Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing Meditations

Musing: If cars could fly…

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Eyes open at all times

I have always been an advocate for the future of flying cars.  For many years my husband argued it was highly unlikely if not impossible.  In more recent years, he simply says it would be a nightmare.  So I am posting the positive and negatives of flying cars.  Feel free to add your two cents. I am curious which will outnumber the other.  As Shakespeare says, ’til my bad angle fires my good one out.”

Positives:

  • Unlimited direction:  Go anywhere simply by pointing your car in the direction of preference and pressing the pedal.
  • As the crow flies:  Forget about turning left and right.  Point A to point B will be the only concern.  Which way do I go, the only question.
  • Take in the View:  Imagine all the beauty of the drive.  Ladies, sorry, start wearing those bikini tops while you sunbathe.  There would be a need for wrap around windshields so that view would be BIG.
  • Talk about noise: What noise?  No road track rumble and rattle, just air foil silence.  And possibly a jet engine, but if you’re fast enough, you can leave that behind, too.
  • More automation here we come:  Autopilot, auto-park, auto-liftoff,  auto-safety, auto-avoidance.
  • Faster, faster, faster – you get there faster.
  • Crossing the Border: Shucks, there will be no borders.  Head overseas, head across state, head north, south, what have you.  One can’t put fences everywhere.
  • Good for your health:  no sharing air with carriers of the flu and other airborne illnesses.

Negatives:

  • Triple-sized rule book: Talk about student drivers.  Studying the handbook will be a two-year process and taking the TEST, yikes.
  • Going up?: Changing lanes means probably changing levels, and what does that mean?  Your not just looking left, right, front and back, but up and down.  Texting is a definite no, no.

  • More automation here we come:  What happens when it breaks or one of those pesky electrical problems no one can ever track down occurs?  Can’t tell you how many cars my husband has installed toggle switches in to bypass various electrical issues.  Tough to steal our cars:  you have to know where all the switches are.
  • Phobias:  So you don’t like heights?  How about giving control to an automaton.  How about all those cars flying just inches away, next door, overhead, below?  (Wrote a story about this: “A Good Argument,” Gardens in the Cracks & Other Stories at Amazon and Smashwords.)
  • Color coding:  Blue, white, black, grey would be paint schemes that cars would not be allowed to have.  Probably dark brown, too; my chocolate lab is invisible in the dark faster than a black lab any day of the week.
  • What goes up must come down.  We’re talking crash and burn.
  • The wallet: What is the cost?  What about insurance?
  • Teen factor:  What do they call that, barnstorming, buzzing their best friend’s house?
  • Running out of gas: Don’t let this happen on a date.
  • Looking under the hood:  Inspection takes all day.  “Honey, I am taking the car in for inspection — be back tomorrow.”

Want to add some more?  Maybe flying cars are not a good idea, but I bet someone will find ways to deal with these less desired features.  Tell me three times will come back into fashion.

Characterization, Star Trek and life challenges

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Star Trek, Next Generation is one of my favorite shows, and my husband and I have been watching an episode every night while we eat dinner as we work our way through the seasons the show aired.  The early ones were still working on depth, characterization and purpose, but after the third year, the show got its legs under it.  I can view the same episode again and again and enjoy the interactions of characters that are distinctly different, driven by motivations individual and evolving.  What captures my attention most are the shows which focus on particular characters and their growth facing distressing or challenging situations.

Tonight we are watching the episode which has Captain Picard trying to understand why he left the ship.  As a second Picard arrives in a shuttle craft that is from six hours in the future, the original Picard wonders what would cause him to choose leaving the Enterprise when the result was the total destruction of the ship.  He is angry at the second Picard for leaving and surviving.  It causes him to question his integrity as a captain and his responsibility to his crew.

