Pat Bertram's Blog, page 220

If You Are Sick Of Hearing About My Loss . . .

Someone left a comment a couple of days ago saying she is tired of hearing about my loss and so is cancelling her subscription to this blog. To be honest, I don’t really blame her. I never expected the death of one man (my life mate/soul mate) to have such an impact on my life that I could feel the ripples of his absence three and a half years later. I certainly never expected to still be mentioning my loss after all this time (it seems a bit pathetic), but I can’t ignore the single most significant event of the past few years of my life. Everything I am, everything I will be stems from that loss.

Death is such an inhuman and inexplicable event that our brains scurry around trying to solve the enigma of a presence that has become an absence. Some people are lucky enough to believe in a benevolent God and a beatific afterlife. Others of us strive to find meaning, and if we don’t succeed in finding it, we have to create meaning.

For now, this blog is my meaning. Or rather, the means to my meaning. I was so stunned at all I felt after his death, so shocked at how little I understood such profound grief despite having lost a brother and my mother that I used this blog as a way of helping other bereft find their way through the labyrinth of pain. I wanted to let them know they are not crazy if they continue to feel grief long after their family and friends (and blog readers) have become tired of their sorrow. The truth is, we too get tired of our loss, but we have no choice but to continue our struggle to live.

And it is a struggle. I realized long ago that the only way I could make sense of his death is to do things that we wouldn’t have done together, or to do things that I wouldn’t/couldn’t have done while he lived. Even though I am no longer actively grieving and in fact am quite happy at times (I seldom cry any more, and if I do, it’s only for a moment or two), I still honor my loss with all that I am doing. I continue to blog about grief, take night walks with the local Sierra Club, travel a bit, write, amble in the snake-infested desert, and do things I am not necessarily comfortable doing.

Although it might seem as if I am still bemoaning my loss by continuing to mention his death, the truth is, I am not embracing loss. I am embracing life — my life. I’m still not convinced life is a gift — there is way too much pain in the world — but my loss is the means of my future gain. I will not waste the freedom his death brought to me. I will not waste the courage he bequeathed me. I will not waste what is left of my life, even though I have to continue alone.

It seems to me that my struggle to create a meaningful life is worth writing about. So, if you are sick of hearing about my loss, feel free to unfollow me, but I am going to continue to blog about my life, and my life includes his death.

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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.

Tagged: blogging to help with grief, creating meaning in our lives, embracing life, impact of grief, life after loss, three and a half years of grief

In the Company of Married Women

I had lunch with some friends today, which would have been nice though not particularly significant if it weren’t that all the women were married. Since the death of my life mate/soul mate, most of my friends have been my fellow bereft — my sisters in sorrow — but gradually I’ve been meeting women who are still coupled. Today was the first time I found myself in the company of only married women.

I was actually okay — no tears — but it did make me sad to listen to these women talk about their husbands’ irritating qualities. Although I sympathized, I wanted to cry out to them to treasure every moment, even the most exasperating incidences, because in the end, every moment spent with the person you love (or once loved) is a golden moment.

But I kept my mouth shut. Anything I said — even a gentle request to give their husbands an extra hug that night — would have seemed as if I were chastising them, and if my words didn’t strike such a note, I would still have turned the focus of the conversation from them and their comfortable confidences to me and my uncomfortable realities. Besides, until you have lost your mate, you simply cannot understand how precious every moment is. You’re caught up in the daily struggle to maintain your autonomy in the face of someone else’s wishes, the struggle to get all of the day’s chores finished, the struggle to find a harmonious balance between aging bodies and youthful spirits. You don’t have the energy to focus on distant tragedy.

So, I’m telling you what I would have liked to say to them. Smile at your mate instead of ignoring or arguing with him. Give him an extra hug and maybe a kiss. Thank whatever powers you believe in that no matter how irritating he might be, you have him for one more day. This is an incredible gift I am giving you — a memory to treasure if ever you should become one of us bereft.

