Pat Bertram is an accomplished author whose work I love. It’s my pleasure to welcome her to Indie Gems. Indie Gems exists to showcase  fine independently produced books and their authors. Indie Gems has a few rules, to which I will adhere. Pat Bertram and her work certainly fit the criteria for Indie Gems. Pat and I spoke about her novel,Daughter Am I . I wondered about her process as she wrote the book as well as what she had to say to upcoming writers. In addition to her wonderful books, Pat maintains a strong web presence and is  generous in helping other authors. She could give us a seminar on social media, as well as discussing her book! Here we concentrate on Daughter Am I , a suspenseful and fascinating novel.

Sandy Nathan
Indie Gems of Your Shelf Life

What is your novel Daughter Am I   about?

Daughter Am I  is the story of a young woman who inherits a farm from her 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.

Daughter Am I by Pat Bertram

How did Daughter Am I come to be?

Daughter Am I was the combination of two different stories I wanted to write. I’d read The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler, and the mythic journey so captured my imagination that I knew I had to write my own quest story. I also liked the idea of telling little-known truths about the mob, and I settled on the story of a young woman going in search of her past. As she listens to stories of old-time gangsters and bootleggers — her mentors and allies — she gradually discovers the truth of her heritage. I’ve always liked stories within stories.

How did you do the research for the book?

Read, mostly. Not all the history in Daughter Am I is from my research, though. I had an historian friend who regaled me with tales of gangsters for many years. In fact, I got to the point where I couldn’t watch a gangster film with him because he’d keep up a running commentary about all the things the filmmaker got wrong, and I’d miss half the story. I did a lot of research myself, though, and it was a special joy when I discovered something he didn’t know! Most of the information isn’t on the internet, but resides in . . . gasp! . . . books.

What challenges did you face as you wrote this book?

I had one great obstacle — me! The story came to me all in one day. Even the biggest story problem — why the gold was buried — was resolved that very night when I read a book about the war on gold. Still, even though I knew the story, it took me eleven months to write the first draft. Words come slowly to me. I’m not one who can sit down and just write what comes to mind. I have to dredge the words from somewhere deep inside.

What author influenced you as a novelist?

My biggest influence was Taylor Caldwell. She told wonderful stories that showed history in the context of fiction, and I’ve tried to do the same. She also used a hundred words when a single sentence would have sufficed, and I’ve tried to do the opposite.

What advice would you give to an unpublished author?

Write your book. Rewrite it. Edit it Re edit it. Study the publishing business. Learn everything you can about good prose, story elements, promotion. With so many millions of people out there who have written a book or who want to write a book, the competition is fierce. And, no matter what happens, keep writing.

A writer does not attain maturity as a writer until he or she has written 1,000,000 words. (I’m only halfway there.) So write. Your next book might be the one that captures people’s imaginations and catapults you into fame and fortune. Not writing another book guarantees you will never will reach that goal. It also keeps you from doing what you were meant to do.

A Spark of Heavenly Fire by Pat Bertram  This was the first book I read by Pat. Really intense drama about an unstoppable disease.

Traditional publishing continues to struggle. How has this impacted you as an author?

The main impact comes from the sheer number of books being published now. So many people have given up the dream of their novel being accepted by a traditional publisher and have found alternatives, that an unknown author who signs with a small independent publisher has a difficult time making a name for herself. Other than that, the struggles of the major publishers haven’t really had an impact on me as an author.

What is your book promotion strategy?

I didn’t realize I had a strategy until just now. It’s simple — I promote other authors in the hope that some sort of author karma will find its way back to me and catapult me to stardom. Hasn’t happened yet, but I’ve met a lot of wonderful writers.

What are you working on now?

Rubicon Ranch http://rubiconranch.wordpress.com/ is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by me and a few other authors of Second Wind Publishing.

Residents of Rubicon Ranch are finding body parts scattered all over the desert. Who was the victim and why did someone want him so very dead? Everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone’s life will be different after they have encountered the Rubicon. Rubicon Ranch, that is.

