My
Daughter Am I blog tour is winding down -- I have seven days to go (eight if you include today) and I don't know whether to be sad or to rejoice. Since my promotion motto is "Promotion is just another word for party," I decided to rejoice and have an end of blog tour party on the 22nd and 23rd. You are all invited, of course.
The most interesting aspect of the tour has been coming up with unique guest pos…
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Added by Pat Bertram on November 15, 2009 at 12:30pm —
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This seems to be a slow weekend here on the Internet. I can never figure out where people disappear to or why. What could possibly be more fascinating than roaming cyberspace? :) I realize in some places the weather is too nice to stay inside, in other places it's too nasty to do anything online. Many writers are involved in National Novel Writing Month. Many others are busy procrastinating. And me . . . well, here I am, still virtually book touring.
Today's stops:
Beth's Book Review Blog --…
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Added by Pat Bertram on November 9, 2009 at 7:45am —
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The other morning I was staring out the window at all the leaves on the ground, marveling at how so much come from almost nothing. A bit of water, a bit of soil, a bit of sun, and something exists where nothing did before. I cherish those leaves. There’s no lawn here, just native grasses, so I don’t need to rake the leaves. I let them finish out their natural cycle of replenishing the soil from which they came.
Looking at those leaves, I was reminded of written words, and how they come from alm…
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Added by Pat Bertram on November 7, 2009 at 11:38am —
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One of the guest stops on my
Daughter Am I blog tour is the Second Wind Publishing Blog. I talk about a fan letter (well, fan email) I received, and cite a quote by John Cheever, “I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss — you can’t do it alone.”
Many writers don’t consider readers -- they write solely for themselves, or at least they say they do -- but often as I am writing a passage (or m…
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Added by Pat Bertram on November 3, 2009 at 2:42pm —
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I had a bit of a scare this morning. I checked my blog as usual found a comment on my "
Origin of the Grim Reaper" bloggery from someone named Robert Weniger, who said:
You Plagiarist. I posted the exact words and you copy/pasted it from my website.
Um . . . What??
I love Wordpress and all the statistics and information one gets! Besides email addresses from commenters, wordpress notes the IP address…
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Added by Pat Bertram on October 31, 2009 at 12:40pm —
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I did not come up with that great title for this bloggery, my host today, L.V. Gaudet, did. (Since you are all familiar with the title of my new book,
Daughter Am I, I know you get the gist.) I'm hoping everyone goes to pay L.V. a visit. She says such wonderful things about me, that I want everyone to know! And, oh, yes -- she's also posted an article of mine in which I say that it does not matter how long it takes you to write a novel or how many words you write each day. All that matt…
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Added by Pat Bertram on October 29, 2009 at 6:51am —
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Though it is actually night here, it's still day ten of my
Daughter Am I blog tour.
The reference to night and day reminds me of one of those standardized tests I took when I was in second grade. The question was, "How many hours are in a day?" I knew, of course, that there were twenty-four hours in a day's span, but for some reason, I took the question to mean day as opposed to night. I knew that there were variable daylig…
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Added by Pat Bertram on October 28, 2009 at 12:26pm —
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Day nine of the
Daughter Am I blog tour, and I am still going strong. I actually went to bed before midnight last night, and I’m a bit more rested. Good thing -- there is a lot going on today! First, check out “
After the Writing Comes the Work.” Great discussion going on at that unscheduled tour stop, and a wonderful compliment about
Daughter Am I…
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Added by Pat Bertram on October 27, 2009 at 2:38pm —
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I made it through the first week of my blog tour!! I’m getting to the hard part, though. I have several interviews coming up, and it’s challenging to keep from making identical responses to identical questions. There really is only one story behind the writing of
Daughter Am I -- I wanted to use the true tales of the Syndicate an historian friend used to tell me, and I wanted to do a mythic journey, so I combined the two ide…
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Added by Pat Bertram on October 25, 2009 at 12:38pm —
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My blog tour is really starting to heat up! Lots of activity, more than I'm used to, that's for sure. To start out, I am a guest at the blog of my good friend
Joylene Nowell Butler author of
Dead Witness. We first met when she submitted a character interview to my
Pat…
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Added by Pat Bertram on October 24, 2009 at 4:32am —
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The Internet is such a wonderful place. Today, day five of my blog tour, I am in Florida with author Nancy J. Cohen talking about dialogue. Virtually speaking, that is. Physically, I am in Colorado, listening to leaves falling like rain. In Florida, it's a sunny day at the beach. At least I hope it is. I sure would hate to get caught in a hurricane while I'm visiting!
