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High summer: a new book, an old book, and a new story
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I usually write an article. Instead, everything that I know of which is coming out this year is coming out in the same two or three months, so that's what I'm talking about this time. Hope that's okay! Note that I did do some fabulous summer reading and have recommendations below.
The sequel to
Wilders will be out July 31st. It's called
Keepers, and I'm quite excited about it. The book is part future western and part smart cities, and like
Wilders, it focuses on rebuilding a damaged Earth and overcoming challenges. So far, others are saying good things about the book:
“
Keepers shows us an earth that is the result of profound climactic and ecological changes. Nobody is better than Brenda Cooper at creating detailed and innovative futures.
Keepers is a gem—a complex and plausible look at what we might face someday, and how we might respond.”
—Nancy Kress, Hugo- and Nebula award-winning author of
If Tomorrow Comes
“Cooper shows a remarkable depth of perception in this gripping story of an American future where humans struggle to come to terms with their destructive impulses and to save the best of the earth and themselves. Beautifully imagined.”
—Justina Robson, award-winning author of the Quantum Gravity series
I'll be doing my first reading from
Keepers on August 1st at the University Bookstore. I hope to see some of you there.
The re-release of
Reading the Wind will be out in August. Word Fire Press is publishing it as an Author's Preferred 10th Anniversary Edition. Be sure you get the Wordfire edition. I will send links to that in next month's newsletter, and I'll post to social media as soon as I get them.
My story "Maybe the Monarchs" is coming out in the small press anthology
After the Orange.
The Kindle version is available on Amazon. This is an eco-story I started during my MFA last year, and it's the same story that made my cry when I read it at Norwescon (and got a few audience members as well). It's a pre-cursor story to
Wilders. None of the same characters, but a peek at how the world of
Wilders and
Keepers might come to be.
100% of my writing focus right now is on getting the
Stories of Fremont's Children Kickstarter closed out. This is short fiction, poetry and oddments set in the world of
The Silver Ship and the Sea and
Reading the Wind.
I turned in a story about solar power meeting political power in a future Arizona. It will be out in August through
ASU's Center for Science and the Imagination, and may be available for free. I hope so, since there are great illustrations and some science pieces along with it, as well as three other stories I'm looking forward to reading.
Lastly, I'm doing the Clarion West write-a-thon, and my goal is to have twenty sponsors. So far, I have six. If you're willing to help, even $5.00 would be great. To sponsor me,
go to the Clarion site. The money helps fund a fabulous six-week long writing workshop. Besides raising money for Clarion West, I'm using the writeathon to goad me into meeting some story deadlines on the
Stories of Fremont's Children project.
I hope you are having a great summer, and as always, thanks for listening.
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Specualtive Fiction Reading Recommendations
If Tomorrow Comes, by Nancy Kress
This lovely sequel to Tomorrow's Kin is even better than the first book. This will be a little hard to write about with no spoilers, but suffice it to say that Nancy, as usual, deftly portrays fascinating human beings in difficult situations. In this case, her most interesting character is an Army Ranger who has to make an impossible choice.
Definitely pick up book one, and then read this one. Best, the third one is done and can already be pre-ordered. If you like hard SF, be sure not to miss this trilogy.
Jade City, by Fonda Lee.
This fast-paced romp through an utterly believable and vicious fantasy world enthralled me so much I kept walking the dogs for longer and longer to hear more of it. This is a story of family, of powers, and of nation-states. It's a mob novel, reminsiscent of
The Godfather, and yet it's also full of magic.
I consumed this in audio book format, and found it well-narrated in a style that goes with the story. I immediately went looking for the sequel, and while I did learn that there will be one, I don;e
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Reading Recommendation
I have been reading a lot of science about climate and nature, and there is much amazing information out there. Trees talk to each other. We are a marriage of human body and bacterial biome. Nature needs room to stay wild. Study after study proves animals and plants feel and think (and who ever doubted that anyway? but now it's more thoroughly documented). I work the information I gain from these books into my fiction.
This summer, I read an author who did that so well I'm still a bit in awe of him. Richard Powers'
Overstory is literary fiction with the slightest frisson of the supernatural. Powers is fabulous at evoking the beauty of nature, at seamlessly providing science, character, and story, and at weaving the past and current time together.
Note: I consume much of my fiction in audio, but this one is a beautiful artifact as a physical book, and since I kept wanting to SEE the sentences, I loved reading it as a book rather than hearing it. It's a deeply complex book with complex ideas and people in it, and deserves to be thumbed through. I recommend the hardcover.
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