Pat Bertram's Blog, page 41

A Sort of Christmas Story

Washington Irving wrote: “There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.” As I read these words several years ago, I could see her, a drab woman, defeated by life, dragging herself through her days in the normal world, but in an abnormal world of strife and danger, she would come alive and inspire others. And so Kate Cummings, the hero of my novel A Spark of Heavenly Fire was born. But born into what world?

I didn’t want to write a book about war, which is a common setting for such a character-driven story, so I created the red death, an unstoppable, bio-engineered disease that ravages Colorado. Martial law is declared, rationing is put into effect, and the entire state is quarantined. During this time when so many are dying, Kate comes alive and gradually pulls others into her sphere of kindness and generosity. First enters Dee Allenby, another woman defeated by normal life, then enter the homeless — the group hardest hit by the militated restrictions. Finally, enters Greg Pullman, a movie-star-handsome reporter who is determined to find out who created the red death and why they did it.

Kate and her friends build a new world, a new normal, to help one another survive, but other characters, such as Jeremy King, a world-class actor who gets caught in the quarantine, and Pippi O’Brien, a local weather girl, think of only of their own survival, and they are determined to leave the state even if it kills them.

The world of the red death brings out the worst in some characters while bringing out the best in others. Most of all, the prism of death and survival reflects what each values most. Kate values love. Dee values purpose. Greg values truth. Jeremy values freedom. Pippi, who values nothing, learns to value herself.

Though this book has been classified by some readers as a thriller — there are plenty of thrills, and though the book was written more than a decade before the current pandemic, there are enough parallels to give anyone the chills — A Spark of Heavenly Fire is fundamentally a Christmas story. The story starts at the beginning of December, builds to a climax on Christmas, and ends with renewal in the Spring. There are no Santas, no elves, no shopping malls or presents, nothing that resembles a Christmas card holiday, but the story — especially Kate’s story — embodies the essence of Christmas: generosity of spirit.

You can read the first chapter of A Spark of Heavenly Fire here: https://ptbertram.wordpress.com/free-samples/a-spark-of-heavenly-fire/

You can download the ebook on Smashwords in any format here: A Spark of Heavenly Fire. As my gift to you, the download is free for the entire month of December.

Fun With Baking

There is a Christmas event at the museum this weekend. Before The Bob hit, I helped out at the event, but lately, I’ve been exposed to too many contagious diseases besides The Bob that I don’t want to press my luck by being among a group of strangers (or even a large group of friends, for that matter). So, I am not going to help this year.

Instead, I made brownie bites to add to their dessert offerings.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the baking experience. I’ve always loved baking, but that was one of the many experiences that went by the wayside when The Bob popped up. Not only were all activities I supplied desserts for cancelled, but people were leery of eating things other people made. (Except for restaurants. People still picked up orders to take out at restaurants. Go figure.)

And I can’t bake for myself. I’m not one of those who can bake brownies or some such and stick them in the back of the freezer for a special occasion, because every day is a special occasion. The next thing I know, the treats are all gone, and I’ve gained a few extra pounds. To stave off temptation, I don’t even keep flour or sugar in the house. If I want a treat, I buy a brownie at the store, which is a ridiculous thing to do. Those pseudo brownies don’t get rid of the chocolate craving because they are made with fake chocolate and taste like cardboard.

So these brownie bites I made from scratch were an especial treat — not just because of the fun of baking, but because the taste is sublime. Even better, once I eat a couple or three or four (they are tiny, just a bite or two), I have a place to get rid of them.

I never used to think twice about gifting people with my kitchen offerings, but now, it seems, everyone has some kind of dietary restriction, and I don’t want to put anyone in the uncomfortable position of having to refuse the gift. Still, there’s no reason to deprive myself of the fun of baking, particularly since I’ve invested in the ingredients. If people don’t want what I bake, that’s their problem, not mine. I’m sure I’ll find people who want a treat or two. Someone besides me, I mean.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Fair Game

Although I am trying to change passwords on sites and accounts that have personal information, for the most part, I tend to think that no matter what you do to protect yourself, if it’s on the internet, it’s fair game.

This was brought home to me last night when I tried to place an order from a company that had a couple of clever gifts I wanted to get for people who are hard to shop for. Generally, I don’t do a lot of gift-giving, but these people were especially kind to me this year, and I wanted to show my appreciation. Hence, the gifts.

I tried to put in the order online, but there was no place to enter the two different addresses, so I called their customer service line. They asked for my account number, which I didn’t think I had, but she said the account number was on the catalog even though I didn’t tell her I had a catalog. I found the number and gave it to her, and it turns out they already had all my information. Apparently, they set up an account when they sent the catalog.