Yesterday someone commented that a virtual book tour seemed like a lot of work and asked if I would do it again. My first inclin…
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Added by Pat Bertram on October 23, 2009 at 7:21am —
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Mary stared open-mouthed into the hole in the wall. Instead of the dining room, which should have been on the other side of the wall, there was a windowless room not much bigger than a walk-in-closet.
"A secret room," she breathed. "It's like something out of Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys."
That brief excerpt from
Daughter Am I has nothing to do with my blog today. It's a clue for a Halloween contest at the Second Wind Blog starting on October 26. I hope you will play…
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Added by Pat Bertram on October 22, 2009 at 4:51am —
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Again I will be at
Malcom's Round Table discussing
Daughter Am I, but this time we will be focusing on the quest angle. The hero's path, the mythic journey, the quest -- these are all different names for a particular form of story, though the format is so infinitely changeable, that unless you search for all the elements, you might not see the similarities in such diverse st…
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Added by Pat Bertram on October 21, 2009 at 4:59am —
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Day Two of my Virtual Book Tour, and I am still going strong. This is like saying: I've just run the second block of a marathon and am still going strong. Most of the tour is still ahead of me, but I'm looking forward to seeing what happens, to meeting new people, and visiting new blogs.
Today I am at Malcolm's Round Table for a discussion of gangsters and
Daughter Am I. I'd hoped to include more of Malcolm's book,
Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, in the discussion, b…
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Added by Pat Bertram on October 20, 2009 at 4:31am —
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Today is the first day of the
Daughter Am I blog tour, and frankly, I'm a bit nervous. Although I always intended to post to my own blog every day, I've only managed to average three or four times a week, yet here I have committed myself to thirty-five days of guest blogging, together with at least a brief post here to keep everyone up-to-date on my touring activities. That is a total of 70 bloggeries in 35 days! Do you think I can do it? Of course I can -- I will have to.
Today I am h…
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Added by Pat Bertram on October 19, 2009 at 1:00pm —
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Isn’t the Internet a wonderful thing! Something happens almost two years ago, and there it sits like a time capsule for all to see.
I met Lazarus Barnhill during a writing contest on Gather.com in October 2007. Entrants posted the first chapter of their work for people to comment on and vote for, and the fifteen top-ranked chapters, plus ten chosen by Gather management went on to post the second chapter. I read some chapters, including Laz’s
The Medicine People, but I never knew quite wh…
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Added by Pat Bertram on July 26, 2009 at 3:48am —
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I am the administrator of the Suspense/Thriller Writers group on Facebook. Our discussion this week was about negative reviews, and Marshall Karp left a comment that I wanted to pass along because I thought you’d find it as helpful as I did.
Marshall Karp, the author of Flipping Out,…
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Added by Pat Bertram on May 7, 2009 at 3:00pm —
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Title: A Spark of Heavenly Fire
Author: Pat Bertram
Publisher: Second Wind Publishing
Publisher's Address: 931-B South Main Street, Box 145, Kernersville, NC 27284
ISBN number: 978-1-935171-23-2
Price: $18.00
Publisher website address: www.secondwindpublishing.com
Review by Aaron Paul Lazar, Author of the LeGarde Mystery Series
Who says you can’t squeeze romance into a thriller? And while you’re at it, how about weaving in a deeply moving story about human redemption?
Author Pat Bertram says…
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Added by Pat Bertram on May 6, 2009 at 3:21pm —
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Images of Betrayal
by Claire Collins
Romance
Published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC
ISBN# 1935171011
Abandoned and betrayed by her family, seventeen-year-old Tysan Reynolds supports herself the best she can with tips from the diner where she works. Into her lonesome life come two men: photographer Walker Sandoval and high school heartthrob David McKee. What should have been a magical time of romance turns into a time of horror; the photos Walker takes foretell violence and disaster. When Tysa…
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Added by Pat Bertram on April 16, 2009 at 9:30am —
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The most compelling characters are those who want something desperately and who will do anything to get it, which is why Scarlett O’Hara is such a perennially popular character. Frankly, I find her a bit over the top -- selfish and greedy and way too egocentric. I can’t write such characters, at least not at the beginning of a novel. I prefer quiet, unassuming characters who are forced into action by circumstances. (To me, life is the real villain. It does things to us that no make-believe villa…
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Added by Pat Bertram on April 8, 2009 at 3:42pm —
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