In the life of any individual, events take place which force one to evaluate, re-evaluate and respond to situations.  We question our choices based on our desires and attempt to see ourselves as truly as we can.  How we answer ourselves, how we evaluate our choices forces us to grow as people.  Characters we create must grow as well, question their choices based on their understanding of the reasons which caused them to select those choices.

This is the challenge I love to work on when I write.  It is also what causes me the most doubt.  It generates questions that I must answer if I want to understand what sort of growth is potentially possible in my characters.  Looking at characterization forces me to stay aware of the process of growth in my characters.

In the first book of my series, the main character Brent Garrett from the start was driven by his perception of his mother’s expectations.  A part of me was always uncomfortable with this fact about him.  Why so driven by his mother’s attempts to control and inspire his life choices?  He’s a grown adult and should be past any dependency on what his mother wishes him to accomplish.  But that is only one part of his story just as our own lives are replete with challenges.  We don’t get them one at a a time.  He doesn’t either.  Still I had to examine my discomfort with his difficulties in order to understand his.

So when I look at my own life and consider the things that have driven my actions, I must confess that the loss of my mother when I was an infant played a strong factor in my wanting to emulate her.  And it had an even stronger influence on my efforts to make sure my father was proud of me.  At one point in my teenage life, I became aware that he gained me shortly before he lost his wife, my mother.  I did not stand a chance of replacing her.  I could only hope he would find my efforts to be the best I could adequate.

When I reached adulthood, I found that every time I visited my father, he attempted to place me back in a childhood role.  It wasn’t until I had been married several years, spent numerous phone calls learning about his experience watching my mother die over a six month period while playing both father and mother to two small children that we grew beyond the loss together.  I hadn’t seen him in four years, though we had talked on the phone regularly.  When I came to visit, it was to find he had suffered a heart attack while I was traveling the 1200 miles to get to my parents’ home (he had remarried).  He was in the hospital and his perspective had gone through a tremendous change. 

The challenges I had gone through entering and growing in adulthood and his own brush with death had caused us both to change, to make new choices and to see ourselves and others in new ways.  So Brent had a perception of himself governed by his mother’s expectations and desires for his “success.”  Through book 1 and book 2 of my series Students of Jump, Brent reached adulthood and whether his mother was ready for him to grow beyond her wishes or not, he did.  Picard worked to understand the choices the second Picard made, and my father and I climbed over the wall that had divided us, interfering with our view of ourselves and our understanding of each other.

Yeah, that is what I like about writing — seeing characters evolve as questions are generated and answered.  And evolving myself along the way.

Survey Results: What did you think when you sent your first book off for epublication?

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Fly away and propagate.

I was curious what other first-time authors thought when they sent off a book for publication.  Mine was about the grammar errors I might have overlooked.  I am an English teacher: what else would cross my mind? So I asked via GoodReads, Twitter and Google+.  These are the results.

  • Marcy Peska, Hashtags and Head Buckets:  “Ooops!”  It
    was when I published Head Buckets & Hashtags, and I accidentally
    pushed the publish button before I’d finished formatting photos. 😉
  • Kevis Hendrickson, The Legend of Witch Bane: I published my first ebook when the Kindle still had fresh paint on it.
    My thoughts at the time were more along the lines of Megatron’s famous
    words: “Their defenses are broken. Let the slaughter begin.”
  • Rinelle Grey, Reckless Rescue:  With the ebook, it was “Well, that doesn’t feel any different”, but the
    print book, which I only hit publish on yesterday, it was “What if I
    missed something?” 
  • Micah R. Sisk, PleshaCore:  But if I were to describe the moment after pushing the button as a
    sound, it sounded like nanometer-sized needle dropping into a
    galactic-sized haystack.
  • Adam Osterkamp, book in process, Minnesota Writer blog:  Having just ordered the “proof” copy for my print version, my first thought was along these lines. “What if it prints terribly?”
  • Jason Letts, Powerless: The Synthesis:  
    It was unbelievably exciting. A lot of times I was checking my
    sales at work, and I was so much more concerned with the dollar or two I
    was making a day from the story and gaining potential fans than
    everything I had to do at my job. 
  • Debra McKnight, Of Dreams and Shadow:  Mine ran along the lines of, “Oh no, I forgot to fix the type-o on page three.”
  • Jennifer Priester, Mortal Realm Witch: Learning about Magic: Sadly my first thought was more money related. I was thinking something
    like this: When will the books be available for purchase online and how
    long until my copies arrive so that I can start selling them? And my second one, although you aren’t asking for it, I just find it
    interesting, was about whether or not they would sell and if people
    would like it as much as I do or not.
  • Philip G. Henley,  To the Survivors: My KDP book launch felt unreal and disconnected, although I enjoyed
    seeing the free downloads happen along with the first reviews. Print
    was a different surreal experience. There was my name on a physical
    book. What followed was even more odd, giving the copies to friends and
    family and then being asked to sign them. All very odd, embarrassing
    even.

