Ask the Author: Doug J. Cooper
Answered Questions (5)
Doug J. Cooper
Congrats on winning the giveaway, Judy! I am excited that you are excited. Lagrange Rising is a crime-thriller-in-the-future written in the same compelling style as popular series like Jack Reacher or Harry Bosch or Lucas Davenport. It's a fun read. Fast paced. Warning: it's edgier than my other books. And yes, Lagrange Calling, book 2 of the series, is on schedule for release next year. Happy reading!
Doug J. Cooper
I enjoy having my characters surprise me, which they do pretty much every time I write, and which is why I can’t plot ahead. The conversations are the wild card. I can describe a setting or have action take place and stay on track. But once the characters start talking, then all bets are off.
In a verbal exchange, a character will reveal information I had planned on holding back, note something that becomes a flaw in my own plot, or make a quip that takes the scene in an unexpected direction. I don’t fight it. I embrace it. Discovering what’s going on in a character’s mind is one of the thrills that keeps me writing.
In a verbal exchange, a character will reveal information I had planned on holding back, note something that becomes a flaw in my own plot, or make a quip that takes the scene in an unexpected direction. I don’t fight it. I embrace it. Discovering what’s going on in a character’s mind is one of the thrills that keeps me writing.
Doug J. Cooper
I chose to become an indie author for a number of reasons: I’m eager to get new works out to readers in a timely fashion, I want to maintain long-term control over the work, and I’m excited by the entrepreneurial challenge. Self-publishing has all aspects of the small business enterprise, including product creation, branding and marketing, finance, project management, and intellectual property concerns. I love exploring ways to pull those levers to advance my writing career.
Doug J. Cooper
My process for writing is simple persistence. I write every morning for several hours. If I can complete just 250 finished words per day, I can write a novel in a year. And that’s what I do.
I begin with the seed of an idea in my head, and then I start putting words on the page. My joy comes from the creative process of writing into the unknown. It’s especially fun for the Crystal Series books because I love the characters. My pleasure comes from living with them through their successes, failures, joys, and sorrows as they meet the challenges in the story.
After a writing session, my routine every day is to take a long walk through the neighborhood. I use that time to brainstorm what happens next in the story, and the following morning I write it down. Then I repeat.
I write the book scene by scene, finishing one before starting the next. And because the Crystal Series books introduce three seemingly unrelated stories in the first chapters, this lets me focus on a different character every few days, and that helps me keep the story fresh. And fortunately, so far anyway, I haven’t had to confront writer’s block. Sometimes I have the opposite problem—my brain suggesting ideas faster than I can write.
I begin with the seed of an idea in my head, and then I start putting words on the page. My joy comes from the creative process of writing into the unknown. It’s especially fun for the Crystal Series books because I love the characters. My pleasure comes from living with them through their successes, failures, joys, and sorrows as they meet the challenges in the story.
After a writing session, my routine every day is to take a long walk through the neighborhood. I use that time to brainstorm what happens next in the story, and the following morning I write it down. Then I repeat.
I write the book scene by scene, finishing one before starting the next. And because the Crystal Series books introduce three seemingly unrelated stories in the first chapters, this lets me focus on a different character every few days, and that helps me keep the story fresh. And fortunately, so far anyway, I haven’t had to confront writer’s block. Sometimes I have the opposite problem—my brain suggesting ideas faster than I can write.
Doug J. Cooper
The Crystal Series books are futuristic thrillers of action and adventure that center on some the great sci-fi themes—aliens, spies, AI, romance, and battles in space. The overarching personality in the series is Criss, a super AI with the cognitive ability of a thousand humans. He is hard-wired to protect and serve his human leadership team, which includes Dr. Juice Tallette, the crystal scientist who created Criss; Cheryl Wallace, captain of a Fleet space cruiser; and Sid, a covert operative for the Union of Nations.
It took six years and 400,000 words for me to complete the four-book series. They are available on Amazon in Kindle or paperback. I’m now working on a new series centered on time travel called Bump Time, with the first book due out in Spring 2019.
As to why I write science fiction, I’d say it’s a combination of what I loved reading as a teen and young adult, combined with me being in a technology career. I caught the sci-fi bug in grade school when I discovered Tom Swift, Jr., a teen sci-fi series that was like a nerd version of The Hardy Boys. The Crystal Series stories might be described as an adult version of Tom Swift, mashed up with some Star Trek, Mission Impossible, and I Robot.
It took six years and 400,000 words for me to complete the four-book series. They are available on Amazon in Kindle or paperback. I’m now working on a new series centered on time travel called Bump Time, with the first book due out in Spring 2019.
As to why I write science fiction, I’d say it’s a combination of what I loved reading as a teen and young adult, combined with me being in a technology career. I caught the sci-fi bug in grade school when I discovered Tom Swift, Jr., a teen sci-fi series that was like a nerd version of The Hardy Boys. The Crystal Series stories might be described as an adult version of Tom Swift, mashed up with some Star Trek, Mission Impossible, and I Robot.
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