They asked if I would like to share my favorite books, and I jumped at the chance. What a great way to find books written with the ideas you most like to see in what you read!

How does it know what the best books are for topics, such as dragons, family, Christian themes, ect.?

Authors answer the question when they list their favorite books that fit a specific topic. But not just any topic, but one they most enjoy and even prefer to make an important feature of their own books.

The books shown above are my favorite books for when strangers become the best kind of family.

Follow this link to read my reasons for liking these books so much. While you’re there, use the search feature to look for your favorite themes and topics. You might just find some new favorites to add to your own.

Here’s one that I found interesting: The Best Books with Dragon-Human bonds in it.

Search Tip: enter a broad topic, such as dragons or mystery or loss. A list will come up for you to select from.

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Oh, poor Carton, who loves Lucie but not himself enough to push aside his determined fate.

Or Monsieur the Marquis as he travels home from Paris, just late from his most recent evil:

The Monsieur the Marquis in red

The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling (sic) carriage when it gained the hill-top, (sic) that its occupant was steeped in crimson.  “It will die out,” said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, “directly.”

Blood not just on his hands but all over him, “steeped in crimson” and “will die out.”  And so his bloodline nearly does; he certainly does and almost “directly.”

I love to get lost in Dicken’s flow of words, so deeply knitted together as though the whole cloth of the story was life as he moves characters in and out of the spotlight until the reader is entirely uncertain who should be followed, main character and supporting shifting places constantly, just as life works, each of us moving in and out of the limelight with the people we most care about.

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To my surprise, my blog was actually viewed today, twice.  Little ghost feet came and went.  I don’t know whether to jump up and down or wonder how the accident happened, and lightening struck twice or it was more along the lines of a vortex and one person was sucked in twice.  A friend and I went driving to Portland, Oregon, once, can’t remember why, but I recall we became very lost, and I took over navigating using a Portland map. Even so, we went by the same dark, lonely building on a one-way street at least three times.  Part of me is certain someone didn’t read the Google blurb right on their search list or hit the mouse accidentally sending them here, twice even.  Hope it didn’t have that same dark and lonely look as the street we tumbled into and giggled nervously about realizing it wasn’t the best part of town and 11 PM was probably not the safest time to visit either.  Oh, let’s look positively.  Two people intentionally visited my blog, looked around, nodded sagely and left closing the door gently. 

It has been an interesting journey this getting my book epublished. Essentially, I am a shy person.  I don’t roust about grabbing people’s attention; I am not hiding in the corner either, but I do tend to be the second person to say hello, not the first, so this whole get out there and make yourself known deal is just not my costume (yes costume, not custom, though it is not that either.  I just meant I can’t put on that kind of appearance).  I know about persona, not the writing one (well that too, but that is not what I am referring to), the one a person creates to cover up the real individual underneath. Not easy being a teacher when shyness is the natural tendency. I just slip on that teacherly persona and teach.  But what is a writer’s persona?  Or rather this writer’s persona.  I know my teacherly one is unique to me, so what should this writer’s one be?  I guess I’ll just have to wait until it grows on.

Some aspect of this has to do with writing; I am certain of it.  Well, it is Wednesday and I couldn’t sleep because I blog on this day each week, and I hate feeling guilty when I miss it.  Next week I am going to write about a lovely little app I found for my iPhone that is great for mapping out a story when I am away from my computer.  How’s that for suspense?

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Smashwords.com is where I published my book, In Times Passed, and one thing that was very much emphasized in the formatting of a book to ready it for the meatgrinder (the program that turns the uploaded manuscript into several varieties of ebook format) is that it must be in Word, preferably 2003 or 2007 versions.  I have a preference for WordPerfect (WP), though I use Word at work.  All my writing is in wpd format.  So for those writers with the same preference as I, I wanted to share how easy it was to make the final preparation on the document that would be uploaded, while still using WP for the original document.  The writer does have to have Word for the final step, though. 

I completed my book in WP as well as put it through a final content edit.  Then following the Smashwords’ guide for publication formatting, I used the recommended “nuclear method.” The name sounds terrible, but the process truly is the easiest way to strip out WP formatting.  I used the select all menu choice in Edit, copied, and then pasted it into Notepad.  I saved the text in Notepad format.  Since I have the programs on separate computers, I used a flashdrive to transfer the new Notepad document to my laptop which has Word on it.  I then opened Notepad on the laptop, selected, copied and pasted it into a new Word document.  From there on, I followed the Smashwords’ guide on preparing the program to avoid it inserting formatting, and then I followed remaining instructions for fonts, chapter headings, scene breaks, styles, etc.

I put my book through one more final edit using a strategy I always tell my students.  I worked from the end of the document, sentence by sentence back to the beginning. This keeps me from falling into the story and losing track of the fact that I am looking for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.  Other things catch my attention that way, too.  If I ask myself, “Who said that?”  I recheck the dialogue and make sure it is clear who is speaking as I don’t always use tags.  Ultimately, I did go through the document with a close eye for formatting codes that were not allowed.  The guide is very clear about how to do this and what to look for, so I leave any writers reading this to read it.  My main point here is feel free to use WordPerfect when creating your work, as a quick trip through Notepad clears away any formatting which could have turned the whole endeavor into a nightmare.  As it was, I had no format errors to correct after the upload and made it into the Premium Catalog without issue the first time.

The post For users of WordPerfect who want to publish on Smashwords first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

I don’t want this to sound like a paid ad, so let me just say, breaking my story into scenes and taking the time to enter the goals, conflict and outcome (for plot) helped me ensure there was purpose for each scene and know how each scene drove the story forward.  There is much more to the software, and most of what it offers has greatly improved my redrafting for content as well as time invested.  The writer can decide what she wants to use and to what extent she wants to use.  And it’s free but well worth showing gratitude by voluntarily sending in a monetary pat on the back to the developer.

The post yWriter software is a tool worth downloading first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

I searched for where to publish my ebook, and though I considered B&N and Kindle at Amazon, when I tripped over a reference to Smashwords and checked it out, I felt that I had arrived home.  Each step was scary but easy, as Mark Coker at Smashwords makes it easy.  When I downloaded my book onto my iPhone and flipped through the pages….euphoria.  I ran and showed my daughter, flipping the title page into view, then the table of contents and a few pages of the first chapter.  She said I looked scary and a little weird.  I think I am going to go see if I still look weird to her.

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