Thinking Inside the Box

Sometimes it amazes me that there is an entire world one can enter through the portal of a electronic box. The only reason this doesn’t always amaze me is that I tend to take the Internet for granted, which, perhaps, is a sign of my addiction. The cyber world is infinitely fascinating and filled with exciting possibilities. A potential friend could lurk behind an anonymous blog view. A possible fan might discover one of my books because of a guest appearance on a blog. I might learn something new on a discussion thread, or I might read a comment that fires my imagination.

I’ve put my addiction to the Internet to good use. I’ve wanted to do all I can to give my books a good send-off, and since I started from zero, I had to learn how to blog, to discuss, to connect on the internet. That in itself satisfied my creative bent for a long time, but now the doubts are starting to creep in. I’m getting known as a blogger and a promoter, but am I getting known as an author?

At Sun Singer’s Travels, author Malcolm Campbell asks: Are you tired of spending more hours a week on Facebook than you are writing? Are you tired of writing more words on all your blogs than you’re writing in all your novels? And, do you ever wonder if you’re becoming less yourself by trying to think of a constant stream of posts, status updates, comments and links that match all the latest trends enough that somebody will notice and stop and look for a moment?

Such interesting questions, ones I hadn’t asked myself until recently. I used to think that I am more myself online than offline, but now I am beginning to wonder if I am losing my offline self. Are my posts and comments reflecting me, or are they creating me? Am I still a writer, or have I simply become a blogger? I know that whatever I am doing is helping establish my online presence, but will it sell books?

I do believe in the Internet. I think the future of books (or at least my books) will come from online promotion, but I’ve begun to realize that promotion is a marathon, not a sprint. It also seems silly at times, a matter of “The House that Jack Built.” Every day I write and promote an article on my blog that promotes the blog where I have another article that’s supposed to promote the book that I wrote. Whew! Sometimes I even write a second article to promote the one on my blog that promotes the one on someone else’s blog that promotes the book that I wrote.

I have ten days left of my Daughter Am I blog tour, and then it will be time to re-evaluate my online life.

All these words just to announce today’s blog tour stop: The Challenge of Research. You can also register to win a free print copy of Daughter Am I.

Description of Daughter Am I: 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 is Bertram’s third novel to be published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC. Also available are More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire.

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Musings From My Notebooks

Today is the 24th day of my Daughter Am I blog tour, and I am wearing down a bit. Mostly that’s because I’m still staying up way too late, though recently those long hours on the computer have nothing to do with my tour. Well, that’s not strictly true — my mind has been going blank when it comes time to write the next guest blog, so I play games on my computer while I try to rev up ideas, but it’s not helping. I have tomorrow’s guest post written, but for the next day I’ve agreed to write an article about giving thanks, and I have no idea what to say. I am thankful for many things — for my online friends, for my fans (odd to think I actually have fans!), for my publisher who understands my books even better than I do – and yet it’s not the sort of article I would want to read, so I’m looking for a different angle — a hook – and not finding it.

Lately I’ve been searching through my old Daughter Am I notebooks for ideas. It’s odd for me to see all the preparation I did for the novel, all the stray thoughts I jotted down, all the reminders.  Here’s one of my reminders: Have Teach tell Mary that the whole point of the Syndicate was for them to become big enough and strong enough to make deals with but time politicians, to go into partnership with the biggest criminal of all — the government.  Teach apparently has no use for the government, but then, he has no use for most societal organizations, not even the mob despite his distant ties to organized crime. 

Here’s a note that came from a book by economist Antony Sutton: “History suggests that gold will once again be made illegal in the U.S. and subject to arbitrary seizures by a police-state apparatus.”  I wonder why I didn’t use that for the book? Perhaps I didn’t want to dilute the shock of that happening in 1933.

You can find more musings from my notebooks at Meritorious Mysteries, where I am guest blogging today.  Now if I can only find something to be thankful for!

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My Journey As a Writer

During my Daughter Am I blog tour, I have talked a lot about my writing life, I have done several interviews, I have even shown photos of my workspace, but today’s stop is by far the most candid. I worry sometimes that I’m telling too much — do people really need to know what an incredibly long journey my quest to become a writer has been? It’s an unending journey, to tell the truth. In the past eight years, I have learned how to write, but I want — need — to become the best possible writer I can be, and so I continue to learn.