Who dunnit? No one knows, and we won’t know until the last chapter has been written. You can download the first book in the series free in any ebook format at Smashwords. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/168165

Where can people learn more about your books?

I have a website — http://patbertram.com — where I post important information, including the first chapters of each of my books, but the best way to keep up with me, my writing, and my life on a daily basis is by way of Bertram’s Blog. http://ptbertram.wordpress.com

All my books are available both in print and in ebook format. You can get them online at Second Wind Publishing, Amazon, B&N and Smashwords. Smashwords is great! The books are available in all ebook formats, including palm reading devices, and you can download the first 20-30% free!

Pat Bertrram author of Daughter I Am

Dear Readers,

Today I have the very great pleasure of introducing our first Indie Gems author and book. Karleene Morrow and her splendid book Destinies kick off my new feature. The purpose of Indie Gems is to give fine independently produced books the recognition they deserve. Indie Gems has a few rules, to which I will adhere.

Without further ado, my review of Destinies follows. Karleene Morrow will add a note of her own.

Sandy Nathan
Indie Gems of Your Shelf Life

DESTINIES
 by KARLEENE MORROW:

Brilliant, Astonishing, and Impossible to Forget

I finished Destinies yesterday and feel like I’ve lost an old friend. I’m in that floating period that comes after finishing a good book: I’m mulling over its scenes, characters, and settings. I’m also wondering what on earth I’ll do until I find another book that carries me away so completely.

Destinies is an epic of sweeping scope that reminds me of famous works about Russia, Dr. Zhivago, for instance. Destinies presents a very original twist on life in Mother Russia and is remarkable in its originality.

It’s the story of a group of German peasants who leave the Rhineland at the invitation of Tzarina Katherine (the Great). Life is rough in the Rhineland. They’re tenants, not landowners, and at the mercy of pretty near everyone in their German life. The village decides to take advantage of Katherine’s gracious offer to bear the expenses of their traveling to Russia, and to set them up with their own farms and all that would be needed to run them: houses, horses, farm implements and seed. Sounds like a good deal, especially when compared to being exploited unmercifully by their landlords and local nobles in the old country.

The tzarina’s plan is to modernize Russia. She intends to settle her new citizens on eastern lands beneath the Ural Mountains, an area undeveloped, sparsely populated and invaded by marauding robber bands and wild tribes. Thousands of individuals—families and whole villages—heed the call. Morrow wisely focuses on one Rhineland village, giving the reader a close-up view of village life and introducing characters that I will never forget.

This book is intricately plotted, but isn’t confusing. It moves like a freight train; the pace being fast and exciting. Right from the beginning things begin to go wrong. I think this work could also be put in the suspense genre. It had me on the edge of my seat and reading into the night.

The plot alternates between the trials and tribulations of the German immigrants and the court life of the tzarina. I wanted to slap that woman. While communicating with Voltaire and the literati of France, and thinking of herself as an enlightened monarch, big (and growing bigger by the day) Tzarina Kate squeezes her own serfs almost to death, which incites a revolt she doesn’t understand.

The book bears the stamp of many hours spent researching everything about her characters, sites and the world around her work. The author presents detailed descriptions of the colonists’ difficult journey to Russia and what happens afterward. For instance, the way that Morrow describes the experience and sounds of the deep Volga ice breaking up during the spring makes you feel as though you’re right there. I can hardly wait to read more by Karleene Morrow.

Sandy Nathan, Indie Gems

Karleene Morrow

A Note from Karleene Morrow:  You asked where I got the inspiration for Destinies.  My grandparents were Germans who immigrated to the U.S. from Russia. They spoke very rarely of ‘the old country’ so I knew little after they were gone. When I started into genealogy, researching my family, I found myself wishing, like every genealogist, that I’d asked my grandparents a hundred questions. The more I researched though the more ideas percolated in my head. When I bumped into Catherine the Great then, of course I had to research her, too. I started all this before genealogy on the internet was much of anything, Cindy’s List was about it and even that was new and extremely limited. Ancestor.com was constantly pressing researchers for information. Now they sell that information to new genealogists.

