Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

What I’m (th)Inkingabout

Perfect match: Smashwords.com

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I graduated from a small college and now teach at a small school and live in an even smaller town.  I married my high school sweetheart and have one child with him.  I like the simple life and feeling comfortable with whom I am dealing with.

I graduated with high honors from that college, teach at a school where I am considered one of their finest teachers, and I know nearly all the parents of the children I teach.  I have been married to my husband for more than 30 years and would change very little of it (a miscarriage and a bout with Lyme disease, I could have lived without), and my daughter is a beautiful, kind, intelligent and creative young lady.  Even my dogs are smaller than their breed is expected to be.  (Their parents were huge, but somehow it didn’t translate.)  But they have so much heart and loyalty, that they’re bigger in what counts than any dog on the block.

That is why I chose to publish my ebook (and future books) with Smashwords. I knew I was coming in on the ground floor of greatness.  It keeps growing, and I know I am going to grow with it. Sure I probably gave up the power of the big boys by not going with Kindle at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but Smashwords felt right to me.  I wanted small, where I feel good about the people I am depending on.  I wanted to gain expertise as I went along, and I wanted to see the bones behind the operation.  That’s what I get with Smashwords.

I checked out Kindle and Barnes & Noble, but I found contract obligations where I wanted author-centered philosophy.  Limitation where I wanted possibility, and a tight grip where I wanted ease of use and access. Certainly  paper publishers have that greater experience which should not be scoffed at; it’s what made them great. Those large distributors did not get this big by ignoring change; they
will catch up, regroup and adapt to the power authors now can have.  But at Smashwords, Mark Coker is already looking at publishing and distribution with a fresh view. Smashwords was developed to build the relationship between author and distributor with the future of electronic publishing in mind rather than the process that was successful in the past.  I am at the start of my writing career, whatever depth of success I am likely to earn, and I think I am going to feel a whole lot better rising with the tide with Smashwords, learning how to swim in this publishing and distribution ocean with them.

I have bought numerous paper books from Bantam, Dell, Tor, Ace, Daw, Del-Rey, etc., etc., and I would have loved to be published by them.  I now own a Sony reader and read, almost exclusively, ebooks.  So here I am in the age of the e-book with the opportunity to publish my writing.  I can do that with Smashwords.

See Mark Coker’s “Smashwords Year in Review 2011” blog post for all the other reasons why I think Smashwords is right for me.

Tuesday Prompt: first of the new year

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PROMPT PEN

This seems like an appropriate prompt:  Take a few minutes to magine how things will be different for you this time next year.  Now do the following steps: First, describe yourself, your successes and how you achieved them, then what new ambitions you will be deciding on based on what you have accomplished at the close of this year.  Second, consider what it took to meet the goals and what had to be overcome.  Finally, can this insight into change be applied to a character and rolled into a story?

While you’re digesting that last question, consider what you need to do first to head in the direction of this possible future.  Hey, why waste such useful thinking?

Happy New Year, happy publishing

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Today started with my usual check in at my blog, at my Smashwords dashboard and at Goodreads.  No one had visited my page, no one had downloaded my book, and I ran short of taking part in Goodreads due to family demands.  And then with this new year winding out before me, I had to stop and rethink where I was about to let my thoughts run off to.  You see, a year ago, I was telling myself that as soon as summer vacation started, I was going to rework the first book in my series of SciFi novels (all unpublished) and check out Kindle and Barnes & Nobel and see about self-publishing an ebook. I was telling myself every day that I was closer to putting my novel out there.

The first week of June, I researched Kindle, then took a look at Barnes & Nobel and on a whim decided to see what else was out there for an author wanting to publish an ebook.  I heard about Smashwords through blogs I read. And that name kept coming up, so I went to the site and looked at what they were offering authors.  I mulled things over for two months, redrafting the entire time.

In August, I finished that redraft, edited, prepared for publication and then uploaded my book to Smashwords, where I decided the best fit for me as an author was.  A year ago, I was not a published author.  This may be only one of three places I call myself one, but it is a place and name I did not have one year ago.  So only 16 people have downloaded the sample of my novel.  I could tell myself, and have, that they did not like my writing or changed their minds and have not even looked at a word I’ve written, but I can also say, that 16 people who would not have seen it at all, never mind download a sample have had the opportunity.  This blog has been viewed 151 times since I started it in September, and that is 151 times more than last year.

So this year my goal is doubled.  I plan to complete my edit on an anthology of SciFi short fiction and complete my redraft on the second in my Students of Jump series.  I intend to publish them both before this new year is out.  It is possible that the third in the series could be out by the end of the year as well.

So it is a very happy new year.  I wish whoever reads this blog has a goal as fulfilling as mine and gets to see his or hers grow to fruition.  Happy New Year.

