Pat Bertram's Blog, page 303

Excerpt from Light Bringer by Pat Bertram

Light Bringer is my latest novel, scheduled for release by Second Wind Publishing in March, 2011.

Description of Light Bringer:

Becka Johnson had been abandoned on the doorstep of a remote cabin in Chalcedony, Colorado when she was a baby. Now, thirty-seven years later, she has returned to Chalcedony to discover her identity, but she only finds more questions. Who has been looking for her all those years? Why are those same people interested in fellow newcomer Philip Hansen? Who is Philip, and why does her body sing in harmony with his? And what do either of them have to do with a shadow corporation that once operated a secret underground installation in the area?

Excerpt (Prologue):

Helen Jenks gripped the steering wheel and squinted into the darkness beyond the beam of the Volkswagen's headlights. Nothing looked familiar. Was she almost home? The snow had stopped falling, but in these hills so far from town, the county didn't bother to plow. She didn't know if she drove on the right road, or any road at all. There were no other cars, no tire tracks.

Where was everyone?

She sighed. Home in bed, probably, where she would be if she hadn't pulled a double shift at the hospital.

Hearing an odd drone, she cupped a hand behind an ear and tried to isolate the sound from the rumble of the Volkswagen engine. Was something wrong with the bug? Oh, please, no.

All at once the sky lit up. She leaned forward for a better view and caught sight of a brilliant star that seemed to throb in time with her heartbeat, growing brighter with each pulsation.

She sat back and rotated her head around her stiff neck. Maybe it was Venus. Hadn't she read that at certain times of the year, under certain conditions, Venus could be as big and as bright as the moon?

Leaning forward again, she saw the star pulse one last time, then wink out. As she became used to the darkness it left behind, it reappeared, darted toward the horizon, and vanished. So, not Venus. Perhaps a meteor or two.

She listened for the drone, but no longer heard it. Good.

Ten minutes later, she noticed a pin prick of light in the distance: her porch light. Her car slid to the side, and she gripped the steering wheel harder. Be careful, she cautioned herself. You're not safe at home yet.

When at last she parked in front of her old frame house, she pried her fingers off the steering wheel and stumbled out of the car. Except for the dings and pops of the cooling engine, the world was silent, appearing so new and un-touched, she hesitated to mar the opalescent expanse with her footprints. Then her eyebrows drew together. The snow wasn't untrodden after all. Tracks led to the house where a small gray creature huddled against the door.

She clapped her hands. "Shoo. Shoo."

The creature did not stir.

"Go on. Get," she shouted.

The creature still didn't move. Was it dead? This wouldn't be the first time a dying animal had been attracted to the warmth seeping from beneath the front door.

She approached gingerly, relaxing when she saw what appeared to be an old gray blanket that had somehow ended up on the stoop. She bent over to collect the wad of fabric, then straightened. Bad idea. Who knew what vermin had taken refuge in the folds.

Before she could figure out what to do, the blanket moved. She jumped back and stared at it. The blanket moved again, giving her a glimpse of a coppery curl.

She lifted the bundle, cradled it in her arms, and drew back the blanket. Two dark eyes, shining with intelligence, gazed at her.

She sucked in a breath. An infant, no more than nine months old.

As the infant continued to gaze at her, its eyes brightened to gleaming amber. Then it beamed at her—a welcoming smile, both joyous and knowing, as if it had recognized a dear friend.

Helen's face felt tight. "Who are you?"

The baby chortled in response.

"And who left you here?" She glanced at the tracks. They led in only one direction—toward the house.

Feeling dizzy, she crouched to examine the tracks more closely.

They were footprints. Tiny footprints in the snow.

Tagged: Colorado, excerpt, fiction, Light Bringer, mystery, novel, search for identity, Second Wind Publishing, shadow corporation

Letting It Be

My previous post chronicled my thought processes as I watched the video "Let It Be" that is making the rounds. As I said in that bloggery, At first I thought that perhaps this was the answer to my confusion over the death of my mate of thirty-four years. Just go on with my life and let it be. Forget my grief. Forget the pain of losing him. Forget trying to make sense of it all. Just . . . let it be.

When I first wrote that a few days ago, something in me let loose, and though I claimed I did not want to let it be (whatever it is) I haven't been the same since. At least not exactly the same. I still had my usual Saturday upsurge of grief (preceded by a late night — I don't seem to be able to go to sleep until after 1:40 am on Friday night, the time of his death) but I felt sad rather than soul-broken. I've even had a few moments when I could actually feel glimmers of life.