I also worry that this long hiatus where I haven’t been writing will kill the urge to create, yet I know it’s in the times of not writing that my brain collates what it has learned, and so when I sit down to write I don’t have to think so much about not using adverbs, for example. I simply don’t use them. I first noticed this trait during the writing of A Spark of Heavenly Fire. I wrote the first fifty pages or so and then stopped for the summer. When I went back to writing in the fall, I felt more assured, more competent, and the writing came easy. Well, easier. Writing is never easy for me, except when it comes to stream-of-consciousness blogging. That I can do!

I always need to stretch myself as a writer, so I doubt I will ever become prolific. I also doubt I will ever do any sort of sequel that uses characters I’ve already created, unless, of course, I decide it will be a challenge. I seem to have the strange propensity for writing books I don’t know how to write, and so I always seem to be starting from scratch. I’m not the first writer to discover that writing never gets easier– it just gets harder in different ways.

I’m straying a bit from the subject, which is today’s blog stop. This is a special day for me. I am at Sheila Deeth’s blog, and she has been a staunch supporter from the moment we met online. It’s no wonder she asked such an interesting question, and it’s no wonder I let down my guard and answered.

So, please visit Sheila and me as we discuss: One Writer’s Journey.

Daughter Am I Blog Tour 2009 Schedule

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Persisting in Delusion

“It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” — Carl Sagan

Is this true? When it comes to the cosmic universe, perhaps. When it comes to our personal universe, is it better to persist in delusion? Isn’t that what a dream is, a delusion? The dream might be attainable with luck and hard work, in which case it’s not a delusion. If it is not attainable, is it better to hold on to the dream or is it better to depersist in delusion?

I used to think reality was important — I spent my life trying to get down to the rock bottom of “what is” (as opposed to what we think is). I studied particle physics and quantum mechanics (for fun, can you imagine that?) and discovered that every particle can be divided into smaller particles and those particles can be divided, until what you end up is nothing. Or a wave. Or a thought. Or something that changes every time you look at it.

Now I don’t know if reality is all it’s cracked up to be. If our perceptions can change ”what is” at the quantum level, perhaps it can change life at the macro level where we live. If so, it might be better to persist in delusion.

I explore this theme of delusion (or illusion, which perhaps comes down to the same thing) in all of my books: What is truth? What is reality? Who are we, really – are we our memories, our experiences, our dreams? And I still don’t have an answer.

So what does this have to do with my Daughter Am I blog tour? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps I am deluding myself that what I am doing will increase sales, increase name recognition, increase my network of friends. (The last is not a delusion — I am making new contacts.) And if this tour turns out to be some cosmic illusion, is it still worth persisting? Of course it is. It’s the doing that’s important — the quest.

Very strange — these are the thoughts that usually strike me late at night, and here it is early afternoon. Must have something to do with all those late nights. Or maybe it’s just an illusion.

Today I am guesting at Alan Baxter’s blog, talking about writing tools. You know the ones I mean — hammers and chisels. Please stop by and say hi. At least there, the talk is much more concrete.  You can find me here – Alan Baxter: The Word.

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What’s in a Name?

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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I Had an Epiphany Today!

For the past six to eight months, I’ve been trying to figure out how to sell books online. I’ve been roaming the internet, experimenting with various social networking sites, but everywhere I went I ended up in a writers’ community. Not that it’s a problem — I’ve met many fine authors, found some good books, learned much about writing. Still, I want my novels to find a readership, so I roamed further afield, signed up for some author/reader sites. And guess what — there I found those same authors. Finally I decided to spend my time on Goodreads and other book sites and have found mostly . . . yep. Authors.

I’m exaggerating here. Of course I’ve met readers, voracious readers. The problem many readers are struggling with is that they already have stacks of books to read, or they read constantly and can’t afford to buy all the books they want to read so they haunt libraries and used bookstores, or else they set up books blogs and do reviews and get so many free books they don’t need to buy any. Readers also tend to stick with a single genre and the authors they’ve already read. Many, of course, are adventuresome, and will try new books by new authors, but these readers are so overwhelmed by the incredible number of books available, that the chances of them finding your book are zero to zilch.

