Lisa Paitz Spindler, Danger Gal

Where have I been? Writing, revising and writing and revising some more. I’ve been digging deep into the emotional arc of my story. In my research I came across Darcy Pattison’s blog, specifically her post on A Novel’s Emotional and Narrative Arc where she cites a book called Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot by Peter Dunne.

Through Google Book Search I found an excerpt of this book from the chapter “Creating an Emotional Outline” (pg. 169):

“Think of your idea now. Think of it in terms of your protagonist’s deep emotional state. What’s going on inside his or her head these days? Not about her job and not about his kids. About the gap inside. About the disappointments of the past. About the dreams unfulfilled. We all carry them. Some more graciously than others. If your protagonist is like most people she is gracious and patient. Maybe even willing at this point to say that not all dreams can come true. It is not overt suffering. It is not playing victim. It is just the way it is.

“But most of us commingle acquiescence with blame. Many of us give up on too many things when really most of what we give up on should be pursued to the gates of heaven. We tend not to give up selectively. We tend to give up completely…

“So what are you willing to reveal about you that you are going to find in your hero? What is it in your hero you will love because it is you? We write what we know about. We write what we know to be true…Give [your character] an exotic name and drop-dead good looks…It doesn’t matter. She is still you. She is the literary expression of your DNA…Can you reveal yourself to her?”

Buy the book here.

Have you written a Steampunk manifesto, but are challenged with titling such an opus? If so, the Steampunk Manifesto Title Generator can help you. It’s like clockwork!

Some of my favorites:

• Tim Whistle’s Submersible Serum
• Lady Lapis and the Love Nautilus
• Mr. McSteamy’s Obscura Meter
• Charity Fotherington and Her Mysterious Machine Eyepiece

Find your favorites too!

I recently joined Authonomy, a community/social networking site “for writers, readers and publishers, conceived and developed by book editors at HarperCollins.” The first four chapters of my book THE KINSHIP is now available on Authonomy, so if you’ve been the least bit curious please go check it out. If you like it — and I hope you do — please back my book by adding it to your bookshelf. This will raise the book’s rank and increase my chances of garnering an editorial review.

To get you started, below is the opening hook:

“You know we’re breaking mission protocol.” Lieutenant Jana Randall yanked up her sleeves.
Tang of alcohol, stab of a needle in each arm. The medtech at the rundown clinic hooked Jana to the cell separator that would remove the microscopic markers from her blood, tools the Kinship used to track its agents.

Her partner Rodrik ignored the medtech. “And your point is?”

“Without the Kinship nanomarkers, we’re off the Grid,” she said. “If anything goes wrong–”

“Domek’s scanners will pick up our signatures.” Rodrik slapped microderm patches on his own IV nicks, his dark brows knit together. “Then we’re dead anyway.”

The Domek Cartel sold weapons and drugs all over the quadrant. She had been working with Rodrik to infiltrate the organization for months.

He leaned in close. “They’re starting to trust me. I can’t do this without you.”

Jana nodded. If they closed the deal and secured the information on the cartel’s trading routes, then the Kinship could shut down Domek in the whole sector.

“You can re-inject when this is over. Enjoy the freedom for a change.” Rodrik smiled and kissed her, a quick slip of tongue over lip laced with a note of ginger from their last meal.

She never could say no to Rodrik.

Over the next few days I hope to post some of the highlights of the workshops I attended at the RWA National Conference last week.

To kick off the highlights posts, here is a photo from Saturday night’s Awards Ceremony of myself and a couple of my pals from Writers at Play.

From left to right, me, author Stacey Kayne and author Leslie Dicken. I’ll try to post some additional photos as time allows, but for now Janice Lynn has a few nice photos up on her blog and Tawny Weber chronicles our “legs” photos from years past.

