Brenda Cooper's Blog, page 46

In Which Lynne Jamneck from New Zealand Asks Me Questions

Thanks to Lynn Jamneck (an sf writer and editor herself) for posting an interview with me over at Suite 101.  She’s also going to be doing more in the same format, so you might want to drop by and see the others as she gets them posted.  I’m looking forwrad to what the others have to say about the internet.

Writers: Worth 38 Minutes of Your Time

TOC ‘09 — “Where Do You Go with 40,000 Readers? A Study in Online Community Building” — Ron Hogan (Beatrice.com), John Scalzi (Scalzi Consulting), Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Tor Books), Tobias Buckell — I found it on Toby’s site, although I suspect it is also elsewhere.  A lovely video by some of our very best on how to be usefully yourself out on the nets.

If Money and Resources Follow Attention…..

There was a meme flitting around Twitter this that included a link to an article on Technium about money following attention.  The article is worth reading, by the way, even though it was posted last year.  The main thing it says that if you get attention, then you are likely to get money.  A similar meme I’ve heard is that “obscurity is the enemy of the creative person.”  I’m sorry I don’t have a reference, but maybe one will show up in comments.  A while ago, I blogged that I’m spending  more

I’m Thrilled: We’re On Track!

Every once in a while, the me-in-my-futurist-hat decides to check in on current actions to see if they’ll lead to a good future.  I have to say I’m quite pleased.  Shortly after Obama was elected, I blogged about how it felt like I was, once again, living in the America I grew up in.  That America had hope and believed in science and wanted to be good.  Somehow in the middle we became afraid and retreated from science because it did have unexpected and sometimes poor consequences.  But we threw

Weekend Report: Norwescon, #Amazonfail, and Stories

I spent the weekend at Norwescon.  It was a lovely con.  I also, finally and slowly (hit me on the head as a slow learner) understood why there have been so many alternate history sf stories set in the 1800’s in my magazines of late.  Having decided to look up and look around, I think the whole steampunk think is lovely (yes, I’ve read and enjoyed a lot of it, but I hadn’t stuck a name on it and have been simply wondering where all this delightful weirdness came from.  Must be a syndrome that co

Norwescon Schedule

It looks like I’ll be rather busy during Norwescon!

 

Friday

 

Creating Emotion-Driven SF/F                               10:00 AM       Cascade 7

Speculative fiction is often called the fiction of ideas, but wonderful ideas will never see print unless they create an emotional impact.  Learn to begin with emotion and then wrap the story around character to affect the reader.

Brenda Cooper, Jeff Soesbe, Alma Alexander, Grá Linnaea, Warren Hammond

 

Writerly Friendship                                    

Reading Recommendation: Charles de Lint’s “The Mystery of Grace”

This is a physically beautiful book.  I bought it because it was a DeLint, but my eye was drawn to it from across the room in a crowded Borders because of the beautiful cover.  It’s really not that often that a book design gets my attention so thoroughly any more. 

Charles de Lint is one of my favorite modern urban fantasy writers, and I rather think he birthed the genre.  I still remember the first book of his I read, MoonHeart.  In The Mystery of Grace, he chooses a new setting, heading into th

New Guest Blog Post Up - Last in the Series

So if you are the kind of reader who waits for all the books to come out before reading the series, well, here you go. Check out the last of my four-post series on writing over at Shaun Farrell’s Adventures In Sci Fi Publishing. This one talks about how to sell your work, and what to do when you sell.

I had a blast writing these, and I really appreciate Shaun’s support.

What’s After Capitalism?

Kim Stanley Robinson got me thinking yet again when he posted this excellent article on post-capitalism.  Post-capitalism, by the way, seems to be as well-defined as post-human.  In other words, not.

But we aught to start figuring out what happens next.

Unregulated capitalism has problems.  The most recent example is the current recession/depression/downturn.  The images on the TV screen while I worked on my  fiction today were demonstrations at the G20 with signs saying - literally - that capital

A Story of Engagement

I usually wake up with fiction stories in my head.  I’ve kept writing fiction in the last month, but the stories in my head lately have mostly been blogs.

Here’s the futurist take on it:

Earth has become a computer connected world. I’m a science fiction writer - so a bigger percentage of my readers are online than some other genres might be.  The raw population of the world is bigger than it ever has been (and has grown by around 30% in the last twenty years).  The broadband connected population i