 I wish more people had responded.  I enjoyed finding others who remembered that moment of final decision.  It is one of those firsts that will stay with us whether we felt fulfilled, let down, frantic with worry or ready to battle bears. 

Now the second time I sent off a book into the eather of e-publication, I wondered why I felt no elation, no panic, no heart thrusting wildly against my ribs.  I wasn’t blase, but I hadn’t been rocked by an overwhelming run of sales on book 1, so I had less uncertainty about what would happen next: Only I would celebrate by dancing in the kitchen, making my daughter blush and my husband shake his head.  Since I now have four books published and my fifth in R&D&R (research and development and redraft), I do feel rather moved peering at the list when I check on Amazon and Smashwords for updates. I think come this July 2014, I may discover a few thrills running up my spine to see book 3 of the Students of Jump hitting the road.

Anyone want to add to the list of first reactions at the cry of “Engage” catapulting off their coddled canary? Post a comment, and I’ll update the list above (this week) and enjoy hearing from you.

Technology must be logical and progressive in a sci-fi novel

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Nerg Box

As a writer of science fiction now working on my third book in the series, I have been practicing to maintain a consistency in my technology.  The last thing I wanted to do was bring up a handy dandy techno tool that is used once and never seen again.  In producing a society or group that has depth and character, it is important that there be logic in the ideas and connectiveness in their use.  So my unique technology must develop and grow with my characters and their experiences.

Here are some examples of what I mean.

Nerg Box turned Time Travel box
In Book 1 In Times Passed, Brent stumbles upon a means to travel in time.  He alters a standard issue Nerg Box which results in a machine that can jump a person back in time.  This is all very well, but to have staying power, this device needs to evolve, develop in use, performance and even appearance.  It starts out as a rather non-descript gray box (Nerg [eN ER Gy]) which provides a temporary means to increase stamina and attention span and is nonnarcotic.  With some modifications in frequency and duration of the “effect,” Brent finds he has created a means to travel in time.

But Brent and his friends are tinkerers, and they have access to a computer with extensive abilities to improve this early model.  And Brent is not one to have a means to travel in time and leave it sitting in a closet.

Time Travel box turned Jump Stage
With Ismar’s help, Brent, Jove and Quixote build a stage that has the same “effect” and can be used to concentrate the time jumping abilities to more than one individual or thing.  This stage makes its debut in In Times Passed, and shows up again in No-Time Like the Present (Book 2) where it evolves over the course of the novel.

Jump Stage turned Jump Pack
In the third book, currently in redraft, Next Time We Meet, Mick and Emily find they can go anywhere or when for a second honeymoon by use of the individual, portable Jump Pack.  It has somewhat limited capabilities in that the jump calculations must occur in the lab still, but once downloaded to the pack, those calculations are available no matter where the jumper is.  This is important as they are on a honeymoon which is serving double duty.  Mick has determined he is going to be a detective, with his wife Emily’s assistance, of course.  Every man, even one who can travel in time, cannot manage without a good woman by his side or ahead of him.