Destinies ended up being loosely based on the family history I was able to find, particularly an ancestor who was a founder of the village of Krasnoyar.  Of course that was in the 1700s and Russia is not very cooperative with her information, being the secretive country she is, so the novel is fiction – but fiction based on fact.  There is an organization in Nebraska called the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia.  I was able to learn a great deal about the Europeans who answered Catherine’s call and made the incredible trek to Russia. One of the things I did was to read 20 years of their professional journals and “Clues” magazine and researched books in their library. I can’t begin to say how I felt when I finished that epic novel of drama and history and held it in my hands as an actual book. It was an emotional moment, misty eyes and the overwhelming feeling that the labor pains were worth it.

Sandy, I want to thank you for the marvelous review of Destinies and of course for loving it. And special thanks for inviting Destinies and me to your Indie Gems feature.  Destinies is available as an ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes (Apple), Kobo, Smashwords and as a paperback at Amazon, Create Space, Barnes & Noble, and from my website, discounted and autographed.

Karleene’s Website

Welcome to Indie Gems! I’m delighted to share a growing collection of books with you. The criterion for appearing on Indie Gems is simple: I have to read the book and really like it. (More rules are set out below.)

A while ago on my blog for writers, Your Shelf Life, I wrote about my plans to highlight the terrific independently-produced books that I’ve been reading.  Here it is:  INDIE GEMS will be a regular/irregular part of Your Shelf Life. I have to give the Amazon KDP free books program some of the credit for this new blog. I’ve been downloading free books like crazy. I’ve now got close to 500 on my Kindle.

The vast majority of these are self-published, independently published, or just whacked on Kindle any ol’ way by the author. You can make distinctions between these categories, but I’m not going to. The quality of the books presented here is their distinguishing characteristic. Details of how they were published don’t concern me. I may sneak a few books by small presses in, but I won’t show any books published by the “Big Six,” major publishers.

Why not? They get so much attention that I want to shine the light in a different direction. Also, I’m sick of hearing about the abysmal quality of author-financed books. Some of that is true: when I started reading the gigantic mound of electronic verbiage on my Kindle, I found that some of it is certifiable garbage that should be sent to the dark side of the moon.

And some of it is as good as or better than much of the major publishers’ output. More creative, too. That’s what shows up here.

THE RULES/STUFF TO KNOW: Indie Gems has a few rules. They’re set up for my sanity and well-being.

1. I’m presenting Indie Gems and will continue to do so as long as it’s fun for me. I am an author 90% of the time, not a reviewer. I’m doing this bit for my own pleasure, and to share books I really like with you. So many people are hungry for reviews that they could gobble a person up. Not this person. I don’t charge for the evaluations I write, though I may accept a complimentary copy to review. At the beginning of this post, I say that Indie Gems is going to be a regular/irregular feature of Your Shelf Life. I don’t want to tie myself to producing reviews on schedule. When I write a review, I’ll post it and announce the post on the social media. Easy.

2. Do not send me your book to review. Don’t include a note saying that our writing styles are so similar that you’re sure I’ll love your book. I’ve already set out my position on reviewing books for Your Shelf Life. I find the books I review myself, or my good friends refer them to me. No exceptions.

3. I give all the books here 5 stars. I won’t put a rating on Indie Gems, but I will post the reviews everywhere with a 5 star rating. I’ll post on Amazon, Amazon UK, Goodreads, Smashwords, and anywhere else that’s useful to the author. I will tell the author about the review, if I can get a hold of him or her. What I write here is my estimation of the book’s worth. My evaluation may differ from yours. Why all 5 stars? I don’t bother reviewing books that I don’t really like. Why should I spend my life tearing the fruit of someone else’s creativity apart?

4. The format of Indie Gems will vary. Some times, I’ll post three or four short reviews and that’s it. No photos, covers, etc. Other times, I’ll have a full review, interview with the author, the works. This will depend on my schedule and if I can contact the author and how much he/she wants to participate.

