Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

book series

A Stab at Self-interview: Question 2 ~ the next Students of Jump book

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When is the next Students of Jump book coming out and what is it about?

Puff – manufactured pet extraordinaire.

I am planning to begin writing book 5 in the Students of Jump series in August. As soon as all three of the Standing Stone books are out, then I’ll shift back to SofJ. So I could start earlier.

If you’ve read book 4, That’s the Trouble with Time, then you’ve met Puff and his friend Sarra Marsh. Puff is such a great character, entertaining and protective, and so unassuming. Seriously, with a name like Puff who would imagine the little guy could go into attack mode if Sarra runs into trouble? One of my beta readers made the comment that every student of jump needs a Puff with them. That statement hung about at the back of my mind while I redrafted and edited book 4. I had to admit that having Puff there for Sarra had added to the excitement of the story. Puff certainly did help her out quite a bit when she ran into sticky situations.

A few hours of brainstorming rounded out a cast of five engineered critters that could accompany students of jump. So potentially, there could be several more books with Puff-like characters.

As a result of that brainstorm, Lizzie and Samantha joined the jump team. Unlike Sarra and Puff, Lizzie and Samantha don’t get along that well, and it takes some effort on both their parts to make the partnership work. And that is the easy part of Samantha’s jump into the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy, in 1703. I am hoping that At Any Given Time (tentative title of book 5) will be out by Dec. 2017 or Jan. 2018.

Why read my books? 15 reasons you should consider making a purchase.

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I don’t do much in the way of advertising my books. So I thought this week I would post some reasons for someone to read my Students of Jump series, currently up to book 4.  The following are the reasons that came to mind.

  1. You haven’t yet. Everybody needs to relax for a while each day. Relax with a book.
  2. You will be thinking about something other than what is troubling you.
  3. You will feel an affinity for at least one of the characters and want to know what is going to happen next to him or her.
  4. If you enjoy time travel stories, you’ll enjoy my books.
  5. There are no cliffhangers. Each novel stands alone.
  6. Each one is better than the one before.
  7. They have strong women characters.
  8. You can get them for a good price at all popular retailers and a number of online libraries.
  9. There is something to laugh about, cry about, and think about in each one.
  10. You can purchase my book in a variety of eBook forms for many ereaders: Kindle, Sony, Kobo, Nook and of course, computer apps.
  11. You can buy the first three books in a box set for only $6.99. That means each one is a bargain at $2.33.
  12. There are four books currently in the series.
  13. Potentially there will be nine or more books in the series. (That’s how many I have brainstormed on Freemind.)
  14. You’ll be able to answer the following questions: 
  • Will Brent come to terms with both his pasts?
  • Will Misty forgive her father, save her mother, or get her aunt’s gate painted?
  • Will Mack and Emily figure out who took Renwick mid time jump and keep each other safe from the same fate?
  • Will Quinn complete his time jumping test or take a forfeit to remain with an ever shrinking selection of pasts?

    15. Now the writer shouldn’t answer all the questions. I bet you can come up with the fifteenth one.

#StudentsOfJump
#Reading
#TimeTravel

Been hanging out with the lady writers these days

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Ready to read at a moment’s notice

