Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing

Happy New Year, happy publishing

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Today started with my usual check in at my blog, at my Smashwords dashboard and at Goodreads.  No one had visited my page, no one had downloaded my book, and I ran short of taking part in Goodreads due to family demands.  And then with this new year winding out before me, I had to stop and rethink where I was about to let my thoughts run off to.  You see, a year ago, I was telling myself that as soon as summer vacation started, I was going to rework the first book in my series of SciFi novels (all unpublished) and check out Kindle and Barnes & Nobel and see about self-publishing an ebook. I was telling myself every day that I was closer to putting my novel out there.

The first week of June, I researched Kindle, then took a look at Barnes & Nobel and on a whim decided to see what else was out there for an author wanting to publish an ebook.  I heard about Smashwords through blogs I read. And that name kept coming up, so I went to the site and looked at what they were offering authors.  I mulled things over for two months, redrafting the entire time.

In August, I finished that redraft, edited, prepared for publication and then uploaded my book to Smashwords, where I decided the best fit for me as an author was.  A year ago, I was not a published author.  This may be only one of three places I call myself one, but it is a place and name I did not have one year ago.  So only 16 people have downloaded the sample of my novel.  I could tell myself, and have, that they did not like my writing or changed their minds and have not even looked at a word I’ve written, but I can also say, that 16 people who would not have seen it at all, never mind download a sample have had the opportunity.  This blog has been viewed 151 times since I started it in September, and that is 151 times more than last year.

So this year my goal is doubled.  I plan to complete my edit on an anthology of SciFi short fiction and complete my redraft on the second in my Students of Jump series.  I intend to publish them both before this new year is out.  It is possible that the third in the series could be out by the end of the year as well.

So it is a very happy new year.  I wish whoever reads this blog has a goal as fulfilling as mine and gets to see his or hers grow to fruition.  Happy New Year.

The incredible disappearing Q W E R T Y

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The incredible disappearing QWERTY.

What is the most important tool for me as a writer?  That is easy: a keyboard.  I mention this as I have noticed that over the years of owning various computers that the keyboard letters are fading more quickly with each new purchase as I upgrade. In essence, as I upgrade the computer, technology seems to be downgrading the durability of the lettering.  I am fairly proficient at keyboarding, but I do use certain letters as landmarks for where other keys are when I am not sitting at my desk.

You know the routine.  There are several things to get done, so I turn on the computer, run to move laundry to the dryer, come back and enter my login, but I am not sitting down, so I have to hunt and peck to locate the keys.  Only, E, R, T, I, S, D, H, L, C, and N are completely gone, and several are in the process of disappearing.  So this simple entering of a login turns into a frustrating moment of trying to visualize a keyboard my fingers know well, but my eyes do not.

Each time I sit down at my computer and note this particular annoyance, I
think of a new way I can replace these keys markers:  paint (the
obvious: would nail polish work?  I have a really nice opalescent.), etch them in with a hot needle (somewhat raised as the
original keyboards were), replace the keys, buy replacement stickers,
buy a new keyboard (really?!), etc.

Sure keyboards are a throw away item, so excess durability is useless. 
But I want to be the one to decide when my keyboard is ready to go the
will-a-the-wisp, and I’ll make the decision based on letters showing or
not showing on my screen not disappearing off my keyboard.

Maybe I just need to use my P’s and Q’s a lot more and my R’s and E’s a lot less.

Update:  I purchased replacement letters to stick on the blank keys.  Then my husband bought me a new computer a month later. So the keyboard letter wear is great on the old keyboard. My new one: well less than a year later the lovely backlit letters began to not fade, but disappear in a whole new fashion.

The keys are cut into the layer of “paint” so the light can glow the letter. But that “paint” is getting scratched off so my keyboard letters are now taking on this sort of smudged effect, rather like a ultra modernist painter swished a vaguely alphabetic impression on the board. The culprit letters are: E, S, D, T, N and M.  No surprise there. Except that I had the previous keyboard near ten years, and this one lasted a mere year.

I am still not using those P’s and Q’s all that much.

Any suggestions?  Should we strike, demand keyboards with raised letters, argue functionality over bells and whistles?  Maybe I’ll just nail polish this time.

The best can come out of the bits and pieces

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I have always been a believer in the idea that there are things that are specifically made to fit a situation or need, but one can always come up with a bypass if that item is just not available. This is how I manage to deal with computers that don’t want to work or when an overhead projector at school decides to go on the fritz. Being a teacher, I need to be ready for every contingency.  I remind my students of this outlook when one tells me the computer died just as she was about to type a homework assignment (pull out a pencil and write) or his printer broke (email it). (Computers crashing far outnumber dogs eating homework these days).  I think I learned this make-do style from my father.

My mom always did the cooking, but there were rare times when she was too sick and my father had to take over.  He never minded, she always did.  He would look in the refrigerator and start pulling things out.  A pot on the stove was the destination for everything he found.  In the end, the bubbling mass would look like a poor quality of concrete ready for pouring.  We would make burritos with it, adding cheddar cheese and taco sauce.  Though it looked disgusting, it was delicious.

When my mom was well enough to return to the kitchen, we would all make her “sick” with our rapturous descriptions of Dad’s “Slab” recipe.