This is a place to have fun, so let’s have fun! I’ve got a few books lined up that I’ll be sharing with you soon.

Let me introduce me . . . Let me make you smile . . . I realized that many of you may not know me. “Why should she be reviewing books? What credentials does she have?”

Ah. You might ask the same thing when you look at the reviews on Amazon. What credentials did Dizzy Lou III have to slash that guy’s book? Usually none. You can bash away like crazy at your fellow human beings without credentials or even a brain. You could be a “sock-puppet,” the fake account of a nonexistent entity speaking for . . . whom? That’s the mystery.

So, who am I, writing-wise? I’ve written for a very long time, since I was five or six, back in the early 1950s. I was screened as intellectually and creatively gifted early on. I wrote academically and professionally in economics and counseling. I’ll tell you one thing about writing in economics. what you write may be totally unintelligible to  99% of the human race, but if you turn it in to your professor, it had better be proper English. Those economists know their grammar and punctuation! Unless you’re a creative writing, literature, or English major, writing done academically and professionally has nothing to do with writing good fiction, or anything that anyone would voluntarily read.

This was driven home to me when a fellow economist asked me to read and review her first book, a knock off of Freakonomics. I said sure. I’m always willing to help one of the faith. She had a big resume and all kinds of credentials. Mama mia! I got into that book and stalled, vowing never to agree to review anyone’s book again.

There’s such a huge difference between what flies academically/professionally and what is palatable prose. I’m not talking about going all the way to something that’s a pleasure to read, but something that doesn’t make you gag. Freakonomics was such a success because the multi-award winning, brilliant economist teamed up with a well-trained writer, resulting in a fun read, even if it is about the Dismal Science.

My reviewing credentials. After all that academic/professional writing, I joined a writing group run by a published poet. I was in that group for nine years. After that, I was in a workshop run by a full professor of English in a major university who had maybe eight or nine books published by the majors. The other group members were mostly published authors. The prof leading the group was incredibly insightful and able to express his opinions of the group members’ writing without drawing much blood. Not all the group members were that skilled. Two members of the group had PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, which participating in that class did not improve. I found having what I’d labored on for weeks slashed and burned by my compatriots in mere minutes traumatic, but useful. This is where I learned to write. The professor retired and the surviving group members disbanded. That’s eleven years of study.

Then I hooked up with a FANTASTIC editor. She does the same thing to my work that the professor, and both writing groups did, but she communicates her opinions in a way that doesn’t have me rolling on the floor screaming when I get an edit back. She’s rough, she’s fair, and, golldurn it, right most of the time. I’ve been with her six years. My books keep getting better. Seventeen years of study and mild agony can a writer make, especially if it’s in her bones.

That’s the difference between writing done by someone with a hot academic resume and someone who is a trained writer. Seventeen years of hard work, and counting. I’m still learning.

When I read a book, those seventeen years read with me. I like tight plotting, fabulous characters, great pacing, and magic. The books that charm and intoxicate me are the books that will show up here. They have a distinctive, special quality.

I’ve also written six books so far and won twenty-four national awards with them. They’re listed below.

So, all the best and keep reading!

Sandy Nathan

Sandy Nathan’s writing has won twenty-four national awards. She’s won in categories from memoir, to visionary fiction, to children’s nonfiction. And more.

Sandy’s  books are: (Click link to the left for  information about each book.
All the links below go to Kindle/Amazon sale pages.)

The Tales from Earth’s End Saga ––A Legend for a New World (I recommend that you read the books in order to fully understand the action.)

1. The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy (Kindle version, paperback version here)  Tales from Earth’s End Saga Book 1
2. Lady Grace: A Thrilling Adventure Wrapped in the Embrace of Epic Love (Kindle version, paperback version here) Tales from Earth’s End Saga Book 2
3. Sam & Emily: A Love Story from the Underground (Kindle version, paperback version here) Tales from Earth’s End Saga Book 3

Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money (Kindle version, hardback version here) Bloodsong Series 1
Tecolote: The Little Horse That Could (Kindle version, paperback version here)