***

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.

Tagged: husbands, lunch with friends, married woman vs widows, memories to treasure, precious moments

I’m a Guest on the Second Wind Publishing Blog

I am blogging at my publisher’s blog today, talking about Finding the Truth of a Story,

We are steeped in story. From birth to death, story forms our lives. Today, more stories are available to us in more media than ever before in history, including the stories we share with each other and ourselves. What is a daydream if not a story of the future we tell ourselves? And at night, while sleeping, our dreams tell us other stories. No wonder we have such a hard time finding a story that is not clichéd. Continue reading—>

 My previous guest post for Second Wind Publishing was Writing: A Universe of Choices.

When we choose to write, we are faced with a universe of choices where all things are possible. Many would-be writers never put a single word on the page because the number of choices to be made seem insurmountable. First, we have to choose what to write about. The topic can be anything: love, abuse, super novas. Next we have to choose how to present the topic. As fiction or nonfiction? As a blog? A poem? A short story? A novel?

By making these decisions, we begin to limit our universe of choices. A blog has certain criteria to be met; it must be brief and interesting or we run the risk of losing our readers. A short story can contain complex ideas, but a novel has the scope for us to develop those ideas more fully. Continue reading—>

If you’re not bored yet, feel free to check out my highest ranked post on the Second Wind Blog: What is Your Character’s Favorite Color?

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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.

Tagged: deciding what to write about, finding the truth of a story, guest blogger, Second Wind Publishing

Rubicon Ranch: Secrets — My Current Chapter

Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the fictional desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing.

In the current story, the  body of a local realtor is found beneath the wheels of an inflatable figure of a Santa on a motorcycle. The realtor took great delight in ferreting out secrets, and everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Could she have discovered a secret someone would kill to protect? There will be suspects galore, including a psychic, a con man, a woman trying to set up an online call-girl service, and the philandering sheriff himself. Not only is the victim someone he had an affair with, but he will also have to contend with an ex-wife who has moved back in with him and a jilted lover, both with their own reasons for wanting the realtor dead.

We hope you will enjoy seeing the story develop as we write it. Let the mystery begin! Whodunit? No one knows, not even the writers, and we won’t know until the very end! If you don’t want to miss further chapters, please go to the blog and click on “sign me up” on the right sidebar to get notifications of new chapters.

(If the Christmas theme seems unseasonal, well . . . considering how long it takes to write a book at the rate of a chapter a week, in a few months, the season will catch up to us!)

Chapter 25: Melanie Gray

by Pat Bertram

Sunday, December 24, 9:00am

Melanie stayed up most of the night sending emails to people on Alexander’s and her contact lists, asking what they knew about her husband. She told them—untruthfully—that she planned to write his biography, and so needed to know anything that could help explain his life and especially his death

She didn’t really expect to discover his secrets this easily, but she hoped that she could at least find a place to start looking for answers. The immediate responses were condolences from those who hadn’t known about his death and from those who hadn’t taken the time to write five months ago when he’d died in what had seemed to be a car accident. A few responses included an anecdote about Alexander, but no one dropped a hint about what he could have done to trigger an assassination.

Only one response surprised her. She’d expected their agent to gush with delight at the prospect of the book, but Dottie wrote: Are you sure this is a wise idea, darling? You might not like what you find out. And isn’t it better to remember him as a real man rather than a character in a book, even one as brilliant as I’m sure yours would be?

Too tired to think of a response to her agent’s message, Melanie dragged herself to bed. She dozed off but jerked herself awake to escape the shadowy creatures who chased her into a building with no windows and no way out.

She thought she’d been asleep for only a few minutes, but the brightness of the room told her she’d slept far into the new morning. She lay in bed, unwilling to face another day in the horror that Rubicon Ranch had become, when she realized she heard something strange for this neighborhood—silence.