I ended up having to pay the shipping costs on each item rather than only once if I’d done it online, but that was okay. The real issue is she told me that they would send me the tracking code when the orders were shipped, but she never asked for an email address. When I queried her about that, she rattled off my email address. Huh? Where did she get it? Now that I think about it, it was probably on the mailing list they bought for sending out their catalogs.

When I said she rattled off the address, that wasn’t exactly true. She very laboriously read it off to me. Considering her thick accent and her inability to understand me, there is a chance that these people will get the gifts I ordered, their names will be spelled right, and the brief message accurate. On the other hand, who knows what will happen. Your guess is as good as mine.

Normally when things are this difficult, especially if it’s something for me, I just forget it. It’s not worth it. But I did say these people were hard to shop for, right? So I stuck with the process and am keeping my fingers crossed that everything will be okay.

But yikes. Here I am trying to streamline my presence online, and it turns out there are all sorts of accounts in my name that I didn’t even know about. Yep, if it’s on the internet, the information truly is fair game whether we want it to be or not.

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***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Curmudgeonly

It’s 72 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside right now. In a mere fifteen hours, it will be 16 degrees. Wow, what a drop! I insulated my outside faucets because I won’t be watering for a few days, though by Wednesday, it will probably be warm enough to give my lawn a rinsing.

It will be good to have a break. Too often, standing out there watering, staring at all that green, I find myself thinking that grass is like hair for the ground. And just like hair, it needs periodic trimming and conditioning, shampooing and rinsing (mowing and fertilizing, watering). As you can see, not a whole lot goes on in my head when I am taking care of my new lawn.

On the other hand, when I am out and about, too much goes on in my head. For example, I’ve been seeing Santa Claus decorations, and for some reason, I have taken a dislike to the mythical old gent. (St. Nicholas may or may not be a myth, but the obese, red-garbed, bearded gent who harnesses wild animals to take him around the world in a single evening sure is.)

I think this dislike started around the time of that Polar Express movie. Here’s a kid who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, but he’s taken to the North Pole, meets elves and sees a huge Christmas present manufacturing system, and then it still takes a huge leap of faith before he believes in SC. Why? It should have been obvious from the beginning that something was going on. Then, when he gets older, he’s rather smug about still believing. Um. If you know something for a fact, if you’ve seen with your own eyes, then it’s not believing. It’s knowing. And how can he feel superior to those who didn’t go on the Polar Express, who had only their own mundane experiences to go by? As you can see, that ridiculous movie still brings out the curmudgeon in me.

Although I’m not particularly religious, religious decorations don’t bother me at all, mostly because they are an intrinsic part of the Christmas story, beginning a couple thousand years before the bearded guy was ever thought of). Mostly, though, the decorations that speak to me are the seasonal ones. As in seasons. Holly. Wreaths. Trees. Cranberries. Snow. The snow part is decoration, you understand; I’m not particularly fond of white Christmases. I’m surprised more people aren’t leery of snow at Christmas. Obviously, snow makes travel difficult, and so many people do travel at that time of year.

Not that any of this matters. It’s just my curmudgeonly side coming to the fore.

And speaking of being curmudgeonly — apparently, I use the phrase “this matters” (as in none of this matters) rather frequently because almost every day now my grammar check tries to tell me I should be writing “these matters.”

Bah, humbug!

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Collecting Local Stories

I’ve been collecting local stories in case I need colorful fillers in my new haven’t-yet-written-a-single-word novel, though to be honest, I have my doubts about some of the stories.

For example, right before I got here, a fellow was killed in a cottage across the alley. (Around here, a cottage is a house built onto the back of a garage.) Supposedly, they were drug users who got in an argument. Or maybe they were drug dealers. Or maybe they were narcs scoping out the drug situation in this neighborhood. In support of the third possibility, one neighbor told me that the dead guy was seen around the courthouse in a nearby city. In opposition, if they were DEA agents, they weren’t very good ones because another neighbor (who has since moved away. Yay!) was the local purveyor of illegal substances, and they never caught him. Though I suppose it’s possible they were looking for his supplier. The general belief, however, is that they were drug users who had a falling out.