Just today I decided to make a list of my new favorite
authors and was surprised to find that they were all women. What’s up with
that?  All my past favorites have been
largely men, or in some cases women using male pen names. Same question
applies. I suppose I’ll have to think on that, but for now, I thought I would
just highlight these ladies of writing. To avoid any favoritism, I am following
the alphabetical rule.
Kim Headlee – she
writes a series of books that is steeped in Arthurian legend. Her
characterization is strong and ties nicely into the legend without being
strangled by it.  The female characters
are strong as are the male which is what I like to read as it really bothers me
when generally one gender is more capable, intelligent and sensible than the
other.  She is a skilled writer, and
especially so in this particular series. 
For more specific details on Headlee see my post of Learning from the Masters on Headlee.
L. A. Hilden – I
tumbled onto Hilden’s writing via Goodreads. It’s been a while so I can’t
really say if I read a book by her first or started chatting with her first.
But they were not far apart in either case. 
I have enjoyed her time travel regency romance series.  She is particular about her research down to
the tiniest details.  I am a sucker for
good research as I love the marriage between fiction and history.  It has been quite some time since I focused
largely on reading romance, so Hilden’s books are actually a step away from
my current interest, but not too big a step as I have lately run almost
exclusively to time travel in my reading and this particular series of hers
anchors itself in the main character’s stumble back and sometimes forward in
time. She’s working on another novel laced with time travel that I have been treated with a glimpse at.
Marcy Peska –
another author I have become close friends with. We met on Twitter via our dog
interests and blossomed into sharing our writing interests.  Peska has two books out that are urban
magic/legend stories imbedded in Alaskan landscapes. I am not much for urban legend,
but throw in some magic and I am ready to take the leap. Leap I did and I met a
strong woman character who is finding her way through unexpected elemental
magic, friendship and danger. The characters are genuine and full of spark,
particularly Vivian who shares the journey in quips and quarrels that show her
depth of character and struggle to deal with the unexpected magic she finds all
around her.  Remember, you promised a
bunch of people (not just me) a book 3, Marcy.
Veronica Roth – the
author of a dystopian series. At this point in time, she hardly needs me to
tell about what she has written. I enjoyed her books because I found her
created society a reasonable evolution and its ultimate breakdown also well
supported. Her characters are easy to connect to, in fact, easy to feel
possessive about.  I found I was arguing
with the play of events, but one cannot control the world he or she lives in,
so how can readers expect everything to flow as they wish. This did not stop me
from “Whatting!” at particular events, but I prefer my flabbergasted
rampage to a predictable read any day.
Jodi Taylor – Her
St. Mary’s time travel novels have quite hooked me.  I wait for the February publication of her
fifth book in the series. (I also read her Nothing
Girl standalone novel and loved it as well.) What I appreciate most about
this series is Max’s humor and internal dialogue. She is the main character
and tells the story with wit, flawed wisdom and loads of emotional baggage.
After reading four of the series books, I know that when there is a moment for
me to rest my tense expectations, something bad is about to happen and Max is
going to be stretched to the limit of her imaginative escape powers, and
emotional scars are going to tear, a marathon to the end.
Rysa Walker – The
Chronos Files series.  I have read the first two books of
the series and am waiting on the third. It is sort of a YA/NA time travel mix
or perhaps it is a YA evolving over time into an NA. In any case, I am
thoroughly enjoying the time travel “training” of Kate by fire and
confabulation. Poor girl. It’s not enough to have her losing lovers every time
the history takes a flip, but she has to stop her grandfather from thoroughly
destroying the world as she knows it (or keeps knowing it more than one way), while
deciding who to trust/distrust/retrust/untrust and work the darn hourglass
thingy that moves her through time.
April White – I
will tell you right now, I avoid vampire and werewolf books purely on
principal.  I have no explanation for
that other than if everybody is writing about vampires, I am probably going to
get annoyed. (Go ahead and shake your head, I keep reading time travel. I know,
I know. I didn’t say I was logical just avoiding a particular genre for some
reason.) The point in bringing this up is that White’s Immortal Descendants
series includes a vampire or two.  And
the main character is in love with a vampire. But that is not the focus of the
series. Time Travel is the focus as is getting back alive, figuring out how it
all works, protecting people important to her and avoiding all the interference
that comes her way when she is just trying to save her mother, and then her
lover, and then her friend, and his friend, and everybody else who gets pulled
in. I hope book three comes out soon.
The immortal Connie
Willis – I could blame her for getting me hooked on time travel if it
wasn’t for Heinlein who gets the blame for just about everything I do related
to reading or writing.  However, I had
been on hiatus awhile reading a lot of literary stuff (Jane Austin about killed
me) and then I read Blackout,
Bellweather, Doomsday Book, and….. 
You get the picture. She was just trolling along, and I took the bait
and been hooked ever since. Because I like time travel and nonstop up and down,
breath-stopping difficulties and general lost in time stuff!
So there you are. That is what I have been reading lately.
Yes, I have read other non-time travel books in between and several by men, but
these are the ladies I keep checking up on and packing my Kindle with. They are
the reason my files are now sorted by author rather than book title.
Who are you reading? 
Is there a common factor?  Are any
of these ladies on your list? If not, why not?
#reading
#timetravel
#writers