I can't forget my grief or the pain of losing him, though both are slowly diminishing. And I can't stop trying to make sense of my life. That's who I am and always will be — a truth seeker. But I can let go of trying to make sense of his life.

It has haunted me all these months — the dual vision of the young radiant man he was when we met and the skin-covered skeleton he'd become. Were all those years of illness worth living? He was often in pain and wanted to be done with life, yet he kept striving to live until the very end. I remember those last years, months, days, and I still cry for him and his doomed efforts. But he doesn't need those tears. His ordeal only lives in my memory. And that is what I am letting be. It is not for me to make sense of his life or his death. It is not for me to keep suffering for him now that he is gone.

A fortune cookie I read the other day said, "Cleaning up the past will always clear up the future." Much of my grief has been about cleaning up the past — coming to terms with small every day betrayals, with dreams that never came true, with leftover worries. I have cleaned up the past, gradually worked through those conundrums. What is left is the habit of dwelling on the past, and that I can let be. It does neither of us any good.

Will it clear up the future for me? Perhaps. At the very least, it will help me face the future. Whatever that might be.

Tagged: cleaning up the past, clearing up the future, death, fortune cookie, grief, Let it Be, life, loss, making sense of life

Let It Be . . . Me

I know you've seen the video, everyone has. It's been emailed and remailed, Facebooked and Twittered, blogged and Gathered, clogging cyberspace with the message: Let It Be. At first I thought that perhaps this was the answer to my confusion over the death of my mate of thirty-four years. Just go on with my life and let it be. Forget my grief. Forget the pain of losing him. Forget trying to make sense of it all. Just . . . let it be.

My second thought as I continued watching this very looooong and repetitive song (Sheesh! What was Paul McCartney thinking when he wrote it? Not much, apparently) was how my mate would have enjoyed seeing all those faces as they are today. We have so many of them in his movie collection, and they are always that age, the one they'd reached when they made that particular movie (such as a much younger Sherilyn Fenn in The Don's Analyst or a very young and fit Steve Guttenberg in Surrender).

My third thought was let what be what? And that's where the thoughts stalled — in a semantics word jam.

I finished watching the video, thinking nothing, just watching the parade of faces, but now I'm wondering if Let it Be is really a philosophy I want to embrace. It seems too accepting of life's vagaries and not enough of . . . well, embracing.

The whole purpose of going through grief is to process the pain and the loss, to mend your shattered life and heart so that one day you can embrace life in its entirety once again. I haven't dealt with all these months of tears, anger, frustration, emptiness, loneliness, pain, just to spend the rest of my life letting it be. I want to let it be me –  the one who's strong enough not to have to simply let it be.

Tagged: anger, dealing with grief, death, embracing grief, embracing life, grief, Let it Be, loss, Paul McCartney, Sherilyn Fenn, Steve Guttenberg, Surrender, The Don's Analyst

Grief: Loose Cannon on Deck

A loose cannon conjures images of a weapon wildly firing in all directions, but it actually refers to a cannon on the deck of a ship. Cannons needed to be lashed down, but in turbulent waters, cannons sometimes came loose and rolled around the deck. Their great weight (some weighed as much as 1800 lbs!) made those loose cannons a dangerous liability and they could crush a hapless sailor who got in the way.

That's exactly the way grief feels. Every time you feel as if you're getting a solid footing despite the turbulence of your new life, whack! That cannon comes loose and crushes you again.

It would be so much easier if the so-called stages of grief were actually stages that you can check off after you've experienced it. Denial. Check. Pain. Check. Anger. Check. Depression. Check. Acceptance. Check.

All done, right?

Wrong!

After you've gone through the list, there it comes again, the pain or the anger or the disbelief that he is gone, and you have to do it all over again. Add to that the innumerable stages that aren't commonly known such as isolation, anxiety, low self-esteem, confusion, panic, frustration, hopelessness, loneliness, bitterness, missing the person, fretfulness, hanging on, waiting for you know not what, and dozens of others. Not everyone who has experienced a significant loss goes through all the stages, but no matter what, we've all felt that loose cannon and wish we could just tie the dang thing up and get on with our lives.

So we do.

And then, comes another storm, there's that loose cannon again.

Can you sense the pettishness of my tone? Must be another stage I've never heard of. Well, check this one off, too.

Tagged: anger, death, denial, grief, loose cannon, loose cannon meaning, loss, significant loss, stages of grief, strength in grief, truth about grief

Owing His Memory?