Another interesting story is that a while back, many years before I got here, someone a few blocks away decided to put in a frog pond. He created the pond, then ordered a thousand frogs. Those frogs turned out to be toads who prefer a damp shady environment rather than a wet one, so they disappeared during the night. The toads I see are supposedly descendants of the mail order toads. It’s a cute story, but such a tale is not necessary to account for all the toads around here. After all, there are rivers and irrigation ditches, which could also be a source for the toads. When I lived on the western slope of Colorado, in a rural plains area similar to this (though surrounded by hills and mountains rather than the flatlands we have here), there were also toads. There seem to be seasons for toads because I remember one year when the baby toads were as plentiful and as fidgety as the grasshoppers.

There are other stories, such as the family who had fourteen kids, the fellow who won’t let anyone in his house because he doesn’t want anyone to see that he is a hoarder, the lady who lets all her dogs get killed, the dispatcher at the sheriff’s department who was married to the local drug dealer, the ex-soldier who was so “ex” there is no record of his being in the service. (His story is spooky, reminiscent of my novel More Deaths Than One). As everywhere, there are gossips and godly people (sometimes one and the same), courteous folk and curmudgeons, those who have lived here for generations and those who are elbowing their way into the power structure (such as it is).

I don’t know what I will do with all the stories I am collecting. I don’t even know if I can use any of them because I wouldn’t want people to think I was writing about them, even if I were. And even if I weren’t. (People often see themselves in a character even though I didn’t put them there.)

Some people would like to be in my book. In fact, the wife of the ex-soldier would like me to tell her husband’s story, but I don’t want to do another mind control novel. Though come to think of it, much of the latter part of that story is similar to stories of people who have been alien-abducted, which could be a way of introducing the story, and then only later letting it be known that our own government was the abductor. Still, it’s too tragic a story for me to want to tackle. I’d prefer a more lighthearted story I wouldn’t mind living since an author does live his or her story for however long it takes to write it.

But none of this matters at the moment since I’m just in the collecting phase of my new haven’t-yet-written-a-single-word novel. Once I’ve collected a critical mass of information, then perhaps the story will explode out of me, and I’ll finally rack up another novel.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Spinning My Wheels

I spent a considerable amount of time today trying to update and streamline my online accounts. I’ve found that I can’t delete some accounts — even going through the entire site map, there’s no place to delete. In one case, it was a store I’d ordered from a couple of times, and I don’t remember ever signing up for the site. I never made a note of the account information (user name and email). Nor do I recognize the password. It makes me wonder if they set up the account? Even if I did it, which is possible, it still seems strange that there’s no way to delete the account. I suppose they find it unbelievable that any customer would want to leave their establishment.

In a couple of cases, I couldn’t update the password. I kept getting error messages. In another case, I had a hard time getting my phone to recognize the new password.

But other than that, I am moving right along.

Some sites I don’t care about, of course. Like Pinterest. I never understood the point of the site, never liked it, never saw that it gained me anything, but there’s no reason to delete it or to change the password. It’s rather innocuous, with no personal information and no links to personal information, so I don’t much care. I’m mostly concentrating on places that do have personal information — social security number, bank routing number, debit card information. And I’m concentrating on my paid accounts — this blog and my website. (Although WordPress is a free service, I’ve been paying for an upgrade so you don’t have to deal with a bunch of ads.)

The task isn’t something that can be done quickly. In fact, it could take me as long to undo or redo all the sites as it took to set them up in the first place. Although I was a latecomer to the internet, it’s been fourteen years since my first foray, and I tried many different sites in those years, so there is a lot to review. But I’ll keep chugging along.

Some sites, of course, are now long gone, like Gather, the best social networking site for authors ever. (In fact, that’s where I met most of my online friends.) Other sites I’ve forgotten about because I never use them. (I used to like Canva, but I find that it’s a lot easier for me to use Photoshop elements than an online site, and anyway, come to think of it, I no longer do the sort of promotional graphic that I did on Canva.)

Writing all this down makes it sounds like a lot of rigamarole, as if I’m spinning my wheels and going nowhere. And no wonder — that’s exactly how it feels. I doubt it’s important to get rid of defunct online accounts, and I’m not sure it’s necessary to update my passwords since who cares about a rather obscure author in a rather obscure corner of the internet.

But you never know. It doesn’t hurt to be more security conscious, and that’s reason enough to go through all this trouble.

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***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Walking in the Dark

Here I am again, scrambling to write a blog post before the day runs out, though this time it’s not because of laziness or procrastination but because I was working all day and just got home. Not much happens to inspire me on such days, though I did enjoy walking home in the dark. I so seldom get out in the dark any more — there’s generally no need to — so even though I am always offered a ride home (sometimes insistently), I refuse. It’s only two blocks, and the problematic dogs are gone — one moved away with the problematic neighbors and the other canine died. (That woman should never be allowed to own pets. She told me that if she were a dog, she’d rather run free even if she ended up getting hit by a car, and guess what. Since I’ve been here, she’s had three dogs, and all three were killed. Weirdly, I even know the person who killed her last dog. Even weirder, now that I think about it, he knew it was her dog, so her blasé attitude must be well known.)