I look at writing this way, too.  Need a name for a character to be common but memorable:  I pick an average name, Fred for instance, and add/delete a letter.  Fned Carson is one of the characters in my short story tentatively titled “Scrapper.”  He’s an average guy whose life has been flowing downhill for awhile (something that happened to my father for a time, too). My main character Moekaff, an eight-year-old boy, is left at Carson’s Rest, a transport rest stop and restaurant. There the two suffer separately as they try to deal with rough times.  I needed Fned to be both an addition to Moe’s troubles but also a man with a right to be angry and depressed, ready to take out his frustrations on this kid who is himself in mourning.  They don’t save each other, but they do share their misery and somehow walk away with possibilities.  But that is only a part of the journey Moekaff takes before he finds a place to call home again.  I am still finishing this story and hope to make it part of an anthology of science fiction stories I have written.  As soon as it’s done, I’ll finish my redraft on my second novel of my Students of Jumps series, No Time Like the Present.

Kenny Rogers, the First Edition and my writing

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I remember when I first starting thinking about writing my book In Times Passed.  I worked at a factory and was a product grader.  I would pull off the line anything that didn’t meet quality requirements.  Doesn’t take much thought or intelligence, just good automaton-like reflexes. I would listen to music, day dream, write letters in my head while my eyes registered flaws and my hands reached out and grabbed, flipped and dropped the item into the correct bin based on the type of flaw.

Then a song came on the radio by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, “I just dropped in (to see what condition my condition was in).” As I listened, the story of a man who found a means to travel in time started playing out in my mind.  I liked the image of him “dropping in to see what condition [his] condition was in.”  And it was there that the idea for my book came from. I actually didn’t start writing it for several months. Each night at work, I would run the story through my mind again and again, working out the characters, problems he would run into, who his friends were, where and when it was all happening.  And every once in a while, that song would play on the radio again and refresh the images in my mind.  So finally I sat down and began writing out the story.

The book has evolved a lot since then, changing, repeatedly edited, redrafted, etc. I thought of it as the book I was learning to write on, though I had written two other books before I began it.  It seemed to be the one I most wanted to make work.  I went on to write a sequel for it and then a third and fourth, thinking all the time that one of them would be good enough to get published.  But I never really made the effort to publish.  Oh, I did some half-hearted efforts:  I sent the manuscript to a contest once and a synopsis of it to a publisher another time.  Nothing came of it.  I’ve redrafted it several times since then.

So here we are in the digital age.  I can self-publish via Smashwords.com and see if someone can enjoy the story as much as I enjoyed thinking of it, writing it and redrafting it.  When I think of that book, it reminds me of the days in the factory and how much it made the time go by for me.  And I still think of it as the book I learned to write on.  And I think each one since has been an improvement. a step forward in the skill of story telling.  So it isn’t the best book out there.  I hope one day, someone will call it an early Gibbs, the one to read to get a sense of where I started. Where one can “just drop in to see what condition my condition was in.”

Those darn book trailers

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I have been working on making a book trailer for my novel In Times Passed. This has not been an easy process. I have pretty much everything I need to produce one except a clear idea of how to put across just the right amount of information to create interest in buying the book and understanding of what the novel is about. I have received some feedback from other writers/readers/trailer viewers/etc. at Goodreads, and this has been helpful.  But again it comes down to me making the necessary changes. I posted my first version on YouTube, at Smashwords on my book page, at Goodreads on my author page and for a short time on this blog.

After considering editing my trailer, I sat down and wrote out the book’s plot in the simplest terms. I thought that this would help me get an idea of what is essential and what I need to leave out. Definitely helped to use the most basic of tools: the plot line.


So I ended up with this brief draft:  
It’s the year 2275 and Brent Garrett has been living off privilege for more than 24 years; however, recently it’s been leaving him dissatisfied.  But it is hard to complain.  

Raised at Meredith Complex, he knows he is expected to add to his orderly and secluded society.  He has yet to contribute anything.  Then he receives a prototype Nerg box and modifies it on a whim with startling results.  Now he has a time machine.  With a means to leave his frustrations behind (or is it ahead of him?), he travels back in time to 1979, part impulse and part destiny.  He meets Miranda Jenkins who offers him a new life, one he’ll have to work for. And it’s satisfying.  

Living the life of the common man has its benefits and its flaws.  Some flaws can shred a heart. For a man with time at his fingertips, running away is a tempting option.  

So that is where I am now. I think I have the text.  Next I have to work on the video.

Writing is like driving a truck a little too big for me

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My husband and I used to own an old red, full-size Dodge truck. I drove it quite a bit, and being a small woman, it always made me feel as though I was doing something unusual.

I would see my petite hands wrapped around the over-sized steering wheel, surprisingly slender, the flat bench seat seeming to push back at my hundred pounds of weight.  The steering had a constant jiggle from side to side in my hands.

At first I tried to hold it steady but overtime I got comfortable enough to trust the truck to steer straight even if the wheel I held seemed to be shifting back and forth; it had play in it.  My arms would just relax into the movement.

Writing is like that.  It has wiggle room in a story when I am drafting, and I will feel at first that the story is drifting in and out of the center it should be in.  I slow down, hold tighter, end up over correcting, and the driving of the story is not enjoyable.

As I become more involved with its inhabitants, my grip loosens. I begin to trust the story to keep the road on its own, and the tremendous view out the window gets much more of my attention, not those quick glances that are punctuated by far more intense visuals of the speedometer, gas gauge and temperature indicator.

When I have gained trust in the story, it doesn’t get easier to write, any more than that truck got easier for me to push the pedal down or steer around corners, but the writing does feel more like it has a good reason to be coming into existence; there is purpose to it, place, time, people and growth.  So every story seems a little too big for me, a little unwieldy, but in time, I gain the finesse and ease of moving along the track of the story’s way.