Cameron Cooper's Blog, page 7

Do You Want More Hammer?

I’ve chatted with a few of you lately, especially around Christmas, when everyone was selecting their Christmas gift, and more than one of you asked when I was going to write more “Hammer” books.

I’ve got two complete series; The Imperial Hammer and The Iron Hammer, both featuring Danny Andela and her friends.

I loved writing these books.

I would have no objection to writing more, but I haven’t, up until now, because I didn’t think anyone would want more.

So, you tell me. I’ve set up a two question survey here. There is also space to add anything else you might have to say about this idea.

Everyone (yes, everyone — no lucky draw) who completes the survey will receive a copy of “Insanity is Infectious”, which is the bonus short story in the Iron Hammer series.

The survey closes a week from now, at midnight MST on January 24th.

Cheers,

Mind-blowing when you really think it through

NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover, April 15, 2018

This photo is a bit old now.  It’s from the Mars Curiosity rover, in 2018.  I only came across it the other day (or, to be precise, re-discovered it). 

I thought I’d share, even though it’s a pretty ordinary looking photo.  The average teenager with a cellphone could frame a better shot of a sunset.

You have to let it sink in a bit to really understand how awesome this photo is.  Why?  Because:

 It was taken by a robot. It is a photo of the sun setting on a different planet.

That’s why the sunset looks blue instead of red, like it does here.  The sun is smaller, cooler, and the atmosphere on Mars brings out the blue spectrum at this time of day.

The technology just to get the robot there in the first place, and return the digital files of photos, in the second, is truly amazing.

HAMMER AND CRUCIBLE free only for the next 35 hours!

A quick reminder that Hammer and Crucible is free at all retailers, everywhere, including my store on Stories Rule Press, but not for long.  The deal expires at midnight MST tomorrow night, and the book returns to the full retail price.

The interstellar array which links worlds together wakes to find it has enemies…

The Fourth Carinad Empire stretches across hundreds of settled worlds and stellar cities, and thousands of light years.  The Empire’s people and data are linked by a space-folding gates array controlled by the Emperor and his cohorts.  When the array evolves into a sentient entity, it recognizes the Emperor as its foe.

Danny Andela, once known as The Imperial Hammer, withdrew from the Imperial Rangers decades ago, her reputation in tatters. She lives on her family’s star barge, waiting to die of a rare disease: old age.  She would be the array’s perfect weapon against the Emperor, except she no longer gives a damn–about anything.

Then Danny learns that the military disaster which essentially ended her life might possibly have been arranged by the Emperor himself…

Hammer and Crucible is the first book in the Imperial Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper.

Fourth place in Hugh Howey’s Self-Published Science Fiction Contest

The Imperial Hammer series:
1.0: Hammer and Crucible
1.1: An Average Night on Androkles
2.0: Star Forge
3.0: Long Live the Emperor
4.0: Severed
5.0: Destroyer of Worlds
5.5: The Imperial Hammer Series Box Set

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel

You can pick up a copy directly from me at Stories Rule Press.

Or you can get a copy from your preferred retailer, here.

Enjoy!

HAMMER AND CRUCIBLE Free for the next week only

I snagged a BookBub Feature Deal (they’re hard to get) this week.  So from today through to January 3rd, Hammer and Crucible is free everywhere. 

The interstellar array which links worlds together wakes to find it has enemies…

The Fourth Carinad Empire stretches across hundreds of settled worlds and stellar cities, and thousands of light years.  The Empire’s people and data are linked by a space-folding gates array controlled by the Emperor and his cohorts.  When the array evolves into a sentient entity, it recognizes the Emperor as its foe.

Danny Andela, once known as The Imperial Hammer, withdrew from the Imperial Rangers decades ago, her reputation in tatters. She lives on her family’s star barge, waiting to die of a rare disease: old age.  She would be the array’s perfect weapon against the Emperor, except she no longer gives a damn–about anything.

Then Danny learns that the military disaster which essentially ended her life might possibly have been arranged by the Emperor himself…

Hammer and Crucible is the first book in the Imperial Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper.

Fourth place in Hugh Howey’s Self-Published Science Fiction Contest

The Imperial Hammer series:
1.0: Hammer and Crucible
1.1: An Average Night on Androkles
2.0: Star Forge
3.0: Long Live the Emperor
4.0: Severed
5.0: Destroyer of Worlds
5.5: The Imperial Hammer Series Box Set

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel

You can pick up a copy directly from me at Stories Rule Press.

Or you can get a copy from your preferred retailer, here.

