I’ve been thinking about how to modify my branding as an author lately. With the intent to shake things up a bit and create interest in my work. They say your work should speak for itself; but in order for that to happen, you have to get people interested enough to give you a chance. I had been marketing myself at a writer of Space Opera. The problem with that label is that outside of a few nerdy writers and readers, people think I write Soap Operas set in space.
Even the classic meaning for Space Opera is kinda dated. Now people are writing The New Space Opera. My fiction doesn’t really read like E. E. “Doc” Smith or even Isaac Asimov. It’s not perfect heroes with ray guns fighting bug-eyed aliens and it’s not a bunch of scientists describing orbital dynamics. My fiction is not as obscure and hard to get into as some of the new stuff I’ve looked at on the shelves, either.
My stories start with a bang and while they may not be all action all the time, they are easy to get into and I try my best to keep you entertained. Without getting all esoteric and nerdy. Other than that, they don’t read like classic Sci-Fi or new SF. They read more like novels set in the Star Wars universe. Fun stuff with big ideas thrown in so it’s not all lasers and explosions. I have several subplots going on and I weave stories that skip around my fictional galaxy in both space and time. I’ve got military action, space battles and aliens mixed in with politics and sentient androids. It’s a complicated universe with depth and some degree of familiarity.
I’m going to describe my fiction as Epic Sci-Fi from here on out. Yes, I stole the term from Fantasy. No, I don’t really feel bad about that. I think it rolls off the tongue and is self-describing to non-nerdy genre fans.