But… there are options:

Start with Book 1, The Dragon Question, and read to the last current book. (series order)
Follow The Dragon Question story: Book 1 then Book 5.
Follow Rasmuth’s story: Book 1 then 3 then 5 then 8, followed by 10.
Follow Codger’s story: Book 1 then 5 then 9.
Follow Brundar’s story: Prequel (The Don’t Eat Humans Clause) then Book 3.

What not to do if you prefer to avoid spoilers:
Best not read Book 5 before reading Book 1.
Best not read Book 8 before reading Book 5.

NOTE: Reading Book 2, Dragon Bone Ridge, first creates no problems at all.

The post With Eight Books & Growing,… first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The post If You Like This Series, Then This… first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The post Where an idea begins ~ mine took me here first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

This won’t be a long post, more of a list of what is in the works.

• The fourth book in the Solstice Dragon World, To Harbor a Dragon, is now up as a pre-order set to upload at the end of April. A paperback version will follow shortly after the eBook goes live.
• The third book in the Solstice Dragon World, Dira’s Dragon, is in the works to be available in paperback, tentative deadline is set for mid-March.
• My new series Kavin Cut Chronicles is moving along nicely. Covers are in the works next week with Ryn Katryn Digital Art. (Loraine has done all my covers. I love her work!) I expect the first to publish about May with the pre-order coming out in March.
• The two Kavin Cut Chronicles that will complete the trilogy should be out before summer ends and in eBook and paperback.
• A fifth book for the Standing Stone series will be hitting the drafting board sometime in August, I expect, and will be out before the end of the year.
• The Standing Stone series should be out in paperback by summer 2020.
• If all goes according to plan, this will be the year I publish four perhaps even five books in twelve months, a new record: One Solstice Dragon World, three Kavin Cut Chronicles and one Standing Stone. All will be in paperback shortly after the eBook publication.

So that is the plan, subject to change, of course. The fifth Standing Stone is the one that has the greatest wiggle room. It may have to wait until January 2021 for publication, though the pre-order will definitely go up between October and December 2020.

This year is off to a wonderful start. I hope yours is as well. May you find plenty of lovely books to read, lots of adventure in your world and contentment where it counts the most.

My plans for 2021 are very fluid, so if you have a particular series you wish me to focus on next year, post it in the comments. My fans definitely have pull with me.

The post Busy in 2020 by an order of 4 maybe 5 first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

Have you ever lost a manuscript or partial draft to electronic failure?

Happily, I can say no. But there is more to my answer than that. I can say no because I have several different automated backups that I use because I have had computers throw up their hands and go black screen on me. And I do panic for a couple minutes. But then I remember I have two external drives (manual system), one Dropbox (automated), one network drive (automated) and emailed copies.

When my daughter was in her senior year in high school, we went downtown and I took pictures of her. They came out amazing and I worked on them all evening. The next day my computer went black. My automated backup system was for all my writing, not for pictures or other work. I had a manual backup system with a external hard drive I used for those since they changed less frequently. I put off backing those lovely pictures up for the next day. Heartbreak.

My daughter and I went out to recreate those pictures. We ended up with other nice ones, but not the ones my memory was certain were the best I’d ever taken.

The Geek Squad came to my rescue and retrieved all the pictures and other documents. Since then I’ve bought a hard drive reader and when the same computer went black again, I retrieved my recent documents myself.

However, even though I had not lost any work in progress, I had feared that I lost my folder on future novel ideas. It was in a section of my drive I did not bother to back up more than once a year. Thankfully, the Geek Squad retrieved it along with my daughters pictures (which were a great as I remembered them), which in retrospect makes me quite happy as I am currently writing book three of the fantasy series that was inspired by two-pages of notes I kept in that infrequently saved folder and it would have been gone had my luck not held out.

One doesn’t have to lose everything to learn a lesson: save everything!

#backup
#wip
#interview

The post A Stab at a Self-interview: Question 8 ~ losing a draft to electronic failure first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

 Would you consider writing a prequel for either of your series?

Actually, I do have a prequel in mind for the Standing Stone series. It would focus on the backstory of the Wielder Wain which is an important event that occurred 16 years prior to the first book in the series. The focus characters would be Mahre Pratter (Donnel) and Tran Pratter. My daughter has suggested that I should also write about the sinister sisters and the An Faire migration mythology which is 300 years earlier than the first book. They both intrigue me. I’ll let the ideas putter about awhile and see what comes to mind.

I don’t think I’ll be writing either anytime soon as I am currently drafting book 3 of the Standing Stone series, have murky beginnings for a book 4 in the series, have book 5 of the Students of Jump series waiting behind the door, along with a contemporary novel, an anthology of poems and another series sitting on the back burner.

So a quick answer to the question: Maybe, but breath holding is not advised.

Since this turned out to be a short post, I’ll mention my current activities. I have, as I said, started writing book 3. As added incentive to new readers, I reduced the price to 99 cents for The Sharded Boy, book 1 in the series (available at all major eBook retailers).

I am also considering setting up a mailing list which would probably be a monthly newsletter combining updates for both my series and anything newsy I want to include. I’m a newby in the process, so I need to do my homework before I make it available for signup. When and if I do, I’ll post the signup link here, on my Facebook page, at the end of each of my books, and perhaps on my Google and GoodReads accounts.

The post A Stab at a Self-interview: Question 7 ~ prequel to a series? first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.