Enjoy!

The Exoplanet Travel Bureau

In 2016, NASA released a collection of posters featuring exoplanets and other stellar destinations, as travel posters.

Extremely high resolution, large scale versions of them were available, and as I was pretty hooked by them, a family member who had access to a high resolution plotter and plastic printing sheets, downloaded the files (they’re free), and printed posters of every image available.

Those 4 foot high posters adorn my office walls still.

The other day I went to the NASA site to see if the posters were still there. Some of them are, and there are some new ones, too.

They’re very stylish. Check them out here. If you need some interesting artwork, these might fit the bill.

They make good screen savers, except their portrait aspect means you have to sacrifice parts of the image, or you can center them on the screen.

Cheers,

The Foundation Dilemma

The TV series, Foundation, has just finished its second season on Apple TV.

I thought everyone who cares about good science fiction would know about the series, but a reader I was conversing with the other day was not aware of it. Because of that conversation, I thought I’d mention the show here.

Perhaps Apple TV is not advertising as widely as other streaming services usually do. I’m not sure.

Foundation is based upon Isaac Asimov’s loose series of books. It was first published as a series of short stories and novellas…in 1942! It has taken 81 years for the beloved series to make it to either the large or small screen.

And I can understand why it has taken that long.

The series is hugely popular. It was awarded a Special Hugo award for best series, and three normal Hugo awards for various parts of the series. Isaac Asimov wrote that fans hounded him for more and more in the series, and the last book was released in 1986 (Foundation and Earth), only six years before the author’s death.

Asimov has also written that The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was one of his sources of inspiration for the series. And Frank Herbert has, in turn, said that he wrote Dune in response to Asimov’s Foundation, as a counterpoint. Which makes Asimov’s series hugely influential.

Yet no one attempted to film it or turn it into a series. That’s because the structure of the stories in the books make it a massive headache to put on film.

I’ve read partway through the series, and keep meaning to get back to finishing it one day, but I’m reluctant to do so because of this same awkward structure issue that scares off screenwriters and directors.

The first story and book is super-interesting. The reader gets to follow the fate of Harry Seldon and the setting up of his Foundation.

So far, so good.

But when you get into the second set of stories/books, it’s hundreds of years later, and every single character from the first book is dead and gone. Now you have to get to know a whole new set of people, and how they fit into the massive series arc.

I petered out after the second set of stories. As interesting as the series concept is–the survival of humanity through a 30,000 year Dark Age–I just ran out of patience. Not having a character(s) to follow through the series, to get to know them and care about what happens to them, is a major drawback in fiction. There are two major moving parts to fiction; What happens, and who it happens to. (Plot and Character.) The Foundation series is hobbled by the fact that reader can’t invest in any of the characters in a way that sustains the story across the series.

I realize that saying this will horrify a lot of fans who love the series. Foundation is considered to be Asimov’s defining work. And its scale is absolutely epic and awesome, no argument. But to love the series is to love the concept, not the story itself, because there is no single story. There are lots of little stories that add to the overall concept.

Given all this, I was wary about investing my time and attention in Apple TV’s series, when it first popped up and caught my attention.

But the trailer was lush, epic and gorgeous. So I tentatively watched the first season and was delighted to find that the TV series has resolved all my issues with the books.

I’m two seasons in, now, and can’t wait for the third season. There are strong rumours that the third season will get the green light, but nothing has been confirmed as I write this post.

The casting for this series was inspired. Lee Pace is an old-style actor with huge screen presence, who chews up the scenes. The series needs someone like this to successfully carry the epic scale of the story-telling. So, too, is Jared Harris the perfect choice for Harry Seldon. He has a quieter presence than Pace, but he exudes heroic qualities with every syllable he utters.

If you love the Foundation books, but have not yet seen the series, I must warn you that the writers have changed huge swathes of the story, characters and more. But if they were to tell the Foundation story at all, they had to. And while I was mildly uncomfortable with the changes through the first half of the first season, once I realized why they had made those changes (to be able to tell the story at all), then I settled in happily and just enjoyed the fabulous visuals and the characters and stories the way the series needed to tell them.

The major concepts and story arcs from the books are still there, but the path the stories take to explain those concepts are a bit different.

I like the differences. None of them (so far) have been arbitrary, and all of them make for highly visual, dramatic and, (yes, I must use the word again) epic story-telling.

Check the series out, if you haven’t got around to it, yet. It’s worth the time.

