internet. It’s easier on a phone to send in a tweet or a comment on a Facebook status than to write a blog or even to leave a comment on a blog. (Or so people say. The only web-related activity I do on my phone is checking my email, and I want to get out of the habit of doing that.)

I started blogging as a way of promoting my books, and even after I found out how little effect blogging has on my sales, I continued. For me, blogging is a discipline, a way of writing when I don’t have the focus to write a novel, a means of helping me think. It’s possible I’d get more views if I posted silly photos, but views are not all I want. I tend to be a thinker (or maybe ”brooder” would be a better description) with a need to talk about the important issues of life and death and finding a place in the world, a need to connect with people on a deeper, truer, and more fundamental way than the simple exchanges that usually take place online. And often, I do find that here in my own corner of the blogosphere.

So, is blogging dead? I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care (as long as WordPress is around, that is. If WordPress becomes defunct, then blogging really would be dead). What’s important to me is that this blog is very much alive, that it continues to satisfy my need for expression, and that sometimes people respond to what I have to say.

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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+

Are Book Trailers a Good Idea?

Someone asked me for advice on how to get people to see his book trailer and then called me negative when I explained how difficult it would be. I admit I’m burned out when it comes to promotion. I’ve spent the past five years researching book promotion in all its many facets, tried hundreds of different things, and I still don’t know how to turn a sleepy seller into a best seller, though I know a lot about what doesn’t work, or at least what doesn’t work for me. Other people do the same sorts of things I’ve been doing and find a pot of gold at the end of the promotion rainbow, but I’m still searching for the rainbow.

Book promotion is a lot like the house that Jack built. You have a book you want to sell, so you create a video trailer to promote it. Then you have to promote the video that promotes the book you want to sell. Then, you join Facebook to get more viewers for your video, so now you have to promote your FB page that promotes the video that promotes the book you want to sell. And on and on and on.

Some people can just throw a book out there and make a fortune on Amazon, but the rest of us have to promote. Have to find a way to get people interested in us and then in our books. As I said in What Works When It Comes to Book Promotion?, the first authors to blog or use the various social networking sites to promote their books found a strong readership, but now all of those means of promotion are so common that they are simply an expected part of being an author.

It’s the same with book trailers. The first people who created book trailers to promote their books did well, but now video promos are just an expected part of being an author. Even if the video is great, the problem is getting people to see the video.

Sometimes people will stumble across a book trailer when they are surfing Utube, but it’s not as if people by the thousands will be searching for his book trailer. I wanted to hear Madonna’s “Playground” the other day, so I used the search function to find it since I knew what I wanted to listen to, but what if I didn’t know there was a song out there I’d like to hear? How do I find it?

The problem is, you have to promote the book trailer as assiduously as you promote the book. If I knew how to get people to see his trailers, I’d be good enough at promotion that I’d be selling millions of books.

Still, book trailers are a good idea, and the better they are made, the better they will do. I don’t want to discourage him from making his video because . . . who knows? His might catch people’s attention and go viral. At the very least, it will give him something other than the book itself to promote.

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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+

Great Blog Resources for Writers

There are some phenomenal blogs and resources for writers that can help you take your writing to a more polished, compelling, or profound level. These are just a few of the links I have collected over the years:

Ageless Wisdom & The Hero’s Journey lists the mythic and archetypal principles embedded in the structure of stories, along with the twelve stages of the hero’s journey. You don’t have to write fantasy to use such mythic elements. My contemporary novel, Daughter Am I, was written with these principles in mind.

The Editor’s Blog is the best resource for new writers who wish to learn the basics of writing and the best resource for experienced writers who wish to polish their work into a perfect gem. Whatever you want to know — hooking a reader, dialogue, action, conflict, editing — you will find great advice from freelance fiction editor Beth Hill.

The Bookshelf Muse has various fascinating thesauruses, such as the Emotional Thesaurus to help you show your characters emotions, Physical Attribute Thesaurus, Character Traits Thesaurus, Weather & Earthly Phenomena Thesaurus, Color, Textures and Shapes Thesaurus, Setting Thesaurus, and the Symbolism Thesaurus. (These are listed on the right sidebar.)

Guide to Grammar and Writing takes the mystery out of grammatical issues and English usage

Cliched, Overdone, or Boring Plotlines helps you find out if your brilliant idea really is as really as fantastic as you think it is, or if it is merely a rehash of a story that has been done a hundred times before.

100 Best First Lines from Novels might help you figure out how to write a first line that is every bit as compelling as those listed.

The Food Timeline helps you keep track of what foods your characters might be eating, especially if you write historical fiction.

Book Marketing Floozy is an indexed blog of sixty-five different articles by various writers about book promotion.

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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+