Pat Bertram's Blog, page 289

The Miraculous Resurrection of the Suspense/Thriller Writers Group on Facebook

A few days ago I talked about how when I first joined Facebook, I hadn't a clue what to do, and how quite by accident, I became a moderator of an almost defunct writing group called the Suspense/Thriller Writers. I was trolling around the site, looking for groups that might interest me, and I stumbled on that particular group, which had but eight members. On the right sideboard was a button that said, "become a moderator of this group." I was curious what becoming a moderator would entail, so I clicked the button. And that's how I became the moderator of the group. To make it a viable group, rather than a typical Facebook group where people just posted book covers and other promotional bits, I decided to have weekly discussions.

We had some great discussions about improving our craft, but facebook, in it's infinite wisdom (that is irony, in case you didn't catch it) decided to get rid of the discussion boards. Without the discussion board and the help we offered each other, any serious discussions rapidly disappeared beneath the steady stream of self-promotion. So all we could do was post information about our books, and in doing so, we lost many of those serious about writing.

On Sunday, something miraculous happened. The members of the group began talking about what they wanted from the group and what they didn't want. Mostly, what they didn't want was blatant self-promotion, and especially from members who never bothered to participate in any group activities. So, we decided to limit such promotion to Saturday (and I'm hoping to make that a fun day where everyone gets together to talk about their books).

This is the first time in a very long time I've felt any excitement at being on Facebook. Not only did we reclaim our group, but I made new friends and reconnected to some long-time facebook friends who had disappeared from my newsfeed.

And today, something else miraculous happened. I found the link to our original discussion board!!! It's still viable, just not linked to the group, so I don't know if  it's worth using, but all that great information is not lost, and losing the information worried me most of all.

So where did I find the link? Here on my blog!! I have a terrible habit of blogging about everything in my cyberworld, and once (or twice or who knows how many times!) I blogged about my facebook activities.  Three years ago exactly (well, minus one day — the post was November 14, 2008) I asked people to join the Suspense/Thriller Writers group, and listed some of the links. And darn if those links don't still work! Wow!

So, if you're interested in learning more about writing, meeting writers, networking, join the Suspense/Thriller Writers. All writers (and readers) are welcome. If you don't think you write suspense, think again. Whatever genre you write, you still write suspense. Suspense at its most basic is making readers worry about what is going to happen to your characters. If they don't worry, they have no reason to read. Besides, all genres make use of the same basic story elements: plot, characterization, scenes, description. So, see you on Facebook.

Speaking of facebook, you can friend me here: Pat Bertram, but if you want to friend me, be sure you tell me why (say you saw me on my blog or some such). I don't friend everyone who asks, though I once did. I want to actually get to know the people I know. Also, you can "like" me here: Pat Bertram. I hope you do. "Like" me, I mean.

Tagged: Facebook, Pat Bertram, Suspense/Thriller Writers Group on Facebook, writing discussions

Proving I Am Human

My email provider has apparently decided I am not human. Every time I try to send an email, it posts strangely twisted letters for me to identify to prove that I am not a machine. Since I have a hard time seeing some of the twists and turns, occasionally this email provider kicks me off its site for not being human.

Does anyone else see the irony of trying to prove to a computer that I am other than it? And losing?

Perhaps the computer should be trying to prove to me that it exists. Or at least that it knows what it's doing. My email provider says there has been too much spam being sent from my IP address, which is why they need this proof of humanity (as if humans never send junk email) but the IP address they say is mine, the email address all that spam is originating from is in Kansas City. Huh? What does that have to do with me? I am more than a thousand miles away from Kansas, though maybe I fell down a rabbit hole without being aware of it? No, wait . . . rabbit holes have to do with Wonderland, not Kansas. Must be all this email jabberwocky that's confusing me. Or perhaps to a computer — which I may or may not be — Wonderland and Oz are the same place.

I do understand the rationale behind the captchas — spam is getting way out of control. In the last few weeks, three people I know had their email accounts hacked, and two lost the accounts and everything in them. At least a dozen Facebook friends had their profiles hacked in the past couple of days and naked photos were posted through their accounts (photos that have over five hundred thousand likes, I might add — apparently I'm going about social networking all wrong. I'm lucky to get five likes per post).