I found this paragraph in a book I read recently, and it's a graphic example of why I want to write a novel about a grieving woman — so few understand the nature of grief:

Jean-Pierre was gone; nothing could bring him back, and her feelings for him, feelings that had risen suddenly, had been ebbing just as quickly as evidence of his involvement with illegal drugs had surfaced. If Jean really had been running drugs, she owed his memory nothing.

Owed his memory? What does that mean? This example seems to have been written by a person who knows little of grief. In all these months of steeping in the world of grief, I have not heard a single person mention owing the dead person's memory anything.  Memories are all we have left and we treasure them, but we also know that memory is not a living creature to whom we must pay homage. We might feel obligations to those who are gone, obligations such as honoring their wishes as to funerals and disbursement of treasured possessions, but we fulfill those obligations out of love and because we find comfort and continuity in still being able to do things for our loved ones. But owing the memory we have of the person? Doesn't even make sense.

We bereft are all struggling to find a way to live with the hole in our lives, with the ongoing sadness, with the reality that grief is an unending (though perhaps diminishing) journey. No griever I have met has said, "Wait! I can't be happy. I owe too much to his memory." Grieving is a process, something we do, something that happens to us, but it is seldom the choice that is hinted at in the above example. Quite frankly, we are all sick of grieving, of being sad, but the only way not to be sad is to have our loved ones back with us, and since that is impossible in this world, we continue on as best as we can with our shattered lives. But we owe that to ourselves, not to his memory.

Tagged: comfort, continuity, death, grief, grief process, loss, love, memory, obligations, owe memory, sadness

Finding Inspiration From Uninspiring Sources

Deserts have traditionally been mystical places where one goes to find inspiration, themselves, the meaning of life, but nowadays people use the desert as a park, a place of recreation rather than re-creation. They whiz by on dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles, they honk their dogs (let the dogs out of the vehicle and and follow along behind, honking whenever the creatures go to far astray), they have drunken parties, and they dump trash, including old furniture.

I used all of these bits to set the scene for the first chapter of Rubicon Ranch: A Collaborative Novel, a novel being written online by me and eight other Second Wind authors, especially the discarded furniture. I do believe I have seen enough old furniture in my walks to furnish a living room, but the piece that most captured my imagination was the television sitting out in the middle of nowhere. No road led to the television, just a footpath. Yet there it was. And so it appears in my chapter:

She turned around to get shots of the trail she'd just climbed and saw a glint of metal reflecting the sun. She squinted. What was that? A television? She found herself smiling—her first smile since Alexander died. She scrambled back down the trail. The television had been dumped a long time ago judging by the creosote bushes that had grown up around it, but footprints leading to the box suggested it had been visited recently. She took several shots from the trail, about fifteen yards from the television, then moved closer. The television had no screen, and she could see that something had been stuffed inside. A doll? She crept closer. Ten feet away, she stopped to take another photo, and the truth washed over her. Not a doll. Crammed inside the console was a child, a girl, her eyes half-eaten by some desert predator.

We've now posted the first six chapters of Rubicon Ranch, the latest one by Christine Husom, author of the Winnebago Mystery Series.  The most fun of a project such as this is that we do not yet know who killed the little girl (if in fact, she was killed) and we won't know until all but the final chapter has been written. I hope you will enjoy following our story as we write it.

Chapter 1: Melanie Gray — by Pat Bertram
Chapter 2: Seth Bryan — by Lazarus Barnhill
Chapter 3: Jeff and Kourtney Peterson — by J B Kohl and Eric Beetner
Chapter 4: Dylan McKenzie — by Nancy A. Niles
Chapter 5: Mary "Moody" Sinclair — by JJ Dare
Chapter 6: Cooper Dahling — by Christine Husom

Tagged: collaboration, desert, fiction, mojave green rattlesnake, murder, mystery, novel, photographer, Rubicon Ranch, Second Wind Publishing

Thinking While Writing

Although I finished the challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month, I am still writing, though I'm back to my usual snail pace and my habit of thinking while I write. It's not so much that I'm reverting to my old ways, but that I've written all the easy parts. Now, besides figuring out how to put the book together, I have to write any missing scenes, write the connective tissue that turns isolated scenes into a cohesive story, and write descriptions, which has always been hard for me. I am not fond of long descriptive passages, but I understand the need to anchor a reader to the story with visuals, so I try to describe a scene in as few words as possible. Generally I do this by finding a significant detail — the one thing that will make a scene come alive, such as a green lizard on the ceiling of a hotel room in Thailand or a razor-wire-topped fence hidden in the trees.

All those parts of the story take thought, which means no more writing at break-finger speed. Still, I've come away from the experience with a better appreciation for the writing process (though, drat it! It was supposed to be a vision quest, and I had nary a vision.)

