A Sense of Place at Brenda Cooper

A Sense of Place

May 10th 2008 at 6:06 pm

I’m finishing up THE DOWNBELOW GIRLS this weekend so I can finally get it in the mail. A last step was getting a sense of place into the book. I set it in Seattle, which I live a five minute bridge ride away from in off-peak traffic. It’s seventeen years away (set in 2025), but that’s not far enough in the future that the city will be completely different. The final scene (and an important mid-book scene) both take place at Volunteer Park, where I’d been five or six times. When I was drafting the book, I pulled up the satellite imagery from Google to get a bird’s eye view. Two weekends ago I went to Volunteer Park and took pictures and added more depth of place to the middle scene.

Today, I went back to the park and sat right where I have my protagonists and their dogs playing in the story, took out my laptop, and fixed things like bad blocking and adding tiny but correct details. That’s not to say I added tons and tons of words - it’s the climactic scene, and wouldn’t benefit from long description dumps. But now it feels better. Maybe I needed a sense of the place!

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Books

Reading the Wind by Brenda Cooper

Audio promo:

"Brenda Cooper's newest novel is a feast of character and concept. She depicts the devastation of war on microcosmic and macrocosmic levels, and even more so, the driving motives of young men and women caught in deadly conflict. Cooper is a master explorer of the interaction of society and individuals. She probes the psychology of her genetically enhanced characters with both rare depth and fidelity to scientific plausibility. Moral conundrums drive the plot in this unforgettable narrative. Don't miss this compelling work by a major new talent." - Mary A. Turzillo, An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl.

"Brenda Cooper tells a tale of a powerful brother and sister in a fight for their lives, offering insights along the way into the nature of courage and the hunger for community that burns in every human being. This is a lively book, full of colorful images and a memorable cast of human and animal characters, a worthy successor to The Silver Ship and the Sea." - Louise Marley

Available in July, 2008, from Tor Books.

The Silver Ship and the Sea by Brenda Cooper

Audio promo:

"The first solo novel by Larry Niven's Building Harlequin's Moon (2005) coauthor portrays the thoroughly convincing human colonial society on Fremont, a dangerous planet rife with vicious predators, frequent earthquakes, and falling meteors....Distinctive characterizations, well-limned interrelationships, and the vividly realized Fremont contribute to an exciting coming-of-age story with a strong message about the evils of prejudice." - Sally Estes, Copyright American Library Association.

Mass Market Paperback, July 2008.
Included by Booklist as a "Best Adult Book for Young Adults."

Building Harlequin's Moon by Brenda Cooper and Larry Niven

"Fans of both hard and softer, psychological SF will welcome veteran Niven and newcome Cooper's well-written tale of a 60,000 year layover in space, in which physical challenges of world building are matched by the social challenges of collaboration among disparate groups." - Publisher's Weekly

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