What I’m getting at is that the walk is as safe as possible. (Obviously, nothing is completely safe, but there are relative matters of safety. For example, there are a heck of a lot of places I’ve lived that I’d never even set foot out of my door in a dark evening, let alone at night.) It’s also fun this time of year seeing the colored lights. There are nowhere near as many here as there were in my dad’s neighborhood — those people must have thought that the only way to offset a non-snowy desert Christmas was to flood the town with Christmas lights. The decorations are tepid here in comparison, but still enjoyable.

The past few years I’ve made a point of doing a bit of inside decorating for Christmas — putting up a small tree and my bowls of lights if nothing else — but I’m not sure I want to make the effort this year. I will be spending the day by myself, and it seems rather absurd to put in so much time digging out the decorations and setting them up just for me, but then, on the other hand, perhaps that’s when it’s most important to make the effort.

I still have time to decide. Or not. We’re already into December! Amazing how that happens — time passing in huge chunks when one isn’t paying attention.

I used to think all those folks who got ready for Christmas early were jumping the gun, but now that I am aware of how fast time goes, I’m surprised more people don’t start getting ready in September or August or July.

But I am digressing. I was talking about walking home in the dark. Not only are the artificial lights pleasing, so are the natural ones — the stars that make themselves seen. You’d think out here there would be more stars visible, but admittedly, the lack could be in me and my old eyes rather than the meager light pollution generated by the sparse street lights. Luckily, there are enough lights to brighten my way when walking home, so I really shouldn’t complain about light pollution.

I got home safely, and in the end, that’s what counts.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

About Passwords

A couple of days ago, I got a security alert email from Google with a list of my duplicate passwords as well as those that were weak. This includes most of the sites I’d signed up for over the years. I suppose it really does behoove me to delete any site I have no more use for, and to update passwords. How kind of Google to send me a list of all those sites as well as the passwords!

I do have two concerns. If Google is privy to all our passwords, does it really matter what the passwords are? Even if they are unbreakable, they are obviously searchable if one has access to the Google cloud or wherever it is they store all their information.

The other thing is that once I have all those unbreakable passwords, they have to be stored somewhere because there is no way they can be stored in my memory — my brain memory, that is. That means they need to be stored on the computer so I can easily copy and paste as needed, which means that all those passwords are doubly vulnerable.

They’d eventually all be stored in my browser, which makes it simpler for me, but makes the sites more vulnerable. Even so, I’d still need a master copy of all the passwords because glitches do happen.

Despite my lack of concern, I did spend some time today with an online random password generator, which means that now there might be a fourth place where my passwords would be stored — on the generator site. Obviously, if they did store the passwords, it’s not that big of a deal since they wouldn’t know what site the password would open. And anyway, that part is easy enough to fix — just change a letter or a symbol. (This is an example of the passwords that were generated: eHLq-B9W. See what I mean about never being able to remember it? They did give a helpful memory hint, but I’d never be able to remember that either: egg HULU LAPTOP queen – BESTBUY 9 WALMART. Sheesh.)

I’m not sure what anyone would gain by breaking into any of my sites. Any online ordering I do is through an account that I keep empty until needed, so there is no way anyone can clear out what little money I have. Only two sites have my social security number (well, any number of sites would have it because the IRS and other government bodies have online sites, but those sites are not under my control, so I’m not going to worry about it). One of my sites already has a strong password, and the other will have one soon.

Other than that, despite my once active presence online, there really is not a lot of my personal information out there.

Apparently, though, stealing personal information is not the only reason sites get hacked. They use the hacked sites for phishing schemes, generating spam, installing malware, and a host of other not-so-nice activities. (At first, when Facebook blocked my blog for being spam, I thought it might have been infected, but if so, Google would have put a warning on the search result as they did once when a bit of code got mistakenly inserted into one of my posts.)

I’d started this article by thinking I’d ignore the password situation and stick with what I have (on the assumption that if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it), but now that I’ve looked further into the matter, I see that it would be a good idea to better secure my sites.

I’ll do it first thing tomorrow.

Or the next day.

Or maybe the day after that . . .