And on top of all this, every few minute a png file tries to open itself on my computer, files with bizarre names such as jkjsylddw.png or qwxxcvjks.png. Perhaps a computer or two has decided I'm one of them and they are coming on to me?

Ah, well, I'll just have to continue traveling the twisted path of trying to prove I am human. But I still think it's bizarre I have to continually prove it. I mean, whatever happened to "I think, therefore I am"? Shouldn't that be proof enough?

Tagged: captchas, email, facebook spam, proving I'm human, spam

Here is My Point: There Needs to be a Point When it Comes to Writing

I saw an indie movie yesterday that was so indie it could actually be considered self-produced. Well, truthfully, it was self-produced — and it went straight to video without a big screen debut, which is something you should all be thankful for. The only reason I watched it was that it was filmed near where I am staying, and I had fun trying to figure out where all the scenes had been filmed. There was no other reason to watch it. The actors were terrible. (I'd read once that a good actor was one who acted natural on the screen. These folk were so unnatural as to make paper doll cut-outs seem life-like in comparison.) The plot was derivative. (You know the story — drug dealers, undercover cops, only one cop left alive at the end and you wish he'd died along with all the rest.) The camera work was appalling — looked as if it had been filmed with a cell phone (as one of my fellow movie watchers put it).

So, here's my question. Why did they make that particular movie? What were they thinking — "Let's make a movie that's been made a zillion times before, but let's see how bad we can make it"? I know they weren't trying to showcase talent — there wasn't any. They weren't trying to have fun with dialogue — it was stilted and silly at best. They didn't show the drug dealer vs. cop conflict in any new light. So, what was the point? I still don't know.

This is the same question I ask myself about many of the books I read, and I get the same response — I don't know what the point is.

But here's my point — there has to be a point, especially when it comes to books, because if there is no point, why would anyone read it? A writer can write for herself, of course, which might be the point of writing the book, but we readers need a reason to read it. Even if it's a light romance or a cozy mystery written only to entertain, there still has to be a reason for it. People do read for entertainment, but if a book gives a reader nothing new — no new experience, no new understanding, no interesting character or situation, no wit or humor, just a rehash of what has been written too many times already — there's not even any entertainment value in it.

I recently read a well-touted book from a debut author, someone I had met on facebook.  I looked forward to the book since this woman posted such interesting and witty remarks that I thought for sure her book would be as interesting. It was, to a certain extent — it was well-written, the dialoque was sort-of snappy (though it often came across as contrived) and the story was okay. But it was only okay, nothing special. There was no spark of originality, no reason to care about the character, nothing that explained why hundreds of people wrote glowing reviews. I might be getting to be a bit of a curmudgeon, since obviously I was one of the few who found the book disappointing, but the truth is, I was disappointed. All the way through, I kept thinking, "Why am I reading this? What's the point?"

Books don't need to have a message — in fact, books with messages are often not worth reading — but there has to be a reason for the book to exist beyond an author's imagination, even if it's just for us readers to see what happens to a character we care about.

Tagged: indie movies, message in a novel, reason for reading, the point of a book

Blogging Day #49 — Hard Rock Cafe

This is not my 49th day of blogging, of course. I've been blogging since September 24, 2007, and I've written 684 posts, but this is my 49th straight day of posting.  I've been wanting the discipline of writing every day, and since I have no focus for fiction, I decided that recommitting myself to blogging is a good way of getting back into writing. Luckily, I usually can find something interesting to say (interesting to me, that is. I can only hope it's interesting to you). But today, I've been out gallivanting with  friends and got back late, which leaves me little time and no inclination to pontificate. (I hear your sounds of relief!!)

So here is something I hope will amuse you as much as it did me. This was an exhibit in the Route 66 Museum we visited today:

Here is a close-up of the menu:

Tagged: chalcedony, hard rock cafe, jade, osidian, pun, Route 66 Museum

Is It Necessary to Want Something?

The other day I told a friend about the feeling of expectation that accompanied my grief and how empty I felt when nothing wonderful happened to me.  She said we have to make wonderful things happen, we can't just wait. Then she started quizzing me on things I wanted to do. I couldn't come up with anything. I've never really wanted much, never had big dreams or wild fancies. I do want to want something, though. It would give me a goal, a reason to be hopeful, an investment in the future.