The incredible disappearing Q W E R T Y

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The incredible disappearing QWERTY.

What is the most important tool for me as a writer?  That is easy: a keyboard.  I mention this as I have noticed that over the years of owning various computers that the keyboard letters are fading more quickly with each new purchase as I upgrade. In essence, as I upgrade the computer, technology seems to be downgrading the durability of the lettering.  I am fairly proficient at keyboarding, but I do use certain letters as landmarks for where other keys are when I am not sitting at my desk.

You know the routine.  There are several things to get done, so I turn on the computer, run to move laundry to the dryer, come back and enter my login, but I am not sitting down, so I have to hunt and peck to locate the keys.  Only, E, R, T, I, S, D, H, L, C, and N are completely gone, and several are in the process of disappearing.  So this simple entering of a login turns into a frustrating moment of trying to visualize a keyboard my fingers know well, but my eyes do not.

Each time I sit down at my computer and note this particular annoyance, I
think of a new way I can replace these keys markers:  paint (the
obvious: would nail polish work?  I have a really nice opalescent.), etch them in with a hot needle (somewhat raised as the
original keyboards were), replace the keys, buy replacement stickers,
buy a new keyboard (really?!), etc.

Sure keyboards are a throw away item, so excess durability is useless. 
But I want to be the one to decide when my keyboard is ready to go the
will-a-the-wisp, and I’ll make the decision based on letters showing or
not showing on my screen not disappearing off my keyboard.

Maybe I just need to use my P’s and Q’s a lot more and my R’s and E’s a lot less.

Update:  I purchased replacement letters to stick on the blank keys.  Then my husband bought me a new computer a month later. So the keyboard letter wear is great on the old keyboard. My new one: well less than a year later the lovely backlit letters began to not fade, but disappear in a whole new fashion.

The keys are cut into the layer of “paint” so the light can glow the letter. But that “paint” is getting scratched off so my keyboard letters are now taking on this sort of smudged effect, rather like a ultra modernist painter swished a vaguely alphabetic impression on the board. The culprit letters are: E, S, D, T, N and M.  No surprise there. Except that I had the previous keyboard near ten years, and this one lasted a mere year.

I am still not using those P’s and Q’s all that much.

Any suggestions?  Should we strike, demand keyboards with raised letters, argue functionality over bells and whistles?  Maybe I’ll just nail polish this time.

Last 2011 Tuesday prompt

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Look through your memories and find one that was especially sad.   Think about all the details.  Make yourself sad. Now write it down in a narrative voice that is not yours.   Write it in poetry, personal prose or short story.  Add this twist to it: Look at it from a funny perspective.  Be smiling when you are done.

The best can come out of the bits and pieces

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I have always been a believer in the idea that there are things that are specifically made to fit a situation or need, but one can always come up with a bypass if that item is just not available. This is how I manage to deal with computers that don’t want to work or when an overhead projector at school decides to go on the fritz. Being a teacher, I need to be ready for every contingency.  I remind my students of this outlook when one tells me the computer died just as she was about to type a homework assignment (pull out a pencil and write) or his printer broke (email it). (Computers crashing far outnumber dogs eating homework these days).  I think I learned this make-do style from my father.

My mom always did the cooking, but there were rare times when she was too sick and my father had to take over.  He never minded, she always did.  He would look in the refrigerator and start pulling things out.  A pot on the stove was the destination for everything he found.  In the end, the bubbling mass would look like a poor quality of concrete ready for pouring.  We would make burritos with it, adding cheddar cheese and taco sauce.  Though it looked disgusting, it was delicious.

When my mom was well enough to return to the kitchen, we would all make her “sick” with our rapturous descriptions of Dad’s “Slab” recipe.

I look at writing this way, too.  Need a name for a character to be common but memorable:  I pick an average name, Fred for instance, and add/delete a letter.  Fned Carson is one of the characters in my short story tentatively titled “Scrapper.”  He’s an average guy whose life has been flowing downhill for awhile (something that happened to my father for a time, too). My main character Moekaff, an eight-year-old boy, is left at Carson’s Rest, a transport rest stop and restaurant. There the two suffer separately as they try to deal with rough times.  I needed Fned to be both an addition to Moe’s troubles but also a man with a right to be angry and depressed, ready to take out his frustrations on this kid who is himself in mourning.  They don’t save each other, but they do share their misery and somehow walk away with possibilities.  But that is only a part of the journey Moekaff takes before he finds a place to call home again.  I am still finishing this story and hope to make it part of an anthology of science fiction stories I have written.  As soon as it’s done, I’ll finish my redraft on my second novel of my Students of Jumps series, No Time Like the Present.