Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

My Publishing Worlds

Excuses, excuses, and no more excuses.

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One simple rule.

I have had several rules over the years that have served me very well. One rule is that if I have a goal, I should never stop pursuing it. This rule has a kissing cousin that follows the same determination just replace “goal” with “habit.” It is my belief that once you turn away from a goal however briefly or take a break from the habit, then you have opened wide the probability that you will cease the pursuit or will falter in maintaining the habit. To not continue means I came up with a plausible excuse, and I will come up with more.

So a few weeks ago my computer hard drive flat lined (the black screen of doom). I sought immediate assistance from my local computer guru.  She sent me to Best Buy Geeks when her skills at resuscitation failed to bring it back or recover my files.

The Geeks saved my files, and I purchased a new hard drive. I then located another operating system and tracked down the various programs I had loaded.  All well and good.

But it took more than three weeks to pull this all together.  Excuse number one: I can’t write a post and upload it if I don’t have my computer.

Medical issues of the family sort came up in three different versions.  Excuse number two: I am so stressed waiting for results and imagining how bad this and that could get.

School took on another level of demand. Excuse number three: I have to get this grading done, plan for next week and coach my students for competition. I haven’t any time.

Lack of communication between siblings wreaked havoc on my decision-making apparatus (known as the brain to common folk). Excuse number four: My extended family is twisting me in knots.

And the list got longer as did the time since I last posted to my blog or I last wrote something for my new book.

My rule has been for the most part rarely tested. Never longer than a day ….. until now. I kept coming up with excuses and buying every last one of them.

The computer is fixed; medical issues are under treatment and improving by the day; communication is still lax, but I am not letting that stop me from dealing with what must be dealt with; and here I am writing a post about not writing posts because I let one excuse turn into many.

So new rule: No Excuses.

 How do you keep yourself on track?

SF genres: where do I fit in?

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mixing it up in SF genres

One of the really difficult things I have found about
writing SF is that there are so many subgenres. I have been doing research so I can be certain which one(s) I fall into.

After reviewing the various sites that explain SF subgenres, I sat down to list the qualities that exist in my Students of Jump series: 

  • time travel 
  • crisis of character 
  • interpersonal relationships 
  • alternate history 
  • family dynasty 
  • Retro Futurism: I write in a style I remember from my days of
    reading science fiction as a preteen and teenager, and apparently they have a
    name for that. 
  • strong female characters 
  • light romance 
  • genetic engineering
  • artificial intelligence 
  • soft science

I found a pretty good list at SciFi Lists.  The explanations were brief but adequate enough to help me decide if my work fit in the category.  
My intention for looking into the subgenres was to make sure I was tagging mine correctly. 
After all, I don’t want to have people searching for novels in the style
I write and have mine slipping by them because I have used tags that don’t
describe my work well.
I found three that seemed to cover my series: time travel,
alternate history and artificial intelligence under the umbrella of Retro
Futurism.  Three of these tags I need to add to my books.
Now I am not certain I fit under Retro Futurism, but I do
know I was heavily influenced by the writers that it is named for: Heinlein,
Asimov, Bradbury, Anderson, Savage, the list goes on. I’ve read plenty of Crichton,
Pohl, Niven, Pournelle, and Norton, but I don’t feel they influenced me as
much.

How did you decide what genre best described you?  Did you look at what authors influenced you, what you read, make a list like I did or some other means to select what best covered your work?

#genre
#SF
#Heinlein

Your are welcome to follow my blog or tweet this article if you enjoyed or found it valuable in some way.

                                                                                                                           

 

Twitter Blog Hopping with some fine friends

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The writer says

E.M. Wynter has invited me to take part in another blog hop.  We met on Twitter when our voids collided one day.  I have invited my Twitter/Google+/Facebook friends L.A. Hilden and Madeleine Masterson to join us.  E.M. has supplied us with another set of questions.  They were a bit tougher to answer this time.
1) If you could achieve anything with your writing in 2014,
what would it be?
Anything?!  That is
easy:  find more readers who love Brent,
Miranda, Misty, Mick, Emily, Qui, Jove, Ondine, Victory, Vivian, Braden, Ismar
and Lumin as much as I do. 
2) What are the top 3 demons you must slay to achieve your
goals in 2014?
The demon of disorganized action:   

  • I must reorganize my time so my husband
    knows how much I love and appreciate him. 
     
  • I must reorganize my time so these last years I have with my daughter at
    home will be remember and cherished by us both.  
  • I must reorganize my time so I am the best teacher I can possibly be for
    my students.  
  • I must reorganize my time
    so I can publish book 3 in the Students of Jump series by June 2014 and fully draft book 4 by mid-August 2014. 
     
  • I must love, be present, teach and write more.