Some of the sessions I attended include:

• • Successful Rewriting:Paring Down and Fleshing Out by Lisa Gardner
  • Emotion, Emotion, Emotion: Writing Romance with Global Appeal by authors Barbara Hannay, Barbara McMahon, Jessica Hart and Harlequin editor Lucy Brown
  • How to Stay Sane in Publishing by agent Steven Axelrod
  • The Great Agent Hunt by authors Christie Craig and Faye Hughes and agents Jessica Faust and Caren Johnson
  • Writing Crossover Fiction with authors Ann Aguirre, Catherine Asaro, Robin Owens and Ace/Berkley Sensation editor Cindy Hwang
  • Writing in a Hybrid Genre with Dorchester editor Leah Hultenschmidt
  • The Lessons of Firefly: Learning From the Works of Joss Whedon by author Jacqui Jacoby

The post talking about a pair of shoes I wore at the RWA Conference is up at Esri Rose’s RWA Shoe Blog. Esri says:

Again, higher than they look because of the platform, and aren’t the flowers on her nails a nice touch? Lisa [Linda] Paitz Spindler writes science fiction with a twist, and says these shoes would show that her heroine “knows how to kill a man with a heel.” They do look sturdy.

Esri, dear, my name isn’t “Linda,” but the shoe blog is adorable.

Tomorrow I’m off to San Fran for the Romance Writers Association National Conference where I’ll be meeting with agents, hooking up with authors I’ve only met online, going to workshops, and just plain hanging out with my writing buddies.

I do plan to keep everyone posted on what’s up at RWA this year and will be periodically blogging from there as well as updating my Twitter page. My tweets should show up momentarily on my blog as well, so don’t be concerned about having two places to check. I’m also on the Blogging National blogroll, where you can find all sorts of RWA Attendees reporting on the events. Some of the events I’m looking forward to: the “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing, the Smart Bitches Trashy Books Bitches At The Bear Happy Hour, and RWA’s RITA/Golden Heart Awards Ceremony (where I’m rooting for my gal pal Terri Garey who is nominated for a RITA).

Stay tuned here for the latest on what I’m up to while attending RWA’s National Conference by reading my Twitter feed right here on my blog.

I’m not sure what to think about this, but the Gender Genie pegged the first two scenes of my novel AVATAR as written by a man. Go figure.

Through all the travails of learning how to write novels, it’s my friends who’ve kept me going.

Specifically, a group of fellow writers who have gravitated toward one another due to what I’d like to think are our high ideals, but I really know it’s our perverted sense of humor. You can find a list of these extraordinary women under Playpals in the Links and Blogrolls section of my sidebar.

More importantly, though, you can find us all at our new Writers At Play web site.

When we initially created this group four years ago, we were all unpublished. Now, twelve of use are published and one has gone on to become an editor. Soon, hopefully all of us will be published.

One of us, Terri Garey (author of DEAD GIRLS ARE EASY, which is on my 2007 Books Read List) carved some time out of her busy schedule to put together a web site for the group.

So, go take a gander and stay tuned for some great content we have planned. We’re giving away free books too on our new group blog as we take questions for our two official Contest Diva’s Stacey Kayne and Lindsey Brookes. Also, today, Tawny Weber is talking about the meaning of friendship and her new title DOES SHE DARE, which comes out this month.

To quote Terri, “Our hard lessons learned are yours for the picking, our inspiration yours for the asking, and our books are yours for the winning.”

Wired has just published an article about The Year’s 10 Craziest Ways to Hack the Earth, and #8 is a concept I use in my book AVATAR.

When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991 (left), it sent 10 million tons of sunlight-blocking, planet-cooling sulfur into the atmosphere. Many scientists, among them Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, think we could duplicate nature’s feat. Using rockets, airplanes, giant guns and even man-made volcanoes to spew fine particles into the atmosphere could drop Earth’s temperatures to early-20th century levels within a decade.

(Photo taken from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the UCAR Office of Programs web site. Photographer: T. J. Casadevall, U.S. Geological Survey.)

In AVATAR the planet Ico exists in a binary star system, the larger sun being similar to Sol, while the smaller one is a long-period variable star that flares about every 20 years. That flare cycle is long compared to the year most are known to cycle, but I should be entitled to a little journalistic license, yes? The twist on this in AVATAR is that the particulates are made up of buckminster fullerene particles, which are hollow carbon spheres filled with good things for the environment. Supposedly. I guess you’ll have to read to find out.

The planet’s indigenous people, the Iconnu, aren’t particularly thrilled with this high-tech solution when their own low-tech one has been working for generations: take refuge in the multitude of caves that exist in the mountains. Plus, blocking all that radiation will actually upset the lifecycle of an important protective plant called bloodstar, a substance that has worked its way into almost every human, animal and plant on the planet.

Just when I think I never want to write another complicated story like this again, science reminds me how cool it is.