My Favorite Things with Brenda Cooper

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Brenda Cooper, who is highlighting a previously published book of hers from eSpec Books, Post, which explores a world recovering for a disaster, which is appropriate, don’t you think?

What does Brenda love when she’s not writing about rebuilding worlds? Spoiler alert: comfort reads that double and research, staying on top of the science game, and reconnecting to the world around her. Interested? Read on to learn more!

In tough times, I go to fantasy fiction, science reading, and the natural world. For fantasy fiction, I’m falling for comfort food in the face of Covid-19. Right now, I’m listening to the Mage Winds trilogy by Mercedes Lackey. Handsome mages, bards, healers, gryphons and kyree working together to save a beautiful country is really working well for me as a counter-feed to the daily news. Next, I might even dig all the way back to my very favorite Lackey trilogy from Valdemar, The Last Herald Mage. I’ve probably read it five times, and given copies of it away to struggling teens at least ten times. There’s comfort in a world where right and wrong are clear, inclusiveness matters and yet differences can be celebrated, where heroes are heroic. In Valdemar the complexities are, in many ways, pretty simple. Part of why I’m listening to this world again right now is because I write in it (you’ll find stories by me in many of the collections of short stories that Lackey curates in her world), and I have a story due soon. But the other reason is stronger; a visit to Valdemar always makes me feel like I’m having hot soup on a cold night.

Since I primarily write science fiction, I have to keep learning. Science books are a great way to do that, and yet another wall against current flashing headlines. My favorite recent science book is Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, by Marcia Bjornerud.  It made me think differently about time and the movements of rivers and mountains. As a special bonus, it’s beautifully written. I read it out loud to my family in front of winter fireplace, and the prose is almost poetry. Note that is NOT true of every science book. This book made me feel small in that delightful way that sitting out at night under the stars makes me understand that the universe is vaster than my current problems. It’s a feeling of being both unimportant and also of being connected to something monumental. One of my concerns is climate and climate change, and Bjonerud’s book shed a lot of light on how much we are changing the Earth’s surface, and how that impacts, well, everything.

Another favorite thing is listening to nature. I’m lucky enough to hear birds singing their morning songs outside my window right now, and have enough land to distance myself from people without distancing myself from nature. But this can be done in cities as well. Open a window. Listen to the natural world. The wind. A crow. A cat on the night hunt. The patter of raindrops. I like to listen soft and long, and write down what I hear. It’s like meditation, a bit of balm for my troubled heart in this time when we are more separated from each other than usual.

Brenda Cooper is a writer and technologist in Washington State.  By day, she’s the Information Technology Director for a premier local construction company, Lease Crutcher Lewis. At night, or sometimes in the early morning, she can be found writing, reading, walking dogs, or riding a bicycle. Her next novel is The Making War, coming from WordFire Press in fall of 2020. For this article, she chose to highlight an older work of hers, Post, which explores a world emerging from a disaster. After all, we will emerge from this one.

Author Photo by Toni Cramer

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