Pat Bertram's Blog, page 322

My Brand New Cousin and My Brand New Book

I love the internet. I never know from day to day what will happen, who I will meet, who will become part of my future. I've made many new  friends, some I have no doubt who will be in my life for years to come, and I also made a new cousin.

Another Bertram contacted me on Facebook and wanted to know if we were related. Since I have very few Bertram relatives that I know of, I told him regrettably that we probably weren't related, though we could be. He lives in Hamburg, and...

The Themes of Our Lives

I've been thinking about themes lately — the themes of our lives, the themes of our stories, the themes that permeate our relationships. (Technically, relationships fall under the category of the themes of our lives, but I like to do thing in threes, and I couldn't think of a third theme category.)

Someone asked me recently if I ever considered writing a novelization of my life, and I just laughed. There is no story in my life – nothing noteworthy ever happened to me, and I never did anything...

Lisping Dialogue

I used to read books about writing — dozens of them.  Several mentioned that mispelled words and apostrophes are no longer in style to show speech defects or accents – such dialogue is difficult to read.  To denote dialect, one needs to show speech patterns from the specific area, such as "It's not far, just down the road a piece." Tells you a bit about the character, and it's easy to read. Another suggestion was to use the misspellings and apostrophe's to set the character's accent in the...

Free Ebooks!

Free ebooks! Just stop by the Labor Day GiveAway at the Second Wind blog before September 12, 2009, mention the name of a Second Wind book that you'd like to read, and you might win an ecopy. http://secondwindpub.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/labor-day-giveaway/ Now is your chance to read More Deaths Than One or A Spark of Heavenly Fire! More Deaths Than One: Bob Stark returns to Denver after 18 years in Southeast Asia to discover that the mother he buried before he left is dead again. He attends...

Blog Talk Two

I just finished being interviewed on blog talk radio, and all things considered, it went okay. Well,  there was that part where my mind went blank and I couldn't think of a single disease mentioned in A Spark of Heavenly Fire, couldn't think of a single biological warfare experiment that I researched. Sheesh. I spent years on the research. You'd think at least some of it would have come easily to mind. I did manage to mention a  connection between swine flu and the novel, but still . . . it...

I Need a…Gulp…Outline

I've been rereading my work-in-progress, trying to get back into the mindset of the story so I can work on it. Usually by the time I've written 37,000 words, my characters help develop the story. No, my characters never take over — they always do what I make them do. It's more that I know who they are, what they want, and who's going to stop them from getting what they want. Unfortunately, during the first part of my WIP, my hero mostly contended with the ever-changing world, and the people...

On Writing: Looking Up

When your characters look up, what do they see? Sunsets and sunrises are so prevalent in books as to be clichés, yet every day there is a sunrise and every day there is a sunset, even if it's too cloudy for us to see either. I suppose mentioning the rising or setting sun makes more sense if there is a reason. For example, tonight there was a gorgeous sunset here because of the fires in California. The smoke drifts to Colorado and is trapped by the mountains.

I try to find different things for my

Distilling the Essence of a Story

I have an interview on BlogTalkRadio on Saturday, September 5 at 11:30am ET. We're going to be talking about back story — where I got the ideas for A Spark of Heavenly Fire and More Deaths Than One. Although one of the hosts of the show has read at least one of my books, I'm sure at some point he will ask me, "What are your books about?" And I will give the same answer I give to everyone who asks. A blank stare. Though, being radio, it will come across as blank silence.

How does one encapsulate a

Why Mistakes Happen

I worked hard to make More Deaths Than One typo-free, but there are at least two errors in the published novel.

        "I'm Kerry. Kerry Casillas." She eyed the obit-

ary. "How many of those children are yours?

        Bob massaged the back of his neck. "None."

And:

"I thought you were in the jungle of your nightmares."

Bob laid a had on top of hers. "I was."

"Then let's get you out of there. Finish the story." 

Errors in copyediting are easy to make. One website, Regret the Error: Mistakes Happen,

Whew! Now I Feel Safe?

I've been reading a very old book on blogging. For normal purposes, a 2006 copyright isn't that old, but apparently when it comes to the blogosphere, it's so old as to be . . . well, not worthless, but outdated. The only mention of WordPress in the book was the .org version. The .com version (the one most of us have come to rely on) wasn't even mentioned. Is WordPress.com that new? I don't know — I've only been blogging for two years, so anything before September 2007 is prehistoric to me.

Anyway