MEET THE SPSFC2 FINALIST!
A special interview with Cameron Cooper!
Name and where are you from? (specific location is optional)
Cameron Cooper. I’m in Canada, not far away from the Canadian Rockies.
How many other books have you self-published?
As Cameron Cooper, I’ve published 32 titles. Under all my pen names, I have over 120 titles.
Tell us a little bit about your discovery of science fiction (books, shows, movies) and why did it stick with you?
The very first SF book I read was thrust at us in English class; The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. Very British, but incredibly mind blowing for a first SF book. Not long after that, Star Wars hit the theatres and I was hooked. Space opera and epic scale SF has been my jam ever since.
What/who made you want to become an author?
Star Wars, again. The small town where I lived didn’t have a cinema, so I couldn’t go back and watch the movie over and over again. Instead, I wrote my own unofficial sequel. My English teacher caught me writing it, read a page or two and tossed it back at me. “Write something original,” he told me. So I did.
I wrote “scribbles” for decades until I realized this story telling business wasn’t going to go away, and maybe I should try to do something with it. I sometimes wish I’d wised up years before, but such is life…
What are some themes or ideas you like to explore in your writing? What may have inspired these?
I’ve noticed a tendency in my stories to give humans very long lives via regeneration or gene development. The possibilities for human development rise exponentially when one human can live long enough to see very long-term projects through to the end, for example. Also, the question of how we would change, how our outlooks would change, when we get to live hundreds of years, instead of just four-score-and-ten, can be answered a dozen different ways. It’s an endlessly interesting topic.
Plus, I do like the idea of AI, androids and sentient computers, and how they might integrate with human society. I think the chances of humans actually meeting their first sentient computer are far greater than humanity meeting a sentient, intelligent alien, so exploring those possibilities could be important for all of us.
What are some of your favorite tropes and how do you explore these in your writing?
Star Wars infected me with a love for big galactic empires, political infighting, and polities that spread across galaxies. Plus ships that can reach either end without too much effort. So I do like to indulge myself with epic scale and galaxy shaking events.
At the same time, I like to drop down to the intimate level, with relationship issues, found families, and all the social difficulties that come with being human and having feelings.
If both those factors are in the same story, so much the better.
What’s something about your book we might not get from the blurb?
There’s a really cool spaceship that readers should watch out for.
What was your path or decision to self-publish? Had you queried for publishers or planned self-publish?
Under a different pen name, I published 35 novels via traditional publishers before the abuse and condescension drove me to indie publishing. So when I began writing as Cameron Cooper, I was already fully established as an indie author. I did not for a moment consider anything but indie publishing for Cameron’s books.
What’s something you’ve learned about the self-publishing process?
I love the control indie publishing gives me over my career and income. I wrote for traditional publishers for eleven years, and never earned more than a couple thousand dollars a year. When I switched to indie publishing, it only took four years to replace my day job income and quit to write full time.
What is one thing that you love about the current state of Science Fiction and what is one thing that you wish you saw more of?
I love how indie publishing is bringing back some of the old adventure-style SF, where the cool ideas were a feature. These days, I think that some SF has swayed so far in the direction of literature that it has forgotten its roots.
Damon Knight said that “Science Fiction is what we point to when we say it,” but sometimes, I think that definition is far too broad.
What’s up next for you as a writer?
I’m currently world building for a new series.
I’m also working to write the last few books of the Ptolemy Lane Tales series, which is a hardboiled adventure SF series that is enormous fun to write.
https://cameroncooperauthor.com/