She jumped out of bed, ran upstairs to her loft office, and glanced out the window. No tour buses, no streams of cars with gawking passengers, no young people (or old people for that matter) dressed as Halloween ghouls. The only things out of the ordinary were the sheriff’s department vehicles cruising the street—at least four of them. One of the tan vehicles pulled up to the curb in front of her rented house, and Sheriff Seth Bryan climbed out.

Melanie dashed down the stairs to the bathroom, splashed water on her face, ran a brush through her hair, and grabbed a dress from the closet. The off-shoulder peasant dress wouldn’t have been her choice for the first encounter with the sheriff in two months, but she didn’t have time to rummage in her closet for something more appropriate.

The doorbell rang. Barefoot, she went to answer it.

The sheriff’s jeans and white shirt still fit his lean, flat-bellied body as if they’d been tailored for him. As when they first met, he wore a blue ball cap with “Sheriff” embroidered in yellow, but his hair curled around the cap as if it had been awhile since he’d taken the time to get it cut. For once he’d left off the mirrored sunglasses, and he looked as if he’d aged two years since she’d seen him last. Apparently, his attempt to make his marriage work hadn’t succeeded. Or maybe the marriage was succeeding, and his haggard expression and weary dark eyes came from too much time in bed with his wife.

Why do you care?

“Good morning, Ms. Gray,” Sheriff Bryan said, his tone as formal as his words.

“Good morning, sheriff.” Melanie stepped outside, put a hand above her eyes to shade them, and made a show of peering up and down the street. “What happened?”

“The people’s right to free expression and lawful assembly destroyed our crime scenes and impeded our investigation, so we cleared the area of anyone who didn’t live here.”

The chill of the concrete crept up Melanie’s bare legs, but she held herself in place. “You call that lawful assembly? So, if there hadn’t been a murder, you’d have just let all those necrophiliacs continue overrunning the neighborhood?”

“Not murder, Ms. Gray. Murders—two of them. And arson.”

“How did you get rid of all the ghouls and gawkers?”

“We have a deputy stationed on Delano Road and Tehachapi, checking to make sure only people who belong here enter the street. And those who were already here—well, we told them we’d arrest them as accessories to murder. When that didn’t work, we reminded them that tomorrow was Christmas, and that Santa didn’t deliver presents to bad little boys and girls in jail.”

“So, you’re the UnSanta Claus?”

The sheriff quirked one eyebrow as if surprised to discover she had a sense of humor, but Melanie had to admit to herself that in their relationship—if a few meetings and a couple of meals could be called a relationship—there’d been no room for humor. There’d been too much death, too much pressure, too many unanswered questions.

“Have you found out anything more about Alexander’s assassination?” Melanie asked.

“We’re doing what we can, Ms. Gray, but there’s nothing to go on. Just skid marks on an open road.”

“What about Alexander’s missing cameras? If someone stole them from the car right after the accident, there might be a witness.”

“We haven’t found a witness, but if a bystander took the opportunity to steal what you said were expensive cameras, I’m sure he or she wouldn’t be interested in informing us of that fact. Have you looked for the cameras? Maybe they’re inside the house somewhere.”

Melanie wanted to stamp her foot, but she refrained. She didn’t want the sheriff to see her acting so childishly, especially since he was being so damned formal. Besides, it would hurt her bare foot. “I told you. I put the cameras in the car myself.”

“Did he drive off immediately?”

Melanie gazed at the driveway where the car had been parked that morning. She’d put the cameras in the trunk. Alexander had yelled at her from inside the house that she had a phone call. She’d slammed the trunk shut and hurried inside.

The call had been from Dottie, their agent, wanting to know if they’d get the book done by the deadline. Melanie had been annoyed with Alexander for not talking to their agent himself because it would have taken him less time to assure Dottie than to shout for Melanie.

When she hung up the phone and went outside, she found that Alexander had left. She never saw him again, never got to say good-bye.

