Why do you write?
I write because I can't help it. Some people do drugs or alcohol or marathons or gaming; I do writing.
What's the one invention/political policy you'd like to see realised in your lifetime?
This is tougher - it's hard to pick one. I think functional, fair world governance (not government) that is capable of taking on world-sized problems (climate change, hunger, nuclear war, a non-military expansion into space...the list goes on). If I have to pick one - educate all women on the planet.
If you could be any fictional character for a day, who would it be, and why?
This is going to sound weird and retro, especially given that I'm a girl and all, but the whole time I was growing up I wanted to be Jubal Harschaw from Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. He wrote full time, had a cadre of smart people around him, had the smarts to stick it to the government...and I guess I'm half-way there. I write part time, have smart people around me, and I work for the government (which is not the same as sticking it to them, but being one of them may actually be more effective). Today? I think I'd be someone in the midst of an epic adventure like Frodo or Luke Skywalker. Somebody living hard but with right and wrong a bit simpler.
Five books that will always stay with you...
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
Dune, by Frank Herbert
Think on These Things, Jiddu Krishnamurti
On The Beach, Nevile Shute
The Magic's Price trilogy, by Mercedes Lackey (I've given that to more teenagers than I can count)
Has the Internet significantly changed writers, for good or bad?
I don't know if it's changed writers, but it's changed the game. We live in a world where money (people buying your books) follows attention, and attention is gained or lost very fast. Books now only have a few months on the shelves to succeed or fail. If they are available electronically, or the publisher keeps a warehouse full of them, then the long tail of slower word-of-mouth advertising can happen.
In reality, it's very hard to gain and keep attention for books. The Internet means we have to participate in marketing. It's a connected world. That's grand. If it weren't, I wouldn't be doing this interview with a woman who lives in New Zealand and who I really only know from online interactions (and I'm happy to be doing this). But even though it's grand, it means writers must stay attentive, gather attention in some authentic way, and thus lose at least some pure writing time. I was going to come home and write for hours tonight, and now I'm thinking about the internet has changed writers. Maybe it's shortened out attention spans.
What are you working on right now, tell us more!
I'm daydreaming about my next sf novel or series, and in the meantime I'm working on short stories. I've got one coming out in Asimov's soon, I have one coming out in the very lovely Footprints anthology from Hadley-Rille books.
I'm trying my hand at a first-ever steampunk story, and I've finished two sf stories in the last week. I just sent off the first poem I've submitted to an editor in years. Stories and poems are good for tightening my craft, and I want to jump a level in my writing skill. I'm also dreaming up a website for my current series with the help of the talented Jeremy Tolbert since the third book in my current series, Wings of Creation, comes out in November from Tor.
I mixed a bunch of eclectic stuff into that book and stirred - so I have hard sf, philosophy, adventure, and a new world-building exercise all wrapped up together. After stirring, I spiced Wings of Creation with the addition of a little frustrated romance and the build up for a huge multi-cultural space war, which will take place in book four if I can keep enough attention on the series. I think so - I do seem to have some readers, and the first book in the series just won a reader-based award called the Endeavor Award for a notable science fiction or fantasy book written by a writer the Pacific Northwest.
But I'm very aware that I'm not yet well-known, the industry is mired in the quicksand of changing business models (here we go back to the internet), and there's a world-wide recession on.
Brenda Cooper has published over thirty short stories in various magazines and anthologies. Her books include The Silver Ship And The Sea and Reading The Wind. She is a technology professional, a futurist, and a writer living in the Pacific Northwest with three dogs and two other women. She blogs and tweets and all that stuff - stop by www.brenda-cooper.com and visit.
Lynne Jamneck - Lynne Jamneck lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Short listed for the Sir Julius Vogel and Lambda Awards, she has published short fiction in ...
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