But here's the conundrum:

We're told that we have to want something, have to try to reach beyond our comfort zone so that perhaps wonderful things will happen to us. At the same time, we're told that all things come to those who wait.

We're told that dreams are important, that we need to have something to live for. At the same time, we're told to be grateful for what we have, to live for the day.

We live in a society with an economy that is built on the principal of wanting. The more we want, the more we buy, the more we use, the more we help the economy. At the same time we're told to be frugal, not to waste, but more trash automatically accompanies more goods. I had to get rid of so much of our stuff when I moved out of our house, that it makes no sense to buy more stuff. So, where does wanting to want something fit in with that situation? I sure don't want more stuff to eventually have to get rid of!

And then, there's the Zen philosophy that we should neither want nor not want.

So what is the answer? Wanting? Or not wanting? Going after something or waiting till it comes to you? Having dreams, or being satisfied with what you have?

(After the conversation with my friend, I did think of something I wanted. I always wanted to make a gingerbread house, so I made a little one. I don't want to eat it, though. But still, I can cross it off my list.)

Tagged: all things come to she who waits, are dreams important?, wanting more, Zen

Hurrying Through Grief To See What is On the Other Side

During the first months of wild grief after the death of my life mate, I occasionally had the feeling that something wonderful was going to happen to me. I don't know why I had that feeling — perhaps my sense of fairness dictated that a great good was needed to balance a great grief. Or perhaps such a cataclysmic closing of one segment of my life demanded an earthshaking opening of another segment. Or perhaps after years of waiting for his suffering to be over, I felt deep down that it was time for me to live.

I wasn't the only one who thought his death might bring good changes to my life. Shortly before he died, he himself told me that everything would come together for me after he was gone. (He never explained what he meant, though, and foolishly, I never asked.) And afterward, my sister, who witnessed my grief and saw it as life affirming, told me that I could be entering the happiest time of my life.

Whatever the truth of it, I held on to the feeling because . . . well, because it was all I had to hold on to. In fact, the feeling was so strong at times that I wanted to hurry through my grief to see what was waiting for me on the other side. But here it is, nineteen months of grief later, and whatever that wonderful thing I expected to happen, didn't.

Part of me is still waiting (just as an ever-diminishing part of me still waits for his phone call to tell me I can come home), but mostly, the feeling that something wonderful was going to happen to me is gone. Oddly, this is not an uncommon feeling for us bereft, and those who had the feeling of expectation also felt let down when nothing wonderful happened, which leads me to believe that the feeling is a survival mechanism, or perhaps another one of the many stages of grief nobody ever talks about. (Those who did have something wonderful happen in their lives weren't able to feel the wonder of it, which left them feeling empty, and that is almost as bad as having nothing wonderful happen.)

Yesterday at the grocery store, I saw one of the hospice social workers who occasionally moderated the grief group I used to attend, and I thanked her for helping me through such a terrible time. During our conversation, I mentioned the odd feeling of anticipation I'd had during my months of grief. She replied, "Something wonderful did happen to you. You got through it."

Is that wonderful enough to account for all those months of expectation? Maybe is has to be.

Tagged: death, getting through grief, grief, loss

The Symphony of a Life Gone By

It is impossible to freeze a single moment of music — what you get is a chord that means little by itself. It only gains meaning by what went before it and what comes after, by existing as part of a whole.

Ever since the death of my life mate, I've been haunted by images of him at various stages of his life — when I first met him, when we were in the fullness of our relationship, and then at the end, when there was nothing left but a body depleted of life. Which of these moments was him? Were any of them him? Or, like music, were each a single meaningless chord in the symphony of his life?

This might seem a foolish reflection, but it is one that echoes now that his life has been silenced. When a person is alive, the person you know is the culmination of a life, with everything — every note and chord of his existence — leading up to that very moment and foreshadowing the song of his future. When the person is gone from this earth, there is no more culmination. The man I knew at the end — the man who had spent his last breath — is gone, burned into a pile of ashes and crushed bone. The man I knew at the beginning, the radiant man with half of his life still ahead of him is also gone, burned by the fires of living and dying. So which is the real person? How do you remember a life — a man — when all you have are bits of the whole?

