Book Review - Pat Bertram's Daughter Am I

In Daughter Am I, Pat Bertram has created an entertaining tale of friendship, discovery, and mystery filled with diverse characters who are instantly likeable. Not only does she bring to life the past world of the gangster era in the current age where it is mostly forgotten, she also reminds us through her elderly cast just how closely linked the past and present really are.






Mary Stuart received a letter from a lawyer that would change her life. She learns that not only did her parents lie to her about her grandparents having died many years before, but also that those grandparents have just passed away and left her everything.



She immediately learns that her grandparents were murdered!

Driven by curiosity and perhaps a sense of self loss and the lack of direction her life has, Mary is drawn into the intrigue of finding out who these people were who her father denied her for her whole life, and the possibility of solving the mystery of their murders.

Mary begins to follow a trail she picks up at her grandparents farm, one that leads her back through their life by finding people who had once known them and finds herself travelling with an unlikely group of relics from a past era. Each stop they make in the search for truth ads another elderly person to her crew. They seem more interested in breaking the boredom of their lives and the excitement of sneaking off on a road trip than anything and yet hold the key to the secret of her grandparent's murder.

With colourful characters, leftovers from the long gone age of the gangsters, including Lefty, Teach, Happy, Lila, and more at her side, Mary finds more than just answers. She finds more questions and love, and a direction for her life.

Daughter Am I is published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC.

 

Book Review: Light Bringer by Pat Bertram

When strange things happen people go to Chalcedony. But what is so special about the little town?



Helen Jenks’ life changed with a drive home on a snowy night. That change came in the form of an infant girl, who she calls Rena, which she finds abandoned on her doorstep.


It becomes immediately apparent that Rena is not your usual kind of abandoned-on-the-doorstep baby. There is something special about the child. Helen soon finds herself living on the run with the child, but on the run from who or what?





And that is where her story ends and the real story begins.



Philip Hansen opens his door to unexpected guests, Agent’s Derrick and Hugh from the National Security Agency. Philip immediately suspects they are there to discuss the books he’s been checking out at the library. He sounds borderline crazy-guy conspiracy theorist, but Philip quickly shows himself to be no crazier than anyone else who thinks aliens are visiting Earth.


With a little help from an unlikely source, Philip escapes the two agents, who aren’t who they claim to be, and finds himself drawn involuntarily on a path not of his choosing.




Becka Johnson, baby Rena grown up and with a new name, returns to Chalcedony thirty-seven years after her adoptive mother found her.


Becka has decided it’s time to find the answers to her lifelong questions that center around “who am I?” And she believes those answers can be found in Chalcedony, Colorado where her life started on a snowy night on a stranger’s doorstep.





In a financial bind, Jane Keeler finds herself in Chalcedony searching for her sister George Keeler. Instead of finding her sister, she discovers an empty house, ransacked office, and abandoned car.


Georgy’s apparent wild ways make things difficult for Jane as she finds herself drawn by the need to investigate this mystery and learn her sister’s whereabouts. Only no one seems to believe her or to even care.



When the trio converges on Chalcedony with no knowledge of each other, things immediately take a turn for the strange.


Philip Hansen arrives to find himself thrust into the arms of Becka Johnson, literally, when he’s dropped off at her doorstep.


Things soon heat up for Philip and Becka when the strange things happening to each of them grow in intensity with their proximity, leading them forward on an adventure of discovery.


Jane is pulled into the strange events surrounding Philip and Becka, finding herself drawn into the midst of a bigger mystery than she’d anticipated.





In Light Bringer, Pat Bertram weaves a fascinating tale of a group of people connected by events in the past, beginning before they were even born, who are inexorably drawn together for the culmination of what was started so many decades before.


In drawing out the strange events linking these three, I also had the impression that the small town of Chalcedony, Colorado hides other secrets that could very well find themselves revealed in another tale entirely unrelated to this story.



Light Bringer is published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC.








Something apart from the story that you might find interesting is this excerpt from Light Bringer (Page 217).

There are three details in particular that will have a sense of familiarity if you have read Pat Bertram’s More Deaths than One.