The demon of uncertainty: I must believe in myself.  I must plan for success and encourage myself
to always take the next step forward so I can continue to grow as a writer and promote
my books to new readers.  One thing is
certain: Time will pass whether I am doing what I love or not.
The demon of the full-time job:  This is the one there is little I can do to change.  So I must do my job in all the best ways I can.  Then for this other side of me, the writer, I will draft, redraft, tweet, post, edit, re-edit, edit again, publish, post, tweet, repeat as often as I can.
3) Name 3 things that inspire you to write.  
Activity or inactivity: Either I jog for 20 minutes on the treadmill or meditate for 20 minutes. One or the other will generate ideas to expand scenes, work out a plot glitch or meet a new character. 
Showers: I do my best thinking in the shower.  I can put all my thought toward a scene that is not meshing well. 
Internet research: I will type into the search field in Dogpile
a topic of interest and keep reading article after article.  At some point, I must stop taking in and
start writing it out.
4) What advice do you have for a new writer who is
considering writing fiction? 
I
agree with so much of what is already said by those with more experience than I
have.  But here are my recommendations:  Read a variety of genres, though focus in the
area you plan to write in, and read a lot. 
Think about and analyze form, style, diction, characterization, etc., in
what you read.  Get feedback on
everything you write and consider all comments (positive and negative) as an
opportunity for growth and development as a writer.  Be a lifelong learner and an observer of
people. Those two things will promote strong writing, especially in character
development, and round out the knowledge base you are working from.  Of course, the most important is simply to write.

#bloghop2014
#writing

 My author site at Smashwords.com
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/LDGibbs
My author site at Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00F1QKAM6
My blog at Blogspot.
http://ldarbygibbs.blogspot.com/
My Goodreads author page
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5109451.L_Darby_Gibbs
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Smashwords Read an E-Book Week is in full swing

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Read an E-Book Week

I love Read an E-book Week at Smashwords, and as of March 2 thru March 8 it has begun.  I along with a huge number of other writers make use of this opportunity to invite readers to check out our books.

Take a look and find a new author to enjoy and follow.

So if you like time travel novels, short stories or are interested in a text about narrative frameworks for fiction novels and shorts stories, you’ll find my books set at 25% off with coupon REW25.

Follow this link to Smashwords promotion page to check out the catalog on the enrolled books:  Smashwords Read an E-Book Week

 

You can’t wear a bowler hat in 1861, just in case you were wondering

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I write time travel novels, and one of the features that stands out when a character travels in time is fitting in with the culture.  That includes clothing, behavior, hair styles, social interaction and such.  Since my characters move about in time, I have had to research to make sure that Mick is wearing the right kind of hat (top hat, not bowler, by the way) when he takes a stroll in Boston 1861 or Emily’s hairdo is appropriate for 1634 in Stepney, England.

That is part of taking on a time travel novel; it is just the nature of the beast.  But I love history, so any reason is a good excuse to immerse myself in the past.  It is time consuming and it is inspiring.  The simple endeavor of describing the sound of horses pulling a carriage down the street led me to learn what kind of paving stone was used on early Boston roads.

I wanted to know if Boston had dirt or cobble roads in 1861.  It is a simple question, but the answer carries a significant difference.  The thud of hoof on dirt is quite different from the sharp plod of a shod step on stone.  But I learned even the diction mattered.   There is a big difference between a sett and a cob, and which was used on the street effected horses and carriage wheels, too.  A sett is a flat granite stone laid in rows which were kinder to horses and did not wear out carriage wheels too quickly, while cobs, round stones that were not just awkward to walk on but dangerous due to their slipperiness, produced an annoying rocking motion.  And that effort to be accurate is meant to add authenticity to my novels.

Though my books are part of a series, they are not focused on one character but on a family of characters who are close in friendship or in family connections.  Brent Garrett is the main character in the first book (In Times Passed).  His daughter Misty picks up the time traveling bug in the second book (No-Time like the Present), and Mick and Emily, Brent’s brother- and sister-in-law and Misty’s foster parents, take up the baton in the third book.

The third book is where I had the most fun working with “costuming” because Mick and Emily are searching for Renwick, who has gone missing during a jump, and they are following clues as Misty finds them and forwards them on.   Since it’s a bit of a mystery where he could have landed, and they have all of time to search, there are bound to be coincidental matches as well as reliable clues, but they are tough to tell apart.

So this detecting, time travel couple find themselves going to places unfamiliar.  Now I can’t do research on times that have not come yet, but I can create such a place and time.  Still it must be unique and grow logically from what human beings do with fashion and interaction.  This excerpt is from the costuming room that Mick and Emily use to prep for their jumps.  In this excerpt, they are getting ready to go to Poukeepsie, New York, in 2082.

     “It’s probably best we get dressed, Mick.  I think these outfits are designed to go
together.  What do you think?” 

     Mick pulled his gaze from the empty doorway and looked at
the clothes hanging on the closet extension. 
He raised an eyebrow.  “I was
hoping that one was yours, but I see now it must be mine.”

     “They’re not bad, Mick.”  The two stood examining the outfits. 

     “I’ve never worn orange before,” Mick said.  “Always thought it was illegal for a
redhead to wear orange.”

     “The brown coat and the tan pants probably keep it from
overpowering the look.”  Emily stood
before the set provided for her.  On the
shoe carousel, she saw a pair of tall black boots her size beside a set of
brown ankle high stouts she knew were for Mick. 
He stood to her right staring at the lower portion of the pants he would
be donning.  “We’ll figure those out
when we get to them, Mick.  Start high
and work down.  Ready?”  She started by taking off jewelry and
emptying her pockets onto a tray.