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***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Facebook’s Vendetta

Facebook is continuing its vendetta against me. It still has my blog URL banned, still say my blog is a spam site, and there is no recourse since they don’t answer emails, snail mails, or online help messages. For a while, I just let it go, figuring if they didn’t want me, I didn’t want them, but a few people mentioned how much they missed seeing my blog on their feed, so I got in the habit of reblogging this blog onto another blog — Dragon My Feet — and then posting that URL to FB.

That worked for several months, but suddenly, all photos that had been part of that reblog — the photos I use to illustrate my posts — disappeared from Facebook going back to when I first started reblogging. I experimented with uploading the photo directly to Facebook, and also uploading a new photo to the reblog, and those photos are still on F. So now I know — they have extended their ban of my URL to any reblogged photo that originated here.

I thought of continuing to upload a duplicate of the photo from this blog to the reblog, but then I rethought that idea. It’s only a matter of time before their bots notice that my so-called spam URL is posted on the reblog, and then they will ban that blog, too. For now, I will continue posting the reblog URL on FB, but for those FB friends and acquaintances who want to read my blog, now would be a good time to sign up to get notifications directly to your email address. (Scroll down to the bottom of the left-hand column and click on “follow.”) As with FB, you can simply “like” a post if you want me to know you were here and don’t want to leave a comment, but of course, I am always appreciative of any comment.

If it weren’t for those friends and a group or two that I keep up with, I’d be done with FB. One of the groups I keep up with is my own Suspense/Thriller Writer’s Group, though I am considering disbanding it or at least denying members the ability to post. It used to be a fun group, but less and less as time goes on because of all the changes FB makes. In fact, FB has been messing with the groups again, so I had to change the group from “public” to “private” because if a group is public, now anyone can join without being okayed, and most of the people who want to join are spammers. Real spammers, not people like me who got caught in the FB fly trap. The problem with disbanding is that first I have to remove all 3,500 members one at a time. I did that for another group I had and it’s no fun.

It’s getting to the point where this blog is my only interaction online. Twitter is absurd, LinkedIn is worthless for my needs, and if there was ever any possibility of signing up with Instagram, it ended when FB bought site. I also lost interest in Goodreads when Amazon bought it.

I suppose I should go through and delete some of those old accounts (Google just emailed me and told me I had too many weak and duplicate passwords, and most of those are for accounts I haven’t visited in years.) Though chances are, I will do the same thing with those accounts that I do with FB — just keep on doing what I am doing . . . or not doing.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Inauspicious Day

This was another long day at work, and it turned out to be a good thing, not just because of the extra money but because this was not an auspicious day to do much of anything.

For one thing, last night I dreamt that the neighbor’s tree, which creaks horrendously in the wind, fell and destroyed my garage (even though in actuality, if the humongous branch would fall, it would be his garage that would be destroyed, not mine). This morning, before I was fully awake, tree trimmers came and started working. They were trimming a different neighbor’s tree, but I did not like the coincidence of both the dream and the reality.

Even worse, my tarot card today was the ten of swords (called the ten of weapons on this particular deck) followed by the nine of wands (nine of staves.) The ten of swords is not a good card to get because there is nothing remotely cheerful about it, speaking as it does of misfortune on a grand scale. The second card was the nine of staves, a card of great strength and denotes being prepared for any contingency.

My preparation for the looming disaster was simply to go about my day as planned.

One good thing about a tarot reading (beyond the fact that the cards I turn up so often have nothing to do with me) is that the effects last only until the next reading. Which means tomorrow is a whole other story.

Speaking of story . . . when I was at my client’s house, I read an excerpt from a book where the character mentioned that the tale of how she met her husband was different for each person she told it to. I thought something like that — telling the truth, but picking different elements of the truth to focus on each time you told it — would work well in the small-town novel I am thinking of writing. Perhaps each person in town thinks they know the truth, but since they assume everyone knows the same truth, the salient points get buried until our hero (me!) starts asking questions and sees the variations of the truth. I guess it would be sort of like the folk tale from India about blind men “looking” at an elephant. Each person who touched a single part of the elephant found out a truth that reinforced their own belief, but it was only when they put all the concepts together that they came across the greater truth of what an elephant was.

In a way, I suppose, all mysteries are like that, with every character believing they know the whole truth but only knowing part of it, so perhaps it wouldn’t be such an interesting idea after all. And anyway, I am no closer to writing the book now than I was when I first started thinking about it, so I have plenty of time to figure it out.

Meanwhile, I missed all the commotion of the tree trimming even though the woodchipper was parked in front of my house because I left to go to work. Luckily, the tree was trimmed without any damage to my property except for a few small twigs in my rocks that did not get swept up. I’m back at home now, safe from whatever dangers lurked out there for me. And tomorrow is a new day . . .

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.