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 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.

The post My Current Reading Rotation first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

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 post Why read my books? 15 reasons you should consider making a purchase. first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

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

The post The 10 problems that will make me giveup reading a book first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

The post Been hanging out with the lady writers these days first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

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.

The post It’s not the words, but the interplay of them first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

Reading was essential. In many ways, it is still the same kind of essential it was when I was a child and later a teenager.  If I cannot sleep, which happens fairly often, all I need do is pick up a book.  Maybe I can’t sleep because I am thinking too much, lesson planning or planning a field trip or going over a conversation that just won’t quit my mind. Whatever it is that is keeping me awake disappears when I read.  It is as if my mind narrows to just this one thing, the story I am reading.  It fills the space between my ears.  Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later, I can turn off my Sony reader, roll over and shortly I am asleep. When I read, I throw everything out and leave room only for the story.  I don’t actively examine the details; I take them in, spread  them out for reflection.  It is a leisurely flow of reading and understanding, putting things together without effort.  When I put the book down, that meditative flow stays and rolls me right into sleep.

If I didn’t read, I would remain awake for hours.

The post When I can’t sleep, I read. When I read, I can sleep. first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.