We were not picture takers, and I have but a single photo of him. Although it looked exactly like him when it was taken fifteen years ago, it doesn't look at all like him at the end of his life. For months after his death, I refused to look at the photo, afraid that the image of him in my mind would be supplanted by the image of the photo. Recently I decided it doesn't matter if the image in my head is not of him at all. No image is him. He is gone, his moments forever broken into meaningless chords. I know I cannot hold the whole of him in my mind — it took 63 years of living to play his entire repertoire, parts of which I never heard.

And so, I look at the photo, this single chord of his life, and remember the symphony of a life gone by.

Tagged: death, freezing a single moment of music, life, music as a metaphor for life, remembrance

Introduction to Beth Groundwater, Author of "A Real Basket Case"

When I first joined Facebook, like many new members, I hadn't a clue what to do, so I became a moderator of an almost defunct writing group called the Suspense/Thriller Writers. Sounds ho-hum, doesn't it? But it was that simple. I was trolling around the site, looking for groups that might interest me, and I stumbled on that particular group. It had eight members at the time. On the right sideboard was a button that said, "become a moderator of this group." I was curious what becoming a moderator would entail, so I clicked the button. And that's how I became the moderator of the group. To make it a viable group, rather than a typical Facebook group where people just posted book covers and other promotional bits, I decided to have weekly discussions.

Brazen me, I picked people from the group at random (after an active membership drive I had over 1,500 members because those were the days authors were signing up for facebook  in droves. Or do I mean signing up in murders — you know, like a murder of crows. What else do you call a convocation of mystery writers?) and asked if they'd like to host a discussion. That was my introduction to Beth Groundwater. Three years ago — November 13, to be exact — I asked if she'd host a discussion, and she said yes. (One of the many strangenesses of Facebook is that the email discussion about the discussion is archived for all times, which is how I know the date, but the discussion itself, which took place on November 18, 2008, has disappeared into the great maw of Facebook's yesteryear.)

It was an apropos discussion, too, considering all the changes Facebook has made. To lead off her discussion, Beth said, "I'd like to see the members of this group help each other figure out how to effectively use the features of Facebook to promote themselves and their books without turning off members of the network." Today, without the discussion board and the help we offered each other, any serious discussions rapidly disappear beneath the steady stream of self-promotion. So all we can do is post information about our books, probably turning off the members of the network in the process.

The discussions may have disappeared from the group, but Beth is still there and still a class act.

The title of this post is Introduction to Beth Groundwater, Author of "A Real Basket Case," but all I did was natter on about me and my running battle with Facebook. So, I'll tell you what — if you click the link below, it will take you to my other blog where I am interviewing Beth. And that interview is all about her. I promise.

Click here for an interview with: Beth Groundwater, Author of "A Real Basket Case"

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Tagged: authors promoting authors, "A Real Basket Case", Beth Groundwater, Facebook, facebook changes, Suspense/Thriller Writers group

Have You Ever Felt as if the World Were Backward and Upside Down?

?drawkcab saw dlrow ruoy fi sa tlef reve uoy evaH

Hɐʌǝ ʎon ǝʌǝɹ ɟǝlʇ ɐs ıɟ ʎonɹ ʍoɹlp ʍɐs ndsıpǝ poʍu¿

¿uʍop ǝpısdn puɐ pɹɐʍʞɔɐq ɥʇoq sɐʍ plɹoʍ ɹnoʎ ɟı sɐ ʇlǝɟ ɹǝʌǝ noʎ ǝʌɐH

At times, we've all felt as if the world was backward and upside down, felt as if we needed to stand on our heads to make sense of life. Come to think of it, the world is upside down all the time, or at least half of it is, though I doubt anyone knows which half is upright and which half is upside down. Does space have an orientation? Is there a top and a bottom? A right and a left? An east and a west? We know the east is where our sun rises (at least, that's what we've been taught) but in space, with no rising suns, with not much of anything in fact, is there an east?