The most important lesson I've learned from this experience is that by jumping around and writing scenes as I think of them rather than trying to write them chronologically, I can see what I need to include. For example, in my other WIP, the apocalyptic allegory that's been paused for the past three years while I dealt with life, I need to have my hero preparing for the future. I couldn't think of all that he would need, but after writing a scene where he assisted at the birth of a baby, I could see he needed something with which to cut the cord. I already had him sharpening a bit of flint, but since these end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-survivors have no clothes but loincloths, which traditionally do not come equipped with pockets, he pulled the flint out of a pouch. Aha! So now I not only have to have him make the flint, I have to have him carrying it around. He started out working on it in secret and hiding it before returning to the group, no he will have to make a pouch (out of what? and how?) and start carrying the makeshift knife. But why would he go through all that trouble? Perhaps too many people have shown an interest in his activities. Perhaps someone went searching for the knife. Perhaps he just likes knowing it is available if he should need it.

Answering why is a vital part of keeping our writing cohesive. Without character motivation, we end up with a series of happenings that aren't connected, which means no story. Knowing what the story needs, such as the flint in the pouch, I can go back and figure out why he'd have it, otherwise it seems too coincidental. And to keep from things being coincidental, I have to think, which means writing at a slower pace. At least for a while.

Tagged: character motivation, cohesiveness in writing, describing a scene, descriptive passages, motivation, story, writing challenge, writing pace

I Am an Eight-Month Grief Survivor

When you love someone deeply, their well-being is as important to you as your own, but what do you do with that feeling when your someone is gone? Eight months ago, my life mate died, and now he has no need for stories to amuse or outrage him, no need for tasty meals to tempt his appetite, no need for comfort or caring or kindness, and yet my habit of thinking of him remains. Eventually, I imagine, the habit will wear itself out, but for now I still find myself thinking of ways to make his life a bit easier or a bit more enjoyable.

After eight months, I am still in . . . not shock, exactly, but a state of non-comprehension. I can't comprehend his death, his sheer goneness. I can't comprehend his life, though perhaps that is not for me to bother about. Most of all, I can't comprehend my sorrow. I never saw much reason for grief. Someone died, you moved on. Period. I thought I was too stoic, too practical to mourn, and yet, here I am, still grieving for someone who has no need for my sorrow.

Despite my continued grief, I am moving on. My sporadic tears do not stop me from accomplishing the goals I set myself, such as NaNoWriMo and daily walks. My sorrow doesn't keep me from taking care of myself — or mostly taking care of myself. (I don't always eat right, and I don't always sleep well.) Moving on, as I have learned, is not about abandoning one's grief, but moving on despite the grief.

Grief is much gentler on me now, and I can sidestep it by turning my mind to other things, but I don't always want to. I have not yet reached the point where thoughts of him bring me only happiness, and I need to remember him. If tears and pain are still part of that remembrance, so be it.

We shared our lives, our thoughts, our words — we talked about everything, often from morning to night — yet even before he died, we started going separate ways, he toward his death, me toward continued life. I often wonder what he would think of my grief, but just as his life is not for me to try to comprehend, my grief does not belong to him. It is mine alone.

And so the months pass, eight now. Soon it will be a year. Sometimes it feels as if he died only days ago, and I expect him to call and tell me I can come home — I've proven that I can live without him, so I don't have to continue to do so. Sometimes it feels as if he's been gone forever, that our life together wasn't real, perhaps something I conjured up out of the depths of my loneliness. Sometimes my grief doesn't even feel real, and I worry that I've created it out of a misguided need for self-importance. Such are the ways of grief, this strange and magical thinking. This could be magical thinking, too, but it seems to me that having survived eight months of grief, I can survive anything.

Tagged: dealing with loss, death, grief, loss, loss of a mate, magical thinking, moving on, remembering, sorrow, surviving grief, tears, walking

NaNoWriMo Winner!

This might be Black Friday for you, but it's a red letter day for me! I actually wrote 50,408 words so far this month, which makes me a winner of NaNoWriMo. (National Novel Writing Month.) Although I already validated my entry, I'm going to continue writing the rest of the month because half of the challenge for me was to write every day in November.  The final part of the challenge, digging for buried wisdom hasn't happened — but I did find all those words, and that's a major step for me. Haven't written that much in years!

Tagged: NaNoWinner, NaNoWriMo

A Thanksgiving Card for You

A friend sent me this card, and I'm sharing it with you. Happy Thanksgiving! Click on the image to get the full effect.

Tagged: Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day card