So, what do we poor authors do? Ah, here’s where I had my epiphany. Promote to non-readers! Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Think about it though. We all talk about there being so few readers in the world, yet DB has sold zillions of books. Who is he selling the books to? It has to be people who seldom read. Somehow, someone convinced those non-readers that they had to read his books, and they rushed out to buy the novels.

How does one reach these non-reading readers? If I knew that, my name would be as well known as Dan Brown’s.

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

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THE BLUEST SKIES YOU’VE EVER SEEN ARE IN . . .

I’ve never been to the state of Washington, but I’d be willing to bet that the Colorado skies in September are much, much bluer than those in Seattle. The thin, dry Colorado air gives the sky a purple cast so deep and vast you can only call it the color of infinity. 

I live off a highway, so unless I want to take my life in my hands by dodging demented drivers or being asphyxiated by exhaust, I walk laps up and down the .3 mile rock- and gravel-strewn dirt lane in front of my home. Although the scenery provides a gorgeous setting for the trashy trailers and tacky houses, after about the ten-thousandth lap (not all in the same day!), the scenery fades into the background. Which is a good thing — I need to look down at my feet to keep from stepping on sharp rocks or stepping into potholes. Still, with writing, as with life, the significance is in the details, so during each walk, I try to find a new detail to focus on. Today it was the sky.  A perfect, cloudless, September sky.

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My Fruitful Summer

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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Happy Bloggiversary To Me!

I started blogging two years ago, back when I didn’t even know what a blog was. I’d read about how important blogging was for authors, both as a way of getting known and as a way of connecting with readers. Deciding to “act as if” I were going to be published one day, in the hopes of making it happen, I created this blog. I had nothing to say, no one to say it to, no reason to say anything, but I didn’t let that stop me. I started yapping and haven’t stopped since. Although I intended to blog every day, I’ve only managed 372 posts in those two years. I’ve received 2,003 comments. I’ve posted in 36 categories, and used 1,402 tags. In the past year, I’ve had five times as many views as I did the first year. Not bad for someone who’d never even heard of a blog.

Did acting as if I were going to get published work? Perhaps, though there is no direct connection that I know of. Still, I have had two books published by Second Wind Publishing and a third will be published next month. More importantly — at least blog-wise — I am still blogging, still making connections, still making friends. Still having fun.

It amazes me that anyone wants to read anything that I write here. This is so much a place for just letting my thoughts roam, for thinking through problems, and (I admit it) for pontificating a bit. It’s been a kick, writing this blog, and I want to thank all of you for indulging my whims and whimseys.

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So . . .  thank you.

Okay, I Admit It. I’m Jealous.

Jealous of whom? Need you ask? I bet if they were honest, most authors would also admit they were jealous of Dan Brown. Whatever one thinks of the man himself, the man as a story steller, the man as a wordsmith, the fact is, he wrote a book that is dazzling the world.

I only read The DaVinci Code because I was curious as to what captured people’s attention when it came to books. Though his prose is supposedly the worst thing since moldy bread, what I noticed were the internal inconsistencies — if the villain was so smart as to stay one step ahead of Robert and Sophie, if he was so smart as to figure out where they were going next and kill the person they wanted to contact, why wasn’t he smart enough just to kill the two of them and put us out of our misery? I don’t like books where the body count rises just to show how smart the hero is to stay alive. Cheap thrills, but apparently they work. 

The internal inconsistencies were bad enough, but what drove me nuts were the external inconsistencies — though the cathedrals in France do hide a code, the code predates the cathedrals, predates Christianity even. The cathedrals were all built on ancient mystical sites, as was the Vatican itself.  If the cathedrals themselves do contain a code, it is a manifestation of the prehistoric meaning. And then there was Sophie as the direct descendent of Jesus. Puh-leeze. A family tree is exactly that — an everspreading, ever thinning genetic branching. Even if Sophie was a direct descendent, her Jesus genes would be so minuscule as to be indistinguishable from yours or mine. (Go back twenty generations, and we’re all related.) I won’t even mention the possibility that Mary Magdalene never existed as a flesh and blood woman but, together with the other two Marys, was a manifestation of the mother goddess. And then, of course, I kept hearing echoes of a previous book I’d read — Holy Blood, Holy Grail — the book that he didn’t credit for his research.

Still, with all that, he captured the world’s attention, and now with his new book, for whatever reason, he is dazzling the world again. I wonder what that would be like? Must be nice.

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