We live on a small ball, careening around in space, twirling and tumbling at unimaginable speeds. And yet, for the most part, we manage to deal with each sluggish day as it comes without a thought to our precarious situation. Some days, we feel as if we are on top of the world even when there's nothing to prove to ourselves that we are on top. Other days, by definition, we have to be at the bottom of the world because, in a globe situation, there is no way for everyone to be on top all the time.

There are some things one cannot make sense of, even when you and the world are both upright. Electrons, for example. We live in an electronic world, with billions of electrons careening around in mostly empty space (hmmm. Too obvious a metaphor, perhaps?). Or maybe there is only one electron zinging around so fast it creates the whole shebang. (Not my idea about there being a single electron, though with the way my mind is working tonight, it might as well be. As for shebang — that's something no one seems to be able to make sense of — apparently it appeared about of nowhere like the big bang.)

Now, don't you feel so much better about your problems? Life may not always make sense, but it muddles along whether we understand it or not.

Tagged: dealing with our problems, electronic world, on top of the world, shebang, upside down world

Do Blogs Need to Have a Single Topic?

Most articles about blogging mention that you need to pick a topic for your blog and all your posts need to center on that topic. Is this really necessary? I suppose if you are a literary agent who sets himself up as an interpreter of the publication industry (explaining what one needs to do get published, for example), you'd need to stick to your topic, otherwise you'd lose your readers. Or if you are a marketing coach who is trolling for clients, it would be a good idea to stick to the topic at hand. But what about the rest of us? Specifically, what about us authors? Is it necessary for us to stick to a single topic? And if so, what should that topic be?

I have two fairly well-received blogs that are topic-oriented — Book Marketing Floozy, which is an indexed blog of book marketing tips and hints written by various authors, and Pat Bertram Introduces . . ., which is a blog for interviews with authors and their characters.  (Ahem! You know this because, of course, you have already submitted an interview, right?! If you haven't yet submitted your interview, you can find the instructions and questions here: Author Questionnaire. I'll be waiting for it!!)

I also have a third blog that isn't as highly rated as those two, but it is rated (if an Alexa rating of 21,000,000 passes for a rating.) That third blog, Dragon My Feet, went through several metamorphoses from a blog to talk about all the things I did while procrastinating from writing (which I never used because when I was procrastinating from writing, I wasn't even writing blog posts) to a blog highlighting excerpts from books as part of my ongoing effort to promote others while I learn to promote myself. You can find submission requirements for that blog here: Let me post your excerpt!

Which brings me to the blog at hand, the one you are reading, the point of the discussion. This blog started out as a place to talk about my efforts to get published, my efforts to get noticed once I was published, and what I learned along the way. I'd talk about reading and writing, and over the years I ended up with some pretty impressive views on some of my articles about writing.  "Describing a Winter Scene," for example, has almost reached 10,000 views for that article alone, and it spawned a couple of other posts with good ratings: "Describing a Winter Scene — Again" and "Describing a Winter Scene — Again. And Yet Again." And all of those winter scene articles descended from the grandmommy of them all: "Describing a Scene in an Interesting Way." But continuing to write such articles would get boring after a while, both for me and my poor readers, most of whom know more about writing than I do!

Before boredom set in, Death intervened. Not my death, of course, but it was a significant event in my life nontheless, and so I started writing about grieving. Partly, I couldn't think of anything else but my sorrow, and partly I got so furious at novelists who didn't seem to understand the first thing about grief that I wanted to set the record straight. Well, I accomplished that to a certain extent, and now I have a book about my grief that will be published next year. So, in a way, all that talk about grief was still within the parameters of this blog — all part of writing.

But now I'm coming out of the worst of the fog. I've said most of what I wanted to say about grief and most of what I wanted to say about writing (I mean, how many articles about describing winter can one person write?) and now I'm at a crossroads. I've been talking about the various things I've been doing to put my life back together, such as "Halt and I'll Shoot! (Adventures With Firearms)" and "Proving to Myself That I'm Real," but eventually I'll move beyond that, and then what? I'll have to decide on a topic for this blog. Or do I? Is "life, writing, and the writing life" a specific enough topic? Is it better for an author to write about whatever catches his or her interest so readers (hypothetical though they may be) can better get to know you? Is it enough simply to blog?

Tagged: blog topics, blogging, description, grief