Hugh & Keith in are in a conference room in the underground bunker going through files taken from George Keeler’s house



Excerpt:

Hugh lifted one transcript out of the file. “Here’s an interview she did with Bob Noone.”

“Who’s he?”

“You know. The weird guy.”

Keith laughed. “That narrows it down.”

“He’s the artist, the one you thought seemed like a chameleon.”

“Oh, him. His work sure mesmerized you. I could hardly drag you away.”

Hugh shuddered, remembering that a monstrous thing had seemed to lurk in the depths of the painting, pulling him in, captivating him in the archaic sense of the word: taking captive. He realized he’d been captivated in the same way by this place, the source of that dreadful hum. All at once he felt glad not to have found the source. Perhaps some secrets should remain unknown.

“What did he have to say?”

Hugh started at the sound of Keith’s voice. “He spouts the same rubbish as everyone else in that ridiculous town. Listen to this. ‘I didn’t move to Chalcedony until the late eighties, so I don’t know anything about the UFO flap, but if you want my opinion, it would have been a mind control experiment. Government is a beast without conscience, and when it teams with conglomerates, it can and will do anything. Even control us as if we were robots.’”

Book Review - Pat Bertram's More Deaths Than One

I felt a little anxious before I even turned that first e-page of More Deaths Than One.




I had never read a book written by anyone I knew before.



While I’ve never actually met the author, Pat Bertram, in person I do consider her to be a good online friend and a valuable writing ally.



What feels even odder to me than reading a published book by someone I know is sitting down and writing a review of a book written by someone I know, and one I count as an e-friend to boot. It’s even worse than that initial “What will they think?” phase of writing subject matter you perhaps wouldn’t want to write home to mother with.



And, perhaps, I should feel a little bit of guilt in not actually buying the book. I got the e-book when she was offering it up free to anyone who wanted it. But, I don’t regret it. Pat also never asked me to do a review on it. This, I do of my own volition – much to her chagrin or delight, all depending on what she thinks of my review I guess.



And so, with a small amount of trepidation, I turned that first e-page and eased my way into what may conceivably have turned into a dead man’s life.







Our hero, Bob Stark, is mostly notable for his very essence of being un-notable. In fact, he is so un-notable that even the people who know him seem to have trouble recognizing him when they first see him. This very plainness draws you in, making you like him for his simplicity and empathize with him for that unwanted feeling of invisibility that we all share at times.



His ordinariness also proves to be essential to the story. In fact, his very plainness plays you right into believing the possibility of the truth that comes out later in the story. You’ll have to read the story to find out why.



The story starts with the very ordinary Bob Stark having a very ordinary hot chocolate in the Rimrock Coffee Shop, where his solitude is intruded on by his waitress making a rather ordinary attempt at flirting with him.



Unfortunately for Stark, the ordinariness of his life ends there.



Stark learns from the newspaper that his mother, Lydia Stark, has passed away – again. Yes, after burying his mother once already, the woman apparently has died a second time, 22 years later.



Convinced it has to be a hoax, Stark decides to show up for his mother’s second funeral.



All the usual people are at the funeral, friends and family, including Stark’s old college girlfriend Lorena Jones. Stark watches the funeral as an outsider only to find himself with more than one shock. Not only does the funeral appear to be entirely real, the man his old girlfriend is with comes as a big shock too. Bob Stark finds himself staring at none other than Bob Stark. But how can this be? How can he be watching himself at his own mother’s second funeral?



Stark soon finds himself pulled along an inevitable series of events, his newly befriended waitress Kerry Casillas at his side.



Stark’s search for the truth draws him deeper into a web of secrecy, and deeper into danger as the pair find themselves trying to stay one step ahead of someone who seems intent on catching them.



He soon learns that the road to the truth lies in his own past, a past he in part has to rediscover as if learning it for the first time.



Bob and Kerry travel to Thailand in search of answers that lead only to deeper questions.



The answers to the mystery prove to be as shocking as looking at yourself at your own mother’s second funeral.





In More Deaths Than One, Pat Bertram has woven an intriguing tale of what can happen when the wrong people are given control over another’s life.