Cheers,

Why Reviews Matter

Have you ever been asked to leave a review, or finished a really good book, and thought about leaving a review, but in the back of your mind, thought: “Why bother? I’m no one. No one cares what I think, and it’s just one review.”

Author Kristen Lamb released a post on her blog recently, “Book Reviews: Why They Matter SO Much”, that explains in detail why, the next time you doubt the value of any review you write, you should overcome the urge to forget about it.

This post is comprehensive, covering all the reasons why reviews are valuable for readers, and also, why reviews are invaluable for authors.

If you’ve ever thought there was no point in reviewing a book, this post may change your mind.

Check out Kristin’s post here: “Book Reviews: Why They Matter SO Much”

Cheers,

American, British, Australian or Canadian, Eh?

I’ve made a standing joke out of the fact that I don’t speak anything but English, but that I’m fluent in Australian, British, Canadian and American.

It really isn’t a joke. As an author of genre fiction, I learned very early on – with my first manuscript, in fact – that I was expected to write in the language of the market I was submitting to.

In that case, it was a U.K. publisher, so I had to do neat things like change all my double quote marks to single and tighten up my diction considerably. No split infinitives, for example. So the sentence in the last paragraph would have become terribly British and ‘…to have written in the language of the market to which I was submitting.’ (Note the quotes, too.)

Yes, even the characters would have spoken this way. It was the nineties, it was England and I was writing historicals.

Canadian, eh?

Move on a few years, and I’d changed locations from Australia to Canada, and my focus from trying to sell to British markets, to trying to sell to New York. I had to change my writing style from British to American.

But the disorientation didn’t stop there. Try this on for size:

The first two books I ever sold, I sold in the same week. Ironically, the first was sold to a U.S. publisher. It was set in Australia, which I had to re-set in the U.S. …and change the spelling and how the characters spoke.

Interestingly, my translation wasn’t fool-proof. It wasn’t until the book was re-published, several years later, and edited again, when that editor–an Australian– picked up a dozen more Australianisms that had to be converted to Americanisms. However, no one seemed to notice or care too much at the time. I didn’t get angry reader reviews or emails pointing out my errors.

The second book I sold had even more of a bastardized language issue. It was as English as you can get, set in Victorian England, and written with British spelling and vernacular for the era. I sold it to a Canadian publisher, who promptly edited it for Canadian spelling and–where I could not argue my way into keeping the Britishisms–Canadian vernacular.

US or bust

This was the beginning of what has been a career-long double life for me, language-wise.

I grew up spelling and writing Australian. I’ve spent the last twenty-three years in Canada speaking Canadian vernacular with an Australian accent, and using Canadian spelling when I had to (the day job, for instance).

For all my books that I have published with U.S.-based publishers, I have used U.S. spelling and language. Except (and here is where it gets weird), those books set in other countries. For foreign settings with “foreign” characters, I’ve used that character’s natural vernacular, idioms and as much as possible tried to inject the flavour of their accent…all with U.S. spelling.

I know I’ve pulled it off because reviewers have spoken about “hearing” accents. I’ve set books in Canada, Australia and many countries in Europe and the Middle East. I’ve featured characters from all types of cultures, eras and races.

Indie Indecisive

The spelling I was using only became an issue when I started indie publishing and was free to choose.

What language should I publish in?

For me the natural answer should be: Whatever serves the reader best.

Considering that the majority of my readers are in the United States, it seemed best to maintain the U.S. English I’ve been using up until this point.

Except, what about books that are decisively English in flavor, charcter and setting?

In addition, I have other books that are set in Australia and feature Australian characters. Should I use Australian English? My gut says yes, but the idioms and spelling might jar readers out of the fictive spell and remind them they’re reading a story. I try to avoid this whenever possible.

It’s a tricky issue.

I and many other non-US indie authors have received four- or three-star reviews, along with the mention of “typos”, from US readers. The typos were the Australian or British or Canadian spelling of words, including adding “s” to backward, forward, etc. Even when a note is put at the front of the book that the story is written in whatever spelling the author has used, the reviews persist.

This means that for the readers, the language they’re reading in can make it a bad reader experience.

However, Australians and Canadians and to an extent, the English, have also grown up reading and being exposed to U.S. spelling and fiction, so reading stories in American English isn’t as jarring as I’ve been told it is for American readers to try reading U.K. English or any other sort of English than American. I remember this from reading novels when I was still living in Australia. Overseas spelling didn’t bother me. I just rolled with it.

This issue of what version of English should be used was a hot topic on an author discussion list I belong to, just recently, and one of the points raised was that with the advent of indie publishing, authors should publish in their own version of English and let readers adapt to the multicultural variety out there. I think this is an excellent idea.

Yet I still use American English for my science fiction because I would rather have readers (you) forget that they’re reading at all. I just want you to see the story in your head.

Your opinion?

Cheers,

Four days to Save. Here are the Details.

So, finally, I can tell you about the big deal going down on Stories Rule Press.  It is, of course, and as you probably suspected, a Black Friday special. 

Here’s the details.

All the Super-Bundles on SRP will be 40% off from Black Friday to Cyber Monday

The Super-Bundles on Stories Rule Press are unique bundles not available anywhere else.

There is one Super-Bundle per SRP author.  My Super-Bundle on SRP includes every single story I’ve ever published.  All of them.  If I have the rights to them, and they’ve been published by me, then they’re in the bundle.

And it’s 40% off for the four Thanksgiving weekend days.

Super-Bundles are unique not just because they’re only available on Stories Rule Press.  They’re also special in that you don’t get every single story jammed into one massive file.

You get all the books as individual books.  These are the commercial releases.  They’re not stunted, edited or different in any way.  So when you load them all onto your reader, you’ll see all the covers as they appear on any retail store.

Plus, the books are delivered by BookFunnel, so that means that all the books will be included in your BookFunnel library at https://My.BookFunnel.com, where you can see them all, and download at your convenience.

This deal will not be repeated or extended.  It will run for the four days only, and then it’s done.

Also, the 40% discount applies to every author on Stories Rule Press:

Mark Posey — hardboiled crime thrillers and espionage.

Tracy Cooper-Posey — Romance (multiple sub-genres), Historical Suspense

Taylen Carver — Urban Fantasy and Contemporary Fantasy.

But that’s not all.

________________

All the Special Bundles on SRP will be discounted by 25% from Black Friday to Cyber Monday.

Similar to the Super-Bundles, SRP Special Bundles are bundles of full, retail books, that will be delivered by BookFunnel, or that you can download from your BookFunnel library.

For me, there are Special Bundles for every series I’ve published.   If the series is still being written, then every book published so far is included in the bundle.  This includes origin stories and side stories that belong to the series.  If they’ve been published, they’re in the bundle.

For all the other authors at Stories Rule Press, there are special bundles of every series they have written or are writing, too.

You can use coupons and discounts.

If you have discount coupons for SRP, or if you have Reward Points from previous purchases, you can add them to the discount for a further reduction in price. 

Honestly, we couldn’t figure out a way to not allow coupons and reward points (we’re authors, not techies, Jim).  But, readers who aren’t already on our email lists and have already bought from us won’t have access to the coupons and reward points, so this turns out to be a nice bonus for you, our more loyal readers.

So have at it.  Use whatever codes and points you have.  And enjoy. 

More Information about Super-Bundles and Special Bundles

You can find more information about the bundles on the Stories Rule Press site, here. 

There is also a list of all the Super-Bundles and Special Bundles for every author.

Here’s a quick list of MY Special Bundles.

Cameron Cooper’s Standalone Fiction — Science Fiction Collection

The Imperial Hammer–Space Opera Series

The Indigo Reports — Space Opera Series

The Iron Hammer — Space Opera Series

Ptolemy Lane Tales — SF Crime & Mystery Series

Watch for the emails on Friday

The deals are scheduled and will go live at one minute pst midnight MST, Friday, November 24th. 

And the deals will shut down at 11.59pm on Monday, November 27th, MST. 

On Friday, I will send a reminder email letting you know the deals are live. 

If you have any questions, ask!

Cheers,

Award Season Begins…

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Association’s (SFWA) Nebula Award. Each award statuette is unique.

I feel a bit self-conscious, writing this post, but it seems to be a perfectly normal practice among Science Fiction and Fantasy writers, magazines, and any other individual or organization who is eligible for this pair of well-known and highly regard industry awards.

The nomination periods for both the Hugo Awards and the Nebula Awards for 2023 are now open.

I have stories that are eligible for both awards.

If you are a member of Worldcon Glasgow 2024 or a member of the Chengdu Worldcon held this year, you are eligible to both nominate and vote upon nominees.

If you are a full, associate, or senior member of SFWA, you are eligible to nominate and vote in the Nebula Awards, and copies of my eligible stories are available in the member’s Forum.

In the Short Story category

A Place for Everyone

“Winds of Change” in Blaze Ward Presents: Every Tomorrow Worse?. 

A Room of her Own

Cheers,