Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Books

Where an idea begins ~ mine took me here

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Picture of The Sharded Boy cover

I am about to embark on writing the fifth book of the Standing Stones series. My daughter reminds me regularly this is the series that writes itself. It is an apt reminder.

It started with a friend wanting me to write a guest post for her blog. She gave me a set of possible topics, one of which was fantasy. I hadn’t written a fantasy before, but I’ve read thousands.

It was the only topic I thought I could write fairly well on. I had an idea, nothing particularly new, but I hadn’t seen it written about in the manner I was thinking, so why not?

My brainstorm idea: the rules that govern the world of a story create pathways that as the story proceeds limit the choices available to both the writer and the character. Those limited choices funnel the writer and the character to its ultimate conclusion. Nothing new, right.

But I’m a teacher, and examples are paramount in putting across expectations. So I immediately began thinking about a set of rules for a fantasy world: wielders of magic must carry with them a heavy flat stone which they must stand on in order to wield the essence that is the base of their magic and is embedded in the stone. What if there was a wielder that couldn’t carry his stone or found it extremely difficult? How would that act as a governor of his experience.

From there, I considered a series of questions.

  • Why can’t he carry it?
  • Are there alternatives?
  • What caused this situation?
  • What can he or she do about this if anything?
  • What other rules apply?
  • and the list goes on…

I got to the bottom of the parameters of this fantasy world and how it would guide the story and was so invested, I could not send her the post. I set it aside while I finished up a book I was writing.

I thought I might write a short story with this created character: Jahl Pratter and his struggle with fitting into the demands of being a wielder.

I began writing another book in my then current series and continued to let Jahl wait for when I had time to write that short story.

I got stuck, not just stuck: I lost faith in the book I was writing. I had to step away.

I started another book that had been running around in my head. Over the course of a couple of months, the conflicts of this new book became all to real to me, and I could not face it. Both my father-in-law and my mother were showing serious signs of dementia, a key component of that novel.

Both have since passed away, and 20k of words are waiting for me to come back. I can’t just yet.

I returned to the previous series’ book and struggled along before again setting it aside. Jahl beckoned.

I thought writing a short story might lubricate the wheels. And it was all laid out in my head. It wouldn’t take much time to write it.

At about 20K of words and no where near the middle, never mind the end, I realized I was writing a book, and it just kept writing itself. I was along for the ride.

Cover of The Shifter Shard

Book 2 grabbed hold, and I said, “Okay, let’s roll.”

Before I had time to take a breath, Book 3 was in the works.

Cover The Heart of Lal

I stepped back to the fifth book in that earlier series I kept setting aside and finished it, quite satisfied with the result. I had hated it the majority of the time I spent writing it. It just never felt good enough. By the time I finished it, I quite liked it. One unpublished blog post produced four books.

I started a new fantasy series of standalone novels, Solstice Dragon World. After writing three of them, I returned to the Standing Stone series and wrote its fourth book as easily as I had written the first three. I love that series and have been thrilled to learn from my readers that I am not alone.

Cover of The Sand Wielders

Standing Stone Book 5 is next on my agenda. I’ve been holding it off while I have finished my current series: Kavin Cut Chronicles, just weeks away from publishing the third in the trilogy.

I suspect Standing Stone’s Book 5 will be the end of the series. Of course, given its beginnings, I can’t be certain.

If you would like to check out any of my fantasy series, click the tab at the top of the web page labeled All Books. You’ll find links to all the main retailers where they are sold. Just click on the series title of each and work your way through the books.

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

The 10 problems that will make me giveup reading a book

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Poorly written stories make for a blurry book, lacking color

Lately, due to my lighter teaching schedule, I have been reading a book a week, minimum. (Last year, a book every two months was my average.) Usually I will read a book to the end, waiting for it to redeem itself if it is less than engaging. “Maybe the writer needed more practice and the end will show improvement,” I tell myself.

Often even a book that starts off rough will, over time, gain its feet. The adage the act of writing improves writing and every writer gets better as they continue to produce often applies. But some problems will bother me so much that I will have to remind myself that redemption might yet flower if I keep reading. But I have given up on a few books.

These are the top ten which will, if enough appear, convince me to give up on a book.