More Deaths Than One is published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC.

(What Kind Of) Writer Am I - With Guest Pat Bertram

Daughter Am I Blog Tour 2009 - With Guest Pat Bertram
(What Kind Of) Writer Am I

I am thrilled to be featuring my first ever guest blogger, Pat Bertram, author of three novels published with Second Wind Publishing LLC.

This is an especially exciting event for me for a few reasons; one being that Halloween is only a few days away and I love Halloween. Okay, so blogging isn't exactly the stuff witches, ghosts, goblins, and all manner of things that say "boo" are made of. Well, unless your guest blogger happens to be the likes of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, or Jeremy Shipp, that is. But blogging is fun and so is dressing up in a tacky costume and frightening little kids before bribing them with handfuls of candy so they hopefully won’t t-p my house a few years down the road. I’m not all that scary myself, but the assortment of screaming rocks, cackling witches, gravestones, and various dead creatures decorating my house are.

At first glance Pat’s new book Daughter Am I may not seem the stuff of Halloween. But when a young woman (Mary Stuart) finds herself on the move investigating her great-grandfather’s deadly secret with the help a group of former gangsters, and a killer on the trail anxious to dig up that same secret, things certainly could get a bit dicey. A little murder, a little mystery … what more could you ask for in a book to read around Halloween?


Another reason this is exciting for me is that my first guest blogger happens to be Pat Bertram, who also happens to be my first online writing friend and mentor. Pat has been an unending source of wisdom, support, and encouragement for me and many other writers who have met her. And, best of all, she hasn't complained about any of my silly questions. Not to me anyway.






I hope you’ll enjoy Pat’s blog post as much as I did. And don’t hesitate to visit Second Wind Publishing where you’ll find Pat Bertram’s newest novel Daughter Am I available both in print and ebook format.

Pat Bertram

National Novel Writing Month is coming up in November, and I am half in awe and half befuddled by those who enter. The writing of a novel takes me a year, and some of the research I’ve done has taken longer than that. But then, I am not an intuitive writer. I have to drag each word out of hiding and find its place in the puzzle that is a novel. I suppose two types could write 50,000 words in a month — the intuitive writers who spew out words, and the logical writers who have the whole thing outlined before they begin. Me? I fall somewhere in the middle. I so hate tossing aside my hard work that I habitually rework my writing as I write. (Though I have rewritten one of my novels four times, and deleted 25,000 words from another.)

I write slowly. Although Daughter Am I came easily to me, I still only wrote an average of 300 words a day. Not that the number of words matters to me, it doesn’t. The only reason I mention it is to let new writers know there are all kinds of writers. Some let the words gush out and try to type fast enough to catch them all. Some, like me, have to pull each word, kicking and screaming, into the world. Some have a compulsion to write; others make a conscious choice. How you write, how often, how many words you write per day are all unimportant, unless, of course, you are a writer under contract. But if you are a writer under contract, you would be writing, not reading this blog.

In the end, the only thing that counts is the finished story. The story doesn’t care how long it took you to write it. It doesn’t care if you wrote it in a month or in a decade. It doesn’t care if you bled words onto the paper or created it slowly, one puzzle piece at a time. A finished story exists complete and entire of itself, separate from the author and the author’s work habits.

Sometimes we wonder how our favorite authors write, but mostly we devour (or savor) their works, wanting only to immerse ourselves in the story. If it moves us to tears, makes us laugh or shiver, that’s what we care about, not how long it took for the author to create the effect. Being writers, of course, we might go back later and see how it was done, but at the time, all we are interested in is the story.

So, here’s the truth. You can call yourself a writer or not. You can write 50,000 words in a month or not. You can write every day or not. The only thing that counts is the story.

That’s what we are all aiming for.

Story.

Pat Bertram is a native of Colorado and a lifelong resident. When the traditional publishers stopped publishing her favorite type of book — character and story driven novels that can’t easily be slotted into a genre — she decided to write her own. Daughter Am I is Bertram’s third novel to be published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC. Also available are More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire.