Snow White and the Seven Old Fogies

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. It should be an interesting game.

What I really wanted to talk about today is time. Or rather the lack of it.

In August, when Second Wind Publishing celebrated its first birthday, Mike Simpson wrote an article called: Ten Lessons I Learned (The Hard Way): A Publisher’s Reflections on the First Year. Number five on the list was: "Everything takes longer than you think." He was referring to publishing, but that line has stuck with me the past two months because everything takes longer than you think. Or at least, in my case, it takes longer than I think it should. I had hoped to be further along in my preparations for the Daughter Am I blog tour, but . . . yep, everything takes longer than the time I've allotted. I worked on an interview last night, which should have been easy. Ten questions about my books. That was it. Yet it took me three hours. (I'll let you know when it's posted. Try to stop me!)

Today's guest post took almost that long, which completely mystified me. It's simply a brief description of my characters -- my seven old fogies. I didn't go into depth about their character flaws, the dreams that drive them, the failures that created them. Nope -- just a simple description. I've been spending most of my words talking about my hero Mary Stuart, lumping her traveling companions into a group: crew of feisty octogenarians -- former gangsters and friends of her grandfather. They deserve better than that. So please click here to visit The Book Faery Reviews and meet Snow White and the Seven Old Fogies.



Click here to buy Daughter Am I from Second Wind Publishing, LLC.

Click here to buy Daughter Am I from Amazon.

Pat Bertram, Gangsters, and 'Daughter Am I'

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, but he was kind enough to focus the talk around me and my gangsters. And do I have gangsters! My hero, Mary Stuart finds her grandfather's little black address book in a secret room of the farmhouse she inherited from him, and she goes on a whirlwind tour of Colorado, Arizona, and on into the midwest searching out the people who knew him. Though in their eighties, none of them are what you would call upstanding citizens, though they are all loveable in their own way. Even Iron Sam, aka Butcher Boy, seemed less lethal than I intended him to be. Of course, he is dying, so he is more concerned with his own death than others'.

See, I'm doing it, too -- focusing on my book. So, let's focus on Malcolm's novel for a moment. If you are a fan of humorous mysteries with outrageous (though incredibly realistic) characters, you will love Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire by Malcolm R. Campbell. I'm on my second read through. The first time was for the story. This time it's for Malcolm's wordsmithery.

So, please join me at Malcolm's Round Table for a discussion about: Pat Bertram, Gangsters, and Daughter Am I.



Click here to buy Daughter Am I from Second Wind Publishing, LLC.

Click here to buy Daughter Am I from Amazon.

Do Blog Tours Live Up To the Hype?

Daughter Am I, my latest novel, will soon to be released by Second Wind Pubishing, so I have to start planning a blog tour if I’m going to do one. I hear so much about how great they are — mostly from the major publishers who don’t want to spend the money to send their authors on an unvirtual tour — that I wonder if blog tours do anything for an unknown author. I know the most popular book blogs do help get the word out, but if one can’t get a guest spot on those blogs, is it still worth doing a tour? And is there any real difference between doing a formal tour and doing guest spots on a few blogs?

In case I decide that a blog tour is worth all the work, would you be willing to be a host?

Daughter Am I is a young woman/old gangsters coming of age tale that is being sold as mainstream, though it could just as easily be classified as a mystery.

When twenty-five-year-old Mary Stuart learns she inherited a farm from her recently murdered grandparents—grandparents her father claimed had died before she was born—she becomes obsessed with finding out who they were and why someone wanted them dead. Along the way she accumulates a crew of feisty octogenarians—former gangsters and friends of her grandfather. She meets and falls in love Tim Olson, whose grandfather shared a deadly secret with her great-grandfather. Now Mary and Tim need to stay one step ahead of the killer who is desperate to dig up that secret.