  1. Unnecessary sex – though it isn’t presented this way, it will have the effect of a quickie with a prostitute. I can ignore it once. But if it repeats, I will probably drop reading the book.
  2. Unnecessary swearing – and even worse, if the swearing is the same word and everybody who swears in the book uses it and only that one word.  I recently read a really great book that had this one flaw. It was as if the characters kept saying “um” or “like” every few words. Made me cringe every time, but it did not make me stop reading because it was an excellent story and thankfully, the swearing was not a constant, just consistently repetitive and frequently unnecessary.
  3. Introductions that tell how bad things are now without providing any real imagery, characterization or depth of story. Sort of a “by the way, first you have to know this.” Now you can read my story.
  4. Too many characters with different color eyes and hair or stripes or accents, and that’s all I get to tell them apart. Everyone sounds the same.
  5. One woman and every guy wants her or vice versa. And I don’t even like the character, so how am I going to be convinced every Tom, Dick and Harry will?
  6. The story plods along, I realize I have been reading for half the book and nothing has happened, and I still don’t know the characters well enough to want to continue the journey with them.
  7. The characters are really tense, but there was nothing to make them tense. Everybody is grumping along or sparks are flying every time they touch, but nothing led up to it.
  8. Really poor punctuation and sentence structure. I can deal with an occasional missing word, an unnecessary fragment, etc. A good story is a good story. And many a time I and others will trip over our words while we tell about something interesting. We don’t lose our listeners and the writer won’t lose this reader for an occasional writing issue. The story is everything. But really bad grammar and punctuation skills can kill even the best story.
  9. I put the book down (voluntarily) to go have lunch or chat with a friend and I can’t remember what I was reading. That is a really bad sign. I am about twenty pages into a book right now and have put it down twice. Both times I had to think a bit about what was happening before I opened it up to read more. Nothing is happening yet that is keeping my interest which is funny as the White House has just blown up, people are fleeing and a crazy man is on the loose. No real tension. The main characters are just walking away from the burning building.
  10. Using known characters and relying on the reader’s knowledge of them to carry the characterization. That is not the way to create memorable characters the reader is going to care about.

#reading
#books

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

What has reading done for me?

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I read a post by Neil Gaiman recently about the power of reading. And he covered a lot of ground, largely about how reading could  improve society and reduce society’s ills.  What he had to say about the benefits of reading resonated with me not just because I am a teacher and a writer but because I have been a reader since I was about eight years old.  I was behind in reading skill as a first and second grader due to all the moving around my family did.  I seemed to keep missing important aspects of reading and math.  I was enrolled in a school in Massachusetts and had the good fortune of having an alert teacher who requested I be given a reading evaluation.

Soon I was receiving reading assistance.  Over the course of a year, I moved from a non-reader to a third grade reader.  When I advanced to third grade, I was already reading above my grade level.  I have two wonderful ladies to thank for my love of reading and for the benefits that came with their efforts.

  • Reading became my safety zone.  Parents argue, and kids don’t like to witness what can appear to be the end of family.  For me, it was especially worrisome as I had already seen my father go through one divorce, and it wasn’t his first.  I could open a book, and whatever was going on around me faded out of my awareness while what was in the book became all I could see, hear, feel.  
  • Reading increased my vocabulary.  Words I didn’t know I learned by context.  It was a challenge to me to stop in the middle of my reading and reread a passage until I felt certain I had a good guess about a word’s meaning.  I was a vocabulary Sherlock, digging through all the clues in preceding and following sentences, reviewing the personality of the character speaking, the events around the usage, the tone of the narrator.  Reading made me alert to body language, to the tones of my parents when they spoke to me, the tricks my sister tried to play on me thinking because she was older, I could be fooled.  I learned to look closely at and listen to the people around me.
  • Reading introduced me to figurative language.  I began a personal career of explaining everything with metaphor and simile.  Reading made me a better communicator because I was always looking for a more interesting and clearer way of saying things.
  • Reading made me more tolerant of difference.  I started out reading animals stories.  I loved to read about leopards, otters and beavers.  When I was eleven I entered a wonderful library in the town we had moved to.  I decided to start at the letter A in the juvenile section and read to the end.  It turned out I was in the science fiction shelves of that section.  By the time I had hit Poul Anderson, I was hooked.  A person can’t read about aliens without gaining a strong sense of appreciation for the unique, unusual, adventurous.  Burroughs, Bradbury, Carter and Heinlein could drown out anything:  a scary movie, my brother’s annoying yelling, parents arguing, anything.
  • Reading gave me a love for science.  For several years I wanted to be an astronaut.  I took high level math, physics, biology, chemistry, and tons of English classes, whether the classes were required or not (when I was in school, few were required.  I could have graduated my junior year).
  • Reading gave me a strong bladder.  “What?” you say.  Well, I never wanted to stop reading.  I would stay until I was going to have an accident then run to the bathroom.  Fortunately, I was one of several children and my father had a good  job.  There were always three bathrooms in the house.  One was bound to be empty when I could stand to wait no more.  Hunger was no different.  I sat reading until I was weak or my mother came looking for me.
  • Reading made me imaginative.  I could plan out a blueberry picking adventure complete with back story requiring we (we being my friends who were not in the least imaginary) locate the requisite amount to save the town from certain death due to a disease cured by a handful of blueberries.  And if they were not to be found, well acorns, strawberries, gooseberries, maple tree seeds that spin like helicopters would make an acceptable substitute cure requiring different procedures but not to worry, there was a reason for everything.
  • Reading helped me decompress (still does): stress, difficult decisions, upcoming events, a bad day, and expected bad day to come, cramps, etc.  Reading helped me relax.  A good book will redirect my brain so I can stop thinking a million things and go to sleep.  And reading can wake me up, too.
  • Reading helps me be a better teacher because of all the things above.  I get excited about the written word.  There are days when my students get excited about it, too.  I can come up with a variety of ways to explain things, I get along with anybody, I can discuss most topics at least generally, some to great detail which helps when I have students not in the least bit interested in grammar and writing, and having a strong bladder can be especially helpful when teaching five periods in a row and the restroom is way down at the other end of the hall.
  • It hasn’t hurt my writing none either.

What has reading done for you?  I am sure there are many benefits I have left out.

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