A Stab at a Self-interview: Question 6 ~ Standing Stone favorite character

L. Darby Gibbs — Sat, 27 May 2017 14:00:00 +0000

Who is one of your favorite characters from the Standing Stone series?

The Mabra – cryptic old woman

When I starting thinking about my answer to this question, I knew immediately who I would name and had a pretty good idea why I was choosing him. But the more I thought about it, I realized there was a secondary character that was a strong favorite of mine, so I have chosen The Mabra.

Mabra Camlis – The Mabra is a character in book 2, The Shifter Shard. She is an enigma, oddly all knowing and thought to be functionally mad. Or as Master Clepp describes her, “The woman’s a bit odd, but it doesn’t interfere with the
running of the orphanage.”

She is so slow moving and old that she covers only inches with each step causing her guests to have to wait quite some time for her to join them even though she is very much in sight. She compensates for this slowness by yelling at the top of her lungs so that she and anyone there to visit her can carry on a conversation without having to wait for her to be seated.

“You will come to know that much of me is old, but my lungs
continue to feign youth, so I use them for all they are worth! It reduces the
boredom of both my guests and myself in the interim of our coming together.”

She has excellent hearing and a mysterious history. Jahl, one of the three main characters, hopes she can supply necessary information he needs to put things right, but though she’s willing to give advice, Jahl perceives it as cryptic and possibly proof of her madness.

She sighed, ignoring his rising annoyance. “Even I, the
eternal container of all hope, can no longer deny that some things never
return.”

I enjoyed working with her character because her limitations were a natural outcome of her age while not interfering with her doing her job. And her desire and faith that she would be reunited with her lost love was as believable as it was impossible.

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A Stab at a Self-interview: Question 4 ~ next possible genre

L. Darby Gibbs — Sat, 06 May 2017 20:49:00 +0000

If your next book was not science fiction or fantasy what genre would it be in?

I’m a bit split on which it would be. I write quite a bit of poetry. I have the beginnings of a series of selections all based on pieces of heirloom china I have received from various family over the years. I also have about 18,000 words done on a contemporary women’s fiction about three best friends enjoying their retirement years. One of the ladies is fashioned after my mother, a very vibrant, dramatic woman who could walk into a room full of people and make them turn at once to see who brought the exuberance into the place. She passed away this past September and I really miss her.

I’m expecting that after I finish with the Standing Stone series and the fifth book in Students of Jump that I will probably get back working on the contemporary piece Joanie and Friends. It’s a standalone work. I would then move on to working on the collaboration series my husband and I are planning.

I am pretty much booked up on ideas for writing. Don’t have to worry about writer’s block for at least the next three years, assuming I am going to keep up my new pace of three books a year.

General plan (subject to change because life is not predictable)
Book 2 in Standing Stone (out June 2017)
Book 3 in Standing Stone (predicted out in September 2017)
Book 5 in Students of Jump (predicted out in Jan. 2018)
Book .5 in Standing Stone
Joanie and Friends
Maybe that china poetry collection would fit here
Book 1 in the Mantle Series

Of course, this ignores the fact that I have four books outlined for the Students of Jump series and another book or two wandering around the back of my mind for the Standing Stone series. Sometimes ideas leapfrog. For instance, The Sharded Boy was supposed to be a short story, but it blossomed into a book and then a series.

#genre
#writing
#series

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A Stab at a Self-interview: Question 6 ~ Standing Stone favorite character

A Stab at a Self-interview: Question 4 ~ next possible genre

If your next book was not science fiction or fantasy what genre would it be in?