“Ms. Gray?”

The sheriff’s voice, smooth as melted chocolate, startled her.

“Stop calling me that,” she snapped.

“What would you like me to call you?” he asked.

“Nothing. Stop using my name every sentence as if you’re some kind of used car salesman with a lemon you want to get off your hands.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Melanie clamped her mouth shut, refusing to rise to the bait.

The sheriff smirked, and the haggardness disappeared from his face. “I need you to tell me what you know about Nancy Garcetti, Clark Bailey, and the fire.”

Melanie glanced back at the door of the house, wondering if she could slip inside for shoes to warm her icy feet, but she didn’t want to have to invite the sheriff into the house. It would feel too much like a fly inviting a spider to visit.

“Go put your shoes on, I’ll wait out here.”

Melanie ran inside, put on socks and shoes, and then sedately ambled back outside. The sheriff hadn’t moved.

“I wish I could help you, sheriff,” she said. “But I don’t know much.”

“I asked you once to call me Seth.”

Melanie shook her head. “Not exactly appropriate.”

“Ah, yes, I’d forgotten how very ‘appropriate’ you always were.”

Melanie narrowed her eyes, wondering if that had been a dig, but he continued as if unaware of her reaction.

“Had you ever met Nancy?”

Melanie tried to remain as still as the sheriff. Or was that the wrong way to act? Did her stillness indicate guilt? Crap, being a maybe murderer was hard.

“I met her once, but we only exchanged a few words.” I know you killed your husband.

“And what about Clark Bailey?”

Melanie relaxed, knowing she had nothing to do with anyone by that name. “Never met him.”

“Oh, but you did. You met him last night. After the fact, so to speak. He’s the man you found wearing the Santa hat.”

“I guess maybe I should have called it in—”

“Ya think?” the sheriff interjected.

Melanie winced at his sarcastic tone. “But I just could not face being known once again as the cadaver dog. I suppose Moody had no choice but to tell you.”

Sheriff Bryan gave her an avuncular smile. “Moody didn’t tell us. She left you out of it. Be careful. She has her own agenda, and she eats innocent women like you for breakfast.”

Melanie straightened her shoulders. “I can take care of myself.”

“Perhaps. Be careful, anyway.” The sheriff turned to leave, then glanced back. “What do you know about Lydia Galvin?”

“Lydia Galvin?” Melanie frowned. “Your Lydia?”

“It’s not how I’d put it, but yes, that Lydia.”

“I don’t know anything about her. Why, is she here?” Melanie laughed, feeling suddenly lighthearted. “She is, isn’t she? Oh, poor Seth. All his chickens coming home to roost. Your wife. Now Lydia. Maybe you’re the one who needs to be careful.”

When Seth cut across her property to the Sinclair house, Melanie realized he hadn’t asked her about the arson. He didn’t forget such matters. Like Moody, he had his own agenda, kept his own counsel.

Melanie went inside, locked the door behind her, and climbed the stairs to the office to see if she’d received any new emails. There was just one from an unfamiliar gmail address:

You never know when to leave well enough alone, do you? Alexander Gray is dead. Let him rest in peace.

***

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+

Tagged: mystery series collaboration, online novel, Rubicon Ranch, Rubicon Ranch Necropieces, Rubicon Ranch: Secrets, Second Wind Publishing

Zigzagging in Writing and Life

I walk in the desert, sometimes on straightaways, sometimes on hills. I learned something from the hill walks: she who goes up, must come down. And sometimes “down” means a very steep grade. I discovered that it was much easier to get to the bottom of these steep hills if I zigzagged from one edge of the path to the other. By descending diagonally, I can cut the steepness of the hill and am able keep my footing.

This seems to be a good metaphor for plot. While writing, we zigzag down an increasingly steep slope, never quite letting our readers know what direction they are traveling, but always keeping them on the path to the end. Or perhaps they are going up a hill, but the point is still the same: zigzagging.

I sent More Deaths Than One to hundreds of agents and editors, and the consensus was that my writing style was too matter-of-fact for the overly complicated plot. This from people who never read more than a few chapters. (Luckily for me, I finally found a publisher — Second Wind – who read the whole novel and understood what I wanted to accomplish.)

It could be that as readers head down the steep slope of my story, zigzagging from side to side, the plot does seem complicated, but when they reach the end and look back, they can see that the story is very simple. A straight path. A man discovers that what he knows about himself is a lie, and he sets out to discover the truth. Very simple. All the complications are simply the zigzagging path.

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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.

Tagged: desert, focus on writing, plot, walk, writing

Grief is Exhausting

Yesterday’s grief update — I Am a Three-and-a-Half-Year Grief Survivor — was very sedate, no great emotion. And that’s how the day went — sedate, no great emotion. I kept myself busy and endorphinized with walks, exercise, and errands. I actually felt happy for a while. (It’s easy to be happy when you are zipping along at three miles an hour beside a dry riverbed at night with new friends, and only flashlights and stars to illuminate the walkway.)

Today, however, I am tearful. I woke with a great yearning to see my deceased life mate/soul mate. I wish I could talk to him, find out how he is (or if he is). I wish I could feel as if once again, I were home. (He was my home. Everything else is just a place to live, though I am gradually learning to find “home” in myself, because of course, wherever I go, there I will be.)

Grief is exhausting, even after forty-two months, and maybe that’s what hit me today — exhaustion. I get tired of trying to find reasons to live and ways to be happy. I get tired of trying to focus on the positive elements of my life and to find ways around that vast emptiness where he once was. The more I do these things, the more of a habit they will become, but his absence is still such a significant factor in my life that the creation of happiness and meaning is a conscious effort. I am always aware that that whatever I am doing is not an augmentation of an already full life, but instead is a way of spending the hours and maybe building a new life for myself.

I feel silly at times even mentioning my sadness because so many people have experienced horrific tragedies that make the death of one middle-aged man seem insignificant, but his death is exceedingly significant to me. And it’s significant to the world (even if no one else is aware of it) because the death of a good man (or woman) somehow diminishes us all.

So today, I will allow myself to be sad that he is gone from my mortal life and from this earth, and wait until tomorrow to once again pick up the pieces of my life and continue on without him.

***

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.

Tagged: finding home, grief is exhausting, three and a half years of grief, yearning to see my soul mate

I Am a Three-and-a-Half-Year Grief Survivor

Three and a half years ago today, my life mate/soul mate died of inoperable kidney cancer. It seems an impossibly long time ago, as if I knew him in another life. It also seems as if it’s only been a few months since I last saw him.

Yesterday I watched his version of Fly Away Home (he edited out parts of movies he/we didn’t like, such as heavy drama and prolonged arguments, which makes what he did leave in very personal). When Jeff Daniels told Anna Paquin that she had to continue the flight by herself, that she had to leave him behind and follow her dream, it seemed as if were a message to me from my mate to just go on with my life, follow whatever dreams I can muster, and leave him behind. (In fact, he often told me I’d have to that very thing — just leave him behind. He was losing his sight, his hearing, his strength, and he didn’t want me to hang around if he became a lingering invalid.)

Well, now I do have to leave him behind. Or maybe he left me behind. (I still don’t have any firm belief about what actually happens when one dies.) Either way, I am becoming comfortable with being single in a coupled world. I don’t panic about growing old alone as I did at the beginning — it seems oddly inevitable, as if it had been written long ago.

During all these painful months and years, those who have lost their mates often told me that around the four-year mark, they found a renewed interest in life, and so it is with me. I find myself coming alive again. Feeling eager to do new things, meet new people. I’m becoming more active physically — taking exercise classes and walking with a group two or three nights a week in addition to my solitary desert walks.