     Mick nodded and removed his suit jacket, tossing it to the
closet for return to the proper slot.  He
continued to remove clothes until he could put on the first layer hanging
before him.  It was a bright orange tunic
with a V-neck collar over an under sheath of butter white.  The tunic tapered in, starting at the chest
without being snug and stopped at the hip. 
The long sleeves had butter white frills at the wrist.  Mick looked to Emily for comment, but she was
busy pulling her pink tunic on sans trim and deep V-neck.  Another difference was that it stopped at just
below her waist.  The material, a soft
suede, was the same though.

     “If I put the coat on next, I’ll feel like a flasher in
a park,” said Mick.  “I am
going for the pants, but I am going to ignore those orange attachments at the
ankle for now.”

Emily nodded reaching for the knickers before her.

     After pulling the deep-waisted pants on, Mick shrugged into
the calf-length overcoat in heavy brown suede. 
“Must be going to Poughkeepsie in the early spring or late
fall.  This is a warm outfit.”

     “I think so, too. 
These pants look like they stole the pattern from Louie the
fourteenth.”

     “Is that better or worse than genie windpants?”
grumbled Mick.  Emily turned to look and
laughed out loud.

     “I’m going to be armed and dangerous, little lady, so
can the laughter.”  Then Mick looked
at her and choked and snorted.  “I
feel much better now.  No one is going to
shoot at us. You can’t kill a man with a grin spread across your face.  What’s that little black thing?”

     “It’s a skull cap, and stop laughing at me.”

     “I don’t have one. 
I don’t have a hat at all.”

     “Are you complaining?”

     “Don’t get me started, woman.   I can complain about a lot more than not
having a skull cap.”
I love those two characters.
Book 3 publishes in July 2014
These two links provide access to the first two Students of Jump novels, my anthology of short stories and my non-fiction narrative frameworks text.  And I am off to research some more.

 My Amazon author page

Smashwords Author page

Family builds my characters and my stories

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Branch of the family tree, okay vine.

Often when I read science fiction, the main characters and certainly the supporting and stock characters rarely have family.  I don’t mean they don’t ever have family, but family is not the cause of change or action in them.  Family is window decoration in most novels.  Yet family is a basic component of my fiction writing.

Family can drive my characters to do things they have been avoiding or things they would not have done without the influence of a member of the family.  In my first book In Times Passed, Brent Garrett jumps to another time period claiming the excuse that he had to get away from his mother’s interference.  After he makes a life in the new time period, it is family again that affects him, influences his actions.  Loss of family nearly destroys him.

In No-Time like the Present, family motivated Misty Meredith to trust a stranger and jump two hundred years into her future so she could stand before her father and prove to him he failed by leaving her, that she didn’t need him anyway because she had her Uncle Mick and Aunt Emily, family that cared to raise her.  And she is surrounded by family, starts her own family and ultimately learns that family means no one ever really leaves anyone behind.

Mick and Emily never had children of their own, yet they raised a family.  They keep taking in the orphans, granted they are family, but this act of parenting the parentless is a basic feature of their lives.   So in Next Time We Meet, this couple think they have nothing to give the future, but what they are always offering is future to those who need it most.  All their efforts are directed at creating, supporting and reuniting family. 

I am currently working on the fourth book in the Students of Jump series, working title Testing Time, and family is again basic to the story.  Sarra Marsh’s family must break up in order to survive what is happening in the world and time she lives in.  The group she ends up with is guided by two individuals, Ma Potterby (a mother to all the assembled renegades) and Carnegie, (a sort of patriarchal figure whose terse manner ensures discipline in the ranks).  As she endeavors to enact change in her society as dictated by her father from a distance, she is always aware of her disbursed family.  Until change occurs, they must remain separated.  And the change may be far too late to bring them back together.

I have an anthology of short stories.  Not one of them lacks the basic feature of family.  The title story, “Gardens in the Cracks,” is steeped in the fact that major change was made in how families are established, maintained, organized and torn apart.  Marga Graber has already given up one child to the demands of planetary survival and is now facing more tears in her family fabric no less damaging.  The novella sequel that follows it in the anthology deals with the events that should pull family together but often does the opposite.  Still the pull that drives us from within to desire and seek family lives on and is at times the only thing that keeps these characters going.  Thus, in Scrapper, a boy finds his way home greatly changed from the boy who was excited to leave family.

Family is integral to us all.  I cannot separate it from my writing.  I am forever influenced by a woman I don’t even remember because she was at one very brief time my mother.  My father now deceased more than eight years is daily a part of my life.  For a time he held a dual role in a time period when few men could imagine being a mother to two children: one a toddler, the other an infant.  He potty trained me, and when I was becoming concerned about my daughter reaching that milestone in development, who did I call?  Yup, my dad, who offered his usual sage advice.  Potty trained in less than a week and my little girl made the decision.  I just offered opportunity and a willingness to listen. But that’s a story for another time.  Family, gotta love them.

Author pages where my eBooks are listed and available for sample or purchase.
Smashwords
Amazon