In search of the ideal timeline program

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I have posted in the past about my search for my holy grail of keeping track of time travel in my novels, especially when the movement forward and back happens repeatedly.  My third book in the series is proving to be more complicated in movements than the second.  Mick and Em not only go back in time, but they find themselves making repeated jumps into the consecutive moments. And to make it more complicated, another character is moving back and forth as well as remaining stationary in No-time, yet still time is passing.  That does not sound clear in this simple writing, and it is more complicated when actually writing the story.

So I have selected and tried three different applications to keep track of time travel.  In this post I am going to evaluate these three based on the criteria of my ideal platform.

Criteria:

  1. A horizontal line on which I can
    assign dates (and create dates that don’t yet exist) 
  2. Attach key
    points to them 
  3. Add little bubbles or boxes that
    connect to those points for summary or notes 
  4. Be able to close them
    up as I move along the timeline 
  5. Open them all up and see how it lays
    out.  
  6. Able to click on them and move them if I wish.  
  7. Have the program on my computer
  8. Print out the timeline
  9. Be capable of showing overlap of other novels, written and planned.

The three programs I have been working with are OneNote by Microsoft,  Timeline by The Timeline Authors available from SourceForge, and Padlet (formerly known as WallWisher) at Padlet.com.

Using OneNote for keeping track of time travel events
OneNote as timeline

OneNote
I have been using OneNote the longest and found it to have numerous qualities that have nothing to do with keeping track of a timeline.  It has proved extremely useful to me in other areas, namely keeping track of my research and publication information.  It has proved a fairly good “time” organizer though still not my ideal. Its proximity to all my other support materials is an important point though.  But that is not on my list of ideal qualities for a timeline. 

  • It does not provide a horizontal line or any line for that matter. But I can create a series of vertical boxes with time, setting and key plot points. (However, this is something any word processing program could do.)  
  • I can attach key points
  • I can add additional text boxes
  • These cannot be “closed”
  • Nor can they be “opened” at will
  • I can shuffle them about to reflect changes in the text
  • The program is on my computer and, in fact, came with the loaded programming.
  • I can print out my “timeline” easily without any format changes.  It looks the same on the computer desktop as it does in printed form.
  • It cannot overlap other timelines easily.  I could muscle it in, but it would be awfully awkward.

So out of the 9 ideals, it provides 5.  Score: 5/9

Timeline program for keeping track of past, current and future time
Timeline as timeline

Timeline
The next timeline program I tried out was appropriately named Timeline.  I have only used it for about a week.

  • It does provide a horizontal line on which I can place time markers with my choice of dates, and it is not limited to history already lived. 
  • What is shown in the note is a title or short summary at best. 
  • It does provide secondary bubbles for additional information which can be fairly detailed.  A window pops up with several features, including attaching files and links.
  • The timeline itself can be stretched and squeezed, but the bubbles only appear when the cursor hovers over them. The timeline adjusts as the time is stretched or squeezed into a short time view.
  • The bubbles open as needed.
  • Movement of the events has proved problematic.   They can be easily adjusted along the line, but the notations also move unexpectedly to locations not intended.  Probably time and learned finesse will correct this, but the instructions are so limited that I spent a lot of time just trying everything to return a notation back to the spot I had it originally before it almost (clearly I had done something) spontaneously  moved.  Without clear instructions, trial and error rules the learning curve.
  • This is a freeware program, and I downloaded onto my computer without trouble.
  • The timeline can be printed out, but legibility was dependent upon how tightly they were scrunched or stretched out.  Could be a problem when scenes cover short amounts of time and the novel extends over a longer period of time.
  • Overlap of novel timelines is difficult.  I had to color code individuals to tell them apart and would have to do something similar for different books.  There are two features: categories and periods.  The descriptions of these was quite limited, so I am uncertain if it would be possible to designate categories as individual novels or if periods would be better.  When I tried using them, they appeared below the horizontal timeline and overlapped each other which interfered with the purpose I had determined I wanted to use them for.

