Brenda Cooper's Blog, page 33

Coming Events

I've missed mentioning multiple appearences of me and/or my work:

The story, "My Father's Singularity" is up at Clarkesworld in issue #45.  Note that I share this issue with delightful Nina Kiriki Hoffman and her story is excellent.  Two science fiction stories written by women in one issue, and in what is becoming the premiere sf and f online mag.  Quirky fact:  My Father's Singularity is the  first story I wrote entirely on my ipad (I did force it onto my PC to edit).

I had the chance to...

Reading Recommendation: The Girl Who Played with Fire

Well, this is the second Stieg Larsson I've recommended.   I've already bought the third.  And again become sad there will be no more.  These are good, well-written thrillers.  They're paced in a way that a reader stays interested and yet can breath out from time to time.  They are in an exotic place, and they contain characters that grow.  There's a lot of other novels that also have those things.  But none of the others has Lisbeth Salander.

I decided to poke about a bit.  Lisbeth has her...

Reading Recommendation: One Monk and one Briggs

As I've posted, I've been dealing with cancer in the immediate family, which has pretty much shot my love for complexity (got enough of it, thank you very much).  My favorite kind of fiction, which is dense and complex science fiction, is just not holding onto me  — my little monkey-enabled brain is wandering off the path whenever it can find an excuse.   And depressing stuff is awful.  I love Jodi Picoult, but anything like that would just reduce me to a puddle right now.   I'm not only...

I wanted the implants in "The Matrix"

And while I may not be able to get those, I'm likely to get an implant or implants of some kind before I die.  And that's not from being an early adopter.  For more about what we are doing today with implants from RFID through silk, take a look at my newest column at Futurismic.

Heading Back to Normal Life

After two weeks in Bend, where I have been mostly doing laundry and cooking and driving about and worrying and other stuff related to caring for my most-beloved little brother, I will be heading home soon  to a faster pace and more of the usual activity.  There will be some catching up to do.

The weather basically was, well, it sucked.  I had visions of breaks to ride my bike.  Hah!  The picture  is me, soaked, walking with the two golden angels.  That would be Nixie (my dog) and Odin (my...

Pardon my Absence

I have been quieter than usual in the Interwebs the past few weeks.  All is not well.  To be more exact, my youngest brother is not well.  He's gone and gotten a fairly rare and difficult cancer, which has provided me with time with him (yay!), sadness that he is doing as well as I like (not yay at all), and things to do.  If you want a clue about what dealing with all that is like, drop by Jay Lake's blog.  I'm not likely to blog that much detail so publicly, but then it's not me with the...

Reading Recommendation: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Steig Larsson

I wander out of genre regularly to keep my head up and learn other tricks and tropes.  Writers rather need to do that, in my opinion, and I'm lucky enough to have a group of writers who explore multiple genres with me.  While I will actually read a text version to do my analysis, I listened to The Girl Who Played with Fire (Vintage)imgimg[image error]The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on a long drive back and for the to Bend Oregon.  It's a long audio, and it wasn't ...

Latest Futurismic Column Up: Cancer and Science Fiction

There was a lot of news about cancer in my life in the last few weeks, so I chose that to write about for my Today's Tomorrows column at Futurismic. I found it a really interesting topic to research – there's a TON of material, and a lot of it gives conflicting advice.  New information pops up quickly.  There is a lot of passion and anger around cancer (which there should be).  There is a lot of money going to work on it, and there are a lot of creative new ideas being tried.

Drop by

Reading Recommendations: The Freelancer's Survival Guide

I highly recommend Kristine Kathryn Rusch's online work-in-progress, "The Freelancer's Survival Guide."  I am quoted in it.  I have learned from it. I have learned from Kris in other ways.  And to top it off, Kris is a damned fine novelist as well as being  one of the best sf short fiction writers of our generation.

At the moment, she's working her way through recommendations about online networking, and if you've been struggling with how to do this well, drop in and see what Kris has to say.

Reading Recommendation: January by Becca de la Rosa

I loved this lyrical and fun story.  I listened to it on a drive over Snoqualmie Pass, flecks of almost-snow mixed with lots of rain as I wound down toward the farmland that fills the eastern half of Washington State.  As usual, the quality of the podcast version from Clarkesworld was great.  Becca's story only turns out to make some sense, but it's so magically told, and with so much authority, that its very nonsense ends up exactly fine.  In fact, the story felt as well-done and...