Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

What I’m (th)Inkingabout

Comfortable on either end of the reading see-saw

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I have become quite technology heavy.  I use quite a bit of technology in the classroom just in the process of my teaching (i.e., two computers, one projector, one Mimeo, one iPad, scanner, digital cameras [still and video], and loads of advanced software. Don’t even ask what I have my students working on).  At home, well, minus the projector and add one e-reader, and a couple of more computers, and that will be close to how technology bound I am.  Of course, some of it is not new tech (I take real good care of my stuff), but it’s in active use.  Oops, forgot the phones.

My point is this. I have owned an e-reader for more than a year now and my mother-in-law wished to get one. We talked about mine and the ones she was considering (I took more than a year to make my decision, she took about the same).  Now we both have e-readers, different brands, and find we quite like reading e-books.  It doesn’t really matter which one you get as long as you can read the way you want to.  I have checked out quite a number of blogs on e-readers, and really if you want it to reduce the amount of books you have in your house (this was the main selling point that got my husband onto pushing me to buy an e-reader) than any crisp-screened reader will meet your needs.  The rest is just bells and whistles with attendant price tags.

This week my mother-in-law gave me her copy of The Help in paperback. She enjoyed it and thought I might like it. She bought it before she purchased her e-reader.  I felt much at home leaning back on the daybed in our computer room holding that book in my hands.  It felt good, so maybe holding a hardback or paperback has some pull yet with me, and it is an entertaining book, but she has never given away a book to me before. The Help is a big book, and it is going to take up space, which may be what prompted her to share.  I know she won’t be handing me her Kindle anytime soon, and I am not lending out my Sony either.  But I think I can shift back and forth between my pencil, pen, keyboard, tablet, paperbacks, e-books, transparencies, and projectors with comfort for some time to come, and there is probably a little space yet left on my bookcase in the hallway.

see-saw

Jasper Fford, Shades of Grey, What a world! What a world!

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I am reading Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey and after the opening pages, which were a bit slow, I found myself striding along with the Russetts, up-and-coming red-hue percepted individuals.  Now about 100 pages in, I am amazed how this world is created and wrapped about the perception of color, both true colors and artificial.  The art of world building is one I am still learning, but reading Shades of Grey as a resource alone is fun, though I am drawn by the story as well.

shades of red on grey

Fforde has built these characters who demonstrate the perception of color in every aspect of their behavior, desires, relationships, social status and careers.  Imagining the scope of his plan before he even began writing is daunting.  This is the first time I have read this book, and I doubt it will be the last. Usually as a reader, I just dive into the story head first, don’t even worry about finding nearby exit routes, confirming there are handrails, checking for a lifeguard or preparing snacks or making a quick visit to the restroom.  I won’t come up for air until my eyes won’t stay open, my stomach won’t stop growling even when I growl back at it or I am having to cross my legs.  I am a full on reader.  But Shades of Grey makes me, the writer, keep sitting back and wondering how he pulled this all together with just one brain.  That is not to say I am pulled out of the story, for I am not.  But this other side of me is pulled just as inextricably.

I started Shades of Grey a couple of months ago and found those first pages so sloggy that I turned to two other books and read them before returning to this one just a few days ago.  What is funny is that only a few pages later I was hooked.  It’s like when a person goes to the doctor for a pain she has been suffering through for weeks and finally just as she has has enough and is sitting in the doctor’s office, she starts feeling better.  That is how I feel: if I had only read five more pages, I would have been enthralled.

Now I don’t want to look at another book until I have finished this one
and then I may just read it again to let my writer self get a more focused
view of what Fforde did with this story.  It makes me want to quote the
witch of the west: What a world, what a world!  But with approbation
rather than frustration.

Tuesday Prompt: 2012 #14

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beating heart

On page 440 of my copy of A Tale of Two Cities is a wonderful last line of a chapter.  Though it means one thing in the context of the book it is in, think and write about what else it could mean.


The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far, we are pursued by nothing else.

When your character is in trouble, or you need them to be

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Mad Scientist

There is a lovely little book called The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook.  This book is great if you are looking for a problem for your character to handle or your character is in a predicament you are uncertain how to bring to a proper conclusion.  Chances are this book or its travel version, will have the perfect get out, get in, get them before they get him/her idea that will fit your plot handily.  Comedy or serious trouble, this book will provide.  Is your character being followed, lost in the woods, dealing with a volcanic eruption?  Check out this book.  Scam artist, runaway horse, mad scientist…..

Tuesday prompt: 2012 #13

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Inspirational frog and teacher.

Write a letter of thanks to the person you hold most responsible for your writing ability.  Explain what that person gave to you that added to who you are as a writer.

My most responsible person was a third grade teacher named Miss Mann.  She was stern, creative, formidable, knowledgeable and caring.  She started out as my first grade reading teacher and then turned up as my third grade classroom teacher.  She taught me to appreciate books and then taught me the desire to write. At the end of my first grade year, she made me promise to write her stories over the summer. She supplied me with her address, and she wrote back each time. She would send her letters written on fanciful writing paper and suggest that I write a story about whatever was pictured on it. I only remember one, a giant green bullfrog whose mouth supplied her writing space.  I don’t remember what I wrote, but I do remember what her reply was.  Write another story and be kind to your little brother.  I suspect the frog ate him.

So Miss Mann, wherever you are out there, Thank you for developing my imagination, for being the person I knew would always read what I wrote and tell me to do it again.