Jump Pack evolves some more
Book 4, with the working title of Testing Time, is in draft and makes extensive use of a more advanced model of  the Jump Pack as it is able to calculate new jumps without returning to the lab.  When things aren’t going according to plan, such an improved model has tremendous advantage even if all it can offer is moving to another site to provide a few more seconds to make a dash for safety.

Another example:

Schemslide
This item shows up for the first time in Book 2.  It is a device that offers environmental as well as background information to its possessor.  It is referred to and used once, but the question of its further use is asked and answered.  It is appears again but as an embedded tool, one casually in use.

Schemslide turned essential time travel resource
In Book 3, Mick and Emily cannot manage without it.  Now called the noter, it provides historical information, a filing system for notes, is the transfer unit for calculated jumps, records environmental features, and is a time-delayed communications device.  Emily gets quite proficient at accessing its valuable capabilities as the travelers stretch their ability to understand the intricacies of moving about in time while tracking down a possible kidnap victim.

Readers complain about those “in the nick of time” devices or theories that save the day.  I don’t want that kind of situation in my books cropping up.  What fiction devices, good or bad, have caught your attention?

Book 1, In Times Passed at Smashwords and Amazon
Book 2, No-Time like the Present at Smashwords and Amazon

There are stories everywhere

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Yeah, it’s a horse, but why is it in my front yard?

There is a road I drive down every day to get to work.  It is not a popular part of the highway system, so there are few businesses along the way.  One site has changed renters numerous times.  It has been a restaurant half a dozen times, a used clothing store, seamstress business and is currently a donut shop.

Usually, at about a year and a half, the business just closes up and goes up for rent again.  The donut shop hit its one year mark back in May.  So I expect soon to see cars in the parking lot one day and the next the day find it as empty as an old shoe box, tissue crumpled and little packets of granular stuff maintaining a dry but useless environment.

That is a story just waiting for the telling. Why does that store never hold a business long even though they seem to be thriving?  Who owns it?  Are they nothing but trouble to their renters?  Is the highway itself unwilling to take so much traffic for too long and has its own agenda to push through despite human desires to succeed?

There are stories everywhere waiting to be told.

  • Why is that little girl sitting in bored meditation on her porch stairs, chin balanced on her hands?
  • Why did that family throw out a perfectly good couch?  It hasn’t any tears, slumping of cushions, or broken frame and is still in style.
  • Why is that fellow standing behind the tree talking on his phone and swatting at the bugs clearly annoying him?
  • Why is that horse wearing a blue cover over its face when the horse beside it isn’t?

You don’t have to beat bushes to find stories.  Write about the bush.

Where did you find your last story or did it find you? 

For writers, tragedy is a good thing

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Caught up in the moment

No one wants to read about everything going right.  Readers want things to go wrong so they can watch the characters find their way through their difficulties.  Houses burn down, people get sick or lost or lose their jobs.  They get angry and lose their temper.  We readers know this happens in real life.  Watching someone go through these kinds of difficulties and come out the other end stronger gives us hope.

In my classes, my students often ask me questions after we have finished a book.  So many times they are questions I cannot answer because the characters aren’t real, and I cannot call them up and check on their progress.  But often my students see them as real, that there is more yet to come.  Every writer should aspire to the kinds of questions my students ask.

  • Did he go back and find her?
  • Why did she leave him if she knew he needed her to stay awhile longer?
  • Will they every see each other again?
  • Did she have an unhappy childhood?
  • What did her family think about what she did?

All I can say is, “I am not sure.  Why do you think they did it?” Or some other statement to put it back on them to consider the possible answers.  Their question are proof that my students have connected to the characters.

Readers find understanding, lessons and experience in the books they read.  This is why writers find tragedy a good thing.  It makes our characters live in reality in a way that brings our readers insight and emotional release while they are “safe” from reality at the same time.