It seems fitting, in a way, all this physical activity. During the first months after we met, I was often restless, going for long ambles around the city (Denver had an interconnecting system of parks and parkways, and I could walk for hours along greenbelts). And now I am again restless, needing more than a single walk to get me through the day.

I still don’t know where I am going with my life, don’t know what I want other than to be more than I am (though at the same time, I am more accepting of who I am and how I look than ever before). Lately I find myself wishing on the first star I see at night, but the only thing I can think of to wish for is to be spectacular. I’m leaving it up to the universe or fate or a future me to decide what “spectacular” means.

It seems strange that of all the grief updates I’ve posted during the past three and a half years, this one is more about me and less about him, and that too is how it should be since my life is now more about me and less about him. I still miss him, still feel his absence in my life the way I once felt his presence, but I no longer feel as if I am a remnant of a shattered couple. I am just me — a woman alone who one day might be spectacular.

***

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.

Tagged: being spectacular, Fly Away Home, follow your dreams, grief and restlessness, grief at four years, leaving the dead behind, Three-and-a-Half-Year Grief Survivor

Everything Happens For the Best — Oh, Yeah?

Twice today I was told, “Everything happens for the best.” Everything? Is it best when a child dies? When an earthquake hits? When people lose their home and end up on the street? In books, everything does happen for the best, whether good or bad. That is the point of writing — to make sense of senseless happenings. There has to be a lesson to be gleaned from the story events — perhaps character growth or a fitting resolution. If the story events happened without reason, the way things happen in life, readers would throw the book across the room and never pick up another one.

Oddly enough, our brains do that same work for us. When a tragedy has passed and we have come to terms with it, when we have found a way to live despite the pain life dishes out, we often look back and think, “Everything did happen for the best.”

Sometimes now I feel that the death of my life mate/sould mate and my ensuing grief all happened for the best. If he hadn’t died, our lives would have remained on the same treadmill of pain (him) and despair (me). His death set me free — free from his illness, free from the financial constraints that his illness caused, and even free from the chains of such a deep love.

He almost died twenty years ago, and so every day I made a point of recognizing and appreciating his continued existence in my life. Because I knew our time together would be cut short (and it was, just not as short as that earlier brush with death would have indicated), whenever there was a choice of doing something with him or by myself or even with another person, I always chose him. And so, gradually the chains of love were forged. Now if there is an opportunity to do something, being with him is not an option, which has opened my life to many new possibilities.

But was his death really for the best or is my brain simply doing what it can to make sense of everything that happened in the past two decades, and especially the past few years? His death ended our pain and set us both free, but what would have happened if he could have gone into intermission? Would I have ended up in the same place even if the tragedy hadn’t occurred? It’s impossible to tell, but I do know not everything happens for the best. We make the best of what happens. It’s called life.

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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.

Tagged: everything happens for the best, loss, making the best of it, tragedy, why write

The Rule of the Gun and Card Tricks in the Dark

Thinking often takes the place of writing for me, which can be a problem. If I know the whole story, what I want to say and how I want to say it, I seem to find little interest in actually writing the book. On the other hand, if I don’t know the major elements of the story, I find little interest in writing. I’ve been performing this balancing act with my grieving woman book. trying to put all the pieces together enough to get the story finished. For example, the woman finds a gun in her husband’s bathrobe pocket, and I’ve been wondering what to do with it. Chekhov said that if you show a gun in the first scene you have to fire it in the third. I followed Chekhov’s rule for Daughter Am I, but I don’t see the woman in my IIP shooting the weapon. (I’ve written so little of the book it’s not a Work-in-Progress but an IIP — Idea in Progress.) The gun could be more of a symbol, something so out of place in her husband’s life that she realizes she didn’t know him at all, and hence she doesn’t know herself. So the book would turn out to be a search for identity, as are all of my novels.