Out of 9 ideals, it met  6 1/2.  Score: 6.5/9

Padlet as timetravel timeline
Padlet as timeline

Padlet
I have made use of Padlet most recently and have spent about three days on it entering just the opening of book 1, the entirety of book 2 and the first five chapters of book 3.  Visually, it is the prettiest of the three with some interesting additions.  It feels the most like a wall of sticky notes, which is the manual ideal I wish I could do, but my husband has a sense of decor and sticky notes aren’t fittin’.

  • Though it does not provide a built-in horizontal line, putting the little “stickies” in place just as I would on a wall created one easily.  I put my dates on the label of the sticky, but I could just as easily provide stickies as tiny markers at whatever interval I want.  I have added the option of several horizontals.  So book one as shown in the picture is furthest to the left with only two stickies at this time.  I plan to raise it up higher as the “wall’ appears limitless in all directions.  Book two is next and is dropped lower.  Book three is two more steps down and because it has two plot lines occurring at the same time, it has two horizontal flow lines which will meet up later in the novel.
  • I can add additional information beneath the heading on the note. It has a red label at the top of the sticky and a secondary notes
    section beneath on the same sticky. The stickies can be lengthened
    horizontally or vertically.  I kept them fairly uniform in width and
    created a short hand summary format that covered the main points.
  • Rather than secondary bubbles, it does provide for inserted pictures (see my book covers), inserted internet media of any type (video, photo, doc, etc.) or use my computer camera to take a picture, bonuses not on my wish list.
  • You might say the sticky is the closed version.
  • A click on the note does bring up a full screen display of the note and attachments as well as means to post to Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Google+, email and others.  Additionally, the wall itself can be stretched and shrunk with ease (especially so if you have a touch sensitive screen.)  Arrow keys move the view from note to note in the screen-sized view.
  • The stickies can be moved easily about the “wall.”  If I could make a suggestion here, it would be to be able to move the notes in large groups rather than one at a time.  I have not found a means to do this, but perhaps that will come up.   The instructions do include sending requests for additional features.  So I will be asking for that one or instructions how to do it if it is already a feature.  The traditional drag and highlight has not worked.
  • This is not a downloadable program but is accessed and free at padlet.com with login and password.   However, privacy settings are available making it public or completely private.
  • The file can be printed in pdf, csv or excel.  The printout does not look like the wall, but it has all the info that I have inserted.  Since I only added pictures of my covers, I cannot say what it does with other media links.
  • Overlapping of book is definitely practical and possible. I did it with three books and intend to do it with all seven.

How did this program fit my criteria?  Pretty well.  Of the 9 desired features, it had some version of 8.  Score: 8/9.

At this point, I prefer Padlet which to my knowledge is marketed more as an educational tool for students than for timeline creation, but it is highly adaptable, pretty, fun to use and it is so much like having a wall of sticky notes that I am looking forward to seeing how it continues to make keeping track of time travel plot points easy.

Let me know if you have found the perfect timeline program or if you see a criteria you would like me to apply to any one or more of these programs.

OneNote will continue to be my research and publications notes filing goto program.  It has been great with holding my notes for clothing over the centuries, cobbles stones, Boston Common, epidemics, etc. Keeping track of timeslines, …. nah.

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

I was inteviewed by Indie Author Land!

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This is a big share post.  Indie Author Land posted their interview with me about the second book in my Students of Jump series.  In Times Passed and No-Time Like the Present are both available at Smashwords.com under all the major formats and Amazon.com as well as other major e-book outlets.

See my interview at Indie Author Land today.