Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Smashwords

Not just sitting around

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Not just watching the flowers grow.

So I have not been preparing my Tuesday prompts and am not busy teaching, but that doesn’t mean I am just sitting around twiddling my thumbs.  I have been steadily working on two separate projects.  One is getting the second of my Student of Jump books (No-time Like the Present) ready for publication at the end of this month.  I just finished what is my pretend final edit.  The one I convince myself is the last one needed.  But in a week or so it will go through another which will no doubt result in finding so many errors I will be a basket case for a few days, losing all confidence before I do another edit which will do the exact opposite, and I will split the difference and feel fairly confident that I have taken care of all I can.  I have my absolutely wonderful beta reader tackling it right now, which will provide the impetus to make changes and edit again.

The other project is The Handbook of Narrative Frameworks for Novels & Short Stories.  This is a gathering of the narrative mode posts I have been doing since February 2013.  After pulling them together, I edited, added, and am currently creating worksheets that will help make use of the frameworks each one provides for novel and story writing.  All and all I have been busy and since school has let out, intensely content finding myself immersed in my writing, spending time with my family, and taking care of those little jobs that always wait for summer to come.

News: In Times Passed is back at Smashwords

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Back in September I took my first novel in the Students of Jump series out of publication to make some additions to the text and finish some small cleanup. Life was very busy: teaching always keeps my personal life on hold from September to May each year. But I still managed to complete the draft on the second book in the series, No-time Like the Present and worked on In Times Passed to get it back into circulation.

Which brings me to now.  I uploaded the updated version last week and have waited until now to announce it because I wished to wait till the book was reviewed and placed in the Premium Catalog which will make it available at other e-book sellers.

Summer is coming; I feel it flutter behind my heart, which means I will be writing again.  I can now prepare the second book for upload which should occur by July 2013 and begin the redraft of book 3, Time on my Hands.

L. Darby Gibbs’s Smashwords Author Profile: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/LDGibbs

See my book page to sample or purchase In Times Passed: http://smashwords.com/b/77866

Or see my book page to sample or purchase my anthology Gardens in the Cracks & Other Stories: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/177065

My Doubling Plan for the Year.

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Scheherazade’s rice doubling

So last year I reviewed my efforts to publish my first book on Smashwords (first book anywhere, to qualify that), and I viewed a simple download of a sample of my work and the 151 times my blog had been sampled as a positive step forward to being a writer. I talked about my plans to publish my second book in my series Students of Jump, and I wanted to double the number of times my blog had been viewed.  So how did I do and am I still looking forward positively when I still remain undiscovered by a reading public?

  • I unpublished In Times Passed this past September to revamp and reedit as I felt it was incomplete.  I intend to republish before this month is out, and it is now complete and just in need of some review editing.
  • No-Time Like the Present, the second in the series, is not published yet, but is on its last redraft and close to a full-blown edit and first reader run.   It suffered a delay when I pulled book 1 off the line for a revamp and reedit.  I can say book 2 is two to four months away from publication.
  • I did publish an anthology of short stories called Gardens in the Cracks & Other Stories last July.  I chose to hit my publish date for book 2 with this anthology as I hated missing a self-imposed publishing day.  I follow the philosophy that backing down from a promise is just a habit in the making. So this was my way of keeping my promise but not putting a book out before it was ready.  These shorts stories felt ready.
  • So I wanted to double my 151 blogger visits.  That would mean I had to have at least 302 hits for 2012.  I have had 1,726 hits.  Guess I hit that goal a few times.  Sure, I know that is not much when looked at in popular blog numbers, but here I am with a plan to double it again.  So I am off to break 3,456 by next year.
  • I started a Twitter account (@LDarbyGibbs) and had quite a run with it until school started and I had to put my valuable time elsewhere.  I met some great writers, learned to get my point across in 140 spaces or less and found Hootsuite a hoot better than a hollar.  I still visit Twitter every couple of weeks and wish I could do more.  Second semester has always been the easier part of the school year for me, so perhaps I’ll be on more in the coming year.
  • I slipped off Goodreads once September came, same excuse applies.  But I read five books in the last week and half while on Christmas break.  So I do have something to talk about.  I might get back on as the new semester gets settled.
  • Book 3 of the Students of Jump is drafted, titled (Time on my Hands), and waiting in the wings.
  • I am still publishing on Smashwords, which is really publishing everywhere else I want to be anyway.  I’ve sold a total of 18 books which is 18 more than I started with.  I can say I doubled my numbers since last year.  Okay, try not to snigger too loud.  Remember what happened when Scheherazade told the story of doubling the grains of rice just a few times.  I have a tried and true plan here.
  • New goals besides what is stated above:  keep writing, keep reading, keep loving my family and being worthy of their love, make more writer friends, and grow a little wiser in the effort.

So what is your plan for the year 2013 in the making?

End of the Month of July Sale at Smashwords

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The last days to purchase my book at Smashwords are here.  

Anybody who knows me knows I hate this stuff.  But if I didn’t mention again that my books are on sale at Smashwords (half price, making each just .99) and one can download them in any of the popular formats for ereaders and computer eBook readers, I will be berating myself in a few days.

I can just hear it now, “Really, you couldn’t plug your books just once more.  It is not like you have been creating traffic jambs on the internet with your broadcasting efforts to sell your book.  One time really?”

It wouldn’t be pleasant. So, one more time: I have two books, In Times Passed, a time travel novel that can stand alone from the series it begins, and Gardens in the Cracks & Other Stories, an anthology of short science fiction stories.  See my books page on this blog or follow the links for details.

Really one dollar.

Today I wish I was perfect, and probably tomorrow, too

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It is hard to believe, but I am close to publishing my second book at Smashwords.  This work is an anthology of shorts stories, Gardens in the Cracks & Other Stories. They are loosely connected by the “world” they are all derived from in that similar technology and history are imbedded in each.  The title piece (“Gardens in the Cracks”) and another short work (Scrapper, a novella) have some characters in common as well as time and general locale.  The remaining stories developed out of experiments of one sort or another: repeating motif, what if, narrative from a secondary character, and such.  I think all writers will agree, the editing is the hardest part.  I have gone over them so many times looking for every error I can.

Besides the fact that I write recursively and therefore edit constantly as I write, I am now on my fourth line edit of this work.  I can say that turning on the feature that checks grammar and mechanics in a word processing program can be the most annoying and beneficial experience.  I found myself examining nearly every sentence and defending or correcting innumerable aspects of my writing.  Frequently, the program would highlight a word or two and state “if you are using this to mean…., then you are correct.  But if you mean…., then….”  I can’t say how many times I said, “Can’t you tell?”  Every once and a while I was glad it did not let a single questionable word by, as I had in fact used a word incorrectly.

Dialogue can play a large part of a fiction work, and in an effort to sound like the genuine article, my characters often speak in phrases or are not necessarily grammatically correct.  So I was reminded on a regular basis that I had fragments of sentences or slang where I intended them to be.  This still was a benefit as I noticed that some of my characters did this more often than others, and I had the opportunity to decide if this was a characteristic I wanted for the individual or if it was too heavily used.

The fine tooth comb that I am using now gives me a headache, but not using it would be worse than a headache.  So off I go again scraping each sentence free of error.  This is one of those times when I really wish I was perfect.