In googling “the rule of the gun” to find its author (I’d forgotten it was Chekhov), I came across a wonderful site: Glossary of Terms Useful in Critiquing Science Fiction. Only a few terms are specific to science fiction, so it’s a fun glossary for anyone who writes. I especially like:

Black box scene analysis. A convenient means of evaluating how important a scene is. Think of the scene as a black box: characters go in to it and come out of it. What have they gained or lost? What irrevocable things have happened? How are they different people afterwards than before? The black-box scene analysis is a useful means of separating local dexterity (entertaining imagery) from important plot or character development. (CSFW: David Smith)

Card tricks in the dark. Authorial cleverness to no visible purpose. Wit without dramatic payoff. (Lewis Shiner)

Eyeball kick. A perfect, telling detail that creates an instant and powerful visual image. (Rudy Rucker)

Head fake. A plot action that appears to be significant but is rapidly proved to be a net null, leaving the plot moving in exactly the same direction. Excessive head fakes undermine the reader’s engagement because the reader becomes trained that they are not real. (CSFW: David Smith)

Inappropriate mystery. An author will often use mystery as a means of propelling a reader forward: characters speak of things that are opaque to the reader, a character goes offstage to do something important, or a development is referred to indirectly (“I was just heading out the door when the phone rang, with terrible news”). Mystery is inappropriate when the expected dramatic follow-up is lacking: the offstage action proves to be a diversion, or the suspense proves false. (CSFW: Steve Popkes)

Laughtrack. Emotional countersinking, where the characters’ give cues that tell the reader how to react. They laugh at their own jokes, cry crocodile tears at their own pain, and, by feeling everything themselves, eliminate the reader’s imperative to do so, so the reader disengages. (Lewis Shiner)

Laughtrack is one I am going to have to be particularly careful of in my grieving woman story. In my previous books, I’ve tried to show the story and let readers infer the emotion, but tears are such a part of grieving that I will have to figure out how to engage readers despite the tears.

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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.

Tagged: black box analysis, Card tricks in the dark, Chekov's gun, head fake, inappropriate mystery, the rule of the gun

Happy Bloggiversary To Me!

I created this blog exactly six years ago today, back when I hadn’t yet become a published author, back when I didn’t even know what a blog was. I’d read how important blogging was for authors, both as a way of getting known and as a way of connecting with readers, so I decided to “act as if” I were going to be published in the hopes of making it happen. 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 blogging on September 24, 2007, and haven’t stopped since.

Did acting as if I were going to get published work? Perhaps, though there is no direct connection that I know of. Still, one and a half years after starting this blog, my first two books were published by Second Wind Publishing. They have now published five of my books — four suspense novels and one non-fiction book about grief. More importantly — at least blog-wise — I am still blogging, still making connections, still making friends. Still having fun.

One thing I never expected when I set up Bertram’s Blog, is how much I would like writing and publishing my articles. I feel safe here, away from the constant promos, ideological ravings, and mindless ratings on other sites, and it gives me the freedom to say what I want, no matter how personal. Three and a half years ago, my life mate/soul mate died, and his death catapulted me into such a world of such pain that it bled over into my posts. This blog became a place where I could try to make sense of what I was going through, to offer comfort and be comforted, to find my way to renewed life.

It’s nice to know that whatever life throws at me, whatever problems I encounter, whatever challenges come my way, this blog will be here for me.

Although I’d planned to post every day, during the first four years I only managed to blog three or four times a week, but exactly two years ago today, I made a 100-day commitment to post a daily blog, and I continued to post every day once that initial commitment was fulfilled. (Which makes this a double anniversary — 6 years for blogging, 2 years for daily blogging.)

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.

Thank you for reading. Thank you all for your comments, your likes, your support. They have meant more to me (especially this past three and a half years) than you can ever imagine.

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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.

Tagged: acting as if, blogging, bloggiversary, daily blogging, grief and blogging, postaday, Second Wind Publishing