Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Reading

If You Like This Series, Then This…

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I have four series published, and there are enough books in each to give a clear representation of the type of writing I do. But there are differences between the series, enough to create readers who might wonder which series they should go to next.

So, I thought I would give a little breakdown of each series and what draw each has.

Cover image of the first book in the series.

I’ll start with my first fantasy series: Standing Stone. This is a coming of age, heroic journey, and fantasy adventure series. Each book links to the next, though a couple years’ time passes for some, while others pick up a day after the previous book.

Another point is that the lead character is male. However, there are two secondary leads: unrelated siblings (read the book if you want that explained 🙂 ). Why is this important? All my books contain strong female protagonists, and this is the only series where the lead is male. If you don’t like independent, intelligent females, you found the wrong author. And they come in multiples as there is never just one smart woman in the room.

Cover image of first book in Annals of the Dragon Dreamer

If you’ve read the Standing Stone series, you might wonder which of my other series would be the best fit. Back to the labels: coming of age, heroic journey, fantasy adventure—the most likely candidate is my new series Annals of the Dragon Dreamer. Why? Well, it fits all three labels, and there is a strong male lead, though he is not the main character. He plays an important role throughout the series.

However, it falls under other labels. It has a slow burn romance. Also, unlike Standing Stone, it has dragons, conscious forests, and magically influenced animals: horses and wolves. So both high fantasy and epic fantasy. Dragons are prominent in this series.

Cover image of book one n the Solstice Dragon World

Annals of the Dragon Dreams should lead you to my Solstice Dragon World novels because there are dragons. Independent, intelligent female protagonists, dragons who follow the demands of the “Don’t Eat Humans” clause, and world and personal crises that require they work together. But there is a difference that it is important to note. While both Annals of the Dragon Dreamers and Standing Stone are series which follow a long story arc, each of the Solstice Dragon novels are stand-alone novels. You don’t have to read book one to enjoy book two.

There’s always an exception. Book five is best read after book one. Why? Well, they share characters and the difficulties in book one lead directly to the problems that hamper the characters of book five. Yes, you can leap over books two, three and four, and go straight to five. Save the others until later. Or read them in this order: 2, 3, 4, 1, 5. However, books one and five are not dependent upon each other and don’t have to be read next to each other or even in order, though you’ll miss some of the best surprises of book one if you read it after book five.

Cover image of Book 1 in Kavin Cut Chronicles

Now if you like Solstice Dragon World novels, but don’t have to have dragons present, there’s the trilogy Kavin Cut Chronicles: a hidden kingdom novel. Like all my books, it is a clean romance, has an independent protagonist (in this case, she doesn’t start out that way but grows into the role—so one might say it is a new adult coming of age series). Kavin Cut Chronicles is a nice lead to Standing Stone.

Not surprised. If you like my style of writing, any of my series could be just right for you, but below is a list of labels matched to the series it applies to.

Independent, intelligent female protagonists: all my series

Clean romance: all my series (Standing Stone is super light on the romance)

Dragons and mythical creatures: Solstice Dragon World, Annals of the Dragon Dreamer

Adventure fantasy: all my series

Epic fantasy: Standing Stone, Annals of the Dragon Dreamer. I suppose Kavin Cut Chronicles fits here, too.

Slow burn romance: Solstice Dragon World, Kavin Cut Chronicles, Annals of the Dragon Dreamer

Coming of Age: Standing Stone, Kavin Cut Chronicles, Dira’s Dragon (Solstice Dragon World)

Sword and Sorcery: all my series

If I’ve overlooked an important category or link between series, leave a comment and I’ll add it to the post.

My Current Reading Rotation

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Reading books (Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash)

I read quite a bit, often following several series at once.

I’ve been keeping up with four separate series whose writers have been kind enough to be on quite fast release schedules.

I can’t write at that speed for a variety of reasons, but I believe all four of these writers are writing full time.

Who are they and which series?

  • K. M. Shea: Hall of Blood and Mercy series
  • Lindsay Buroker: Star Kingdom series
  • Jessica Lynch: Touched by the Fae series
  • Elizabeth Hunter: Glimmer Lake series

I just keep rotating through.

What I find particularly interesting is that the moment I read the first few sentences, I’m suddenly comfortable. “Oh, its Killian and Hazel.” I snuggle down in my seat and put off grading for a few hours.

That is what books should do. They steal us a few hours away from what we should do, what we don’t want to do, what needs to be done and will be, later.

I remember when my parents would be arguing, I’d grab a book, pick a chair somewhere in the house and leave via someone’s well-written words.

I didn’t want to return. It took someone jiggling my foot and saying, “Dinner! Didn’t you hear?” to get me to return to the world of the teenager and family squabbles.

So along with getting my now online-job work done, keeping my family from going stir crazy, enjoying a particularly affectionate Labrador who is no longer in quarantine in the back hall, I’ve been reading at every opportunity.

I hope you’ll consider checking out these series. They are each nearing their completions, I think. You never know for sure though.

Stories sometimes do more of the dictating than the writer of when the story ends.

For myself, I have often thought I was writing a standalone novel only to find the story is not complete. Such is the case with my newest series. I published book 1 and have book to in pre-order. It’s a trilogy, I think. I’ll know for certain when I get to the end of book three.

I suspect it may have an offshoot series, but I’ll have to wait and see when I get there.

In the meantime, I’ll follow these series to their ends. Join me if you like snark, magic/space adventure, strong female protagonists and well-wrought worlds you can step into until someone jiggles your foot and you have to eat dinner, which I have found makes it possible to read more later.

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.