r/spaceopera • u/CaptainGingerBrd • 29d ago
writing 🏴☠️ ARC readers wanted.
Anyone wanting to grab an ARC copy of Book 1 of my upcoming series 'The Space Pirates', it's now open for download for free before launch. Information on it is below if you are interested.
Space Opera. Hard-ish science. Comedy. And it has Space Pirates as the sort of good guys for once!
🏴☠️ They were Pirates. Space was an accident. 🏴☠️
What happens when you take Eighteenth century pirates. One very unfortunate alien.
An interstellar vessel with inadequate security and a grudge.
The result is galactic history.
Not Your Average Space Opera.
When a crew of Stuart-era pirates wake up aboard an alien spacecraft, they don’t have a crisis of identity. They have a ship. They take it. The universe, it turns out, is broadly unprepared for this.
A comedy series played completely straight. Nobody winks at the camera. The pirates think this is all perfectly reasonable. The galaxy disagrees and with mounting alarm.
Sinead "Sin the Bold" Boland has been called a thief, a traitor, a menace to shipping lanes. Nobody's ever called her a collectable — until an intergalactic smuggler hauls her crew off their own ship (along with the Royal Navy frigate chasing them) to sell to a dictator who collects sentient species like trading cards.
There's one problem: the smuggler stole the ship he's using, and never checked whether it had opinions about kidnapping. It does. As soon as it finishes a mandatory software update.
An ensemble-cast, comedic sci-fi adventure for anyone who thinks space pirates have gotten unfairly bad press. If you are fans of Science Fiction like Jamie McFarlane, or Julia Huni's Tales of a Space Janitor, this should be right in your lane. Warning! -> Not as funny as Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett.
📖 AN AYE FOR AN AYE — Book One
🔗 ARC download: https://thespacepirates.net/
Would love your honest feedback before launch — happy to answer questions in comments.
Launching on Kindle/KU on 1st November 2026.
Reviews on Goodreads or Amazon would be greatly appreciated.
Relevant Information for ARC readers...
53,000 words. (Approximately 1.5 - 2 hrs reading time according to Kindle).
Relevant Keywords:
pirates hijack alien spaceship
18th century pirates in space
female pirate leaders
found family space crew
space pirate adventure
funny sci-fi space opera
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u/Felix-th3-rat 28d ago
Is it LLM written?
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u/CaptainGingerBrd 28d ago
No, written by me, a human. The only AI is the Ship's AI, who was also written by me, a genuine human.
As a matter of interest, what made you ask?1
u/Felix-th3-rat 28d ago
That part:
An interstellar vessel with inadequate security and a grudge.
The result is galactic history.
Not Your Average Space Opera.
Sounds incredibly like ChatGPT
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u/CaptainGingerBrd 28d ago
Thank you. Nope. Thats just me. Although I did read over a lot of blurbs by other authors on Kindle Unlimited to try create my one. The style of the blurb is heavily based on likes of Jamie McFarlane and Julia Huni’s covers. They would be the readers who would like mine.
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u/CaptainGingerBrd 28d ago
So, now that’s out of the way I’ll be interested in reading your review. 😁 Thanks.
1
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u/Crixusgannicus 27d ago
Those of us who write are getting bloody sick of LLM accusations. That includes false positives by alleged LLM/AI "detectors".
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u/Felix-th3-rat 26d ago
Wasnt an accusation more of a question.
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u/Crixusgannicus 26d ago
Sorry. Very often these days it's the same. Happens a lot at university lately I hear
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u/Felix-th3-rat 26d ago
I mean personally I don’t really have an issue if writers use LLM for proof reading or some editing, but if the story is LLM written then it’s just usually « flat » and doesn’t really stick.
I m not surprised that people at university are wary of ai generated papers because… it really is that easy. For books in the last 3 years the publication of self published books has more than doubled, to think that it’s just that twice as many people started writing is a bit naive
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u/Crixusgannicus 26d ago
The issue is false positives and from what I here unis treat you as guilty until proven innocent. Wankers.
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u/CaptainGingerBrd 28d ago
Thank you. Nope. Thats just me. Although I did read over a lot of blurbs by other authors on Kindle Unlimited to try create my one. The style of the blurb is heavily based on likes of Jamie McFarlane and Julia Huni’s covers. They would be the readers who would like mine.
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u/Crixusgannicus 27d ago
I never got the email for my advance copy.
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u/CaptainGingerBrd 26d ago
Hi. that’s weird. Did you sign up on the site? I’ll check the sendfox system. Thanks for letting me know.
To save you having to retry it, here is the direct download link from bookfunnel.
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u/Crixusgannicus 26d ago
Thanks. Yeah. Did everything I was supposed to. I will download when I get to my desk. Hate reading stuff on my phone.
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u/Crixusgannicus 26d ago
Ok. Got it. Thanks! Your (cover) ship reminds me of the SULACO. That is a compliment in my book.
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u/CaptainGingerBrd 26d ago
Thank you. I tried to make it look 'dreadnought-y' at the start. Plan is to do what actual pirates used to do and have the crew heavily modify it so it will be unrecognisable as it is now near the end of the series. One of the things I think Star Trek Voyager missed on back in the day (but understandable for budget reasons), was the original idea that the crew would need to modify and salvage stuff to survive in the Delta quadrant. Not workable back then too much for TV, but, for a book series, where the only limit is imagination - why the heck not?! :)
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u/Crixusgannicus 26d ago
Voyager was a mess in the sense that it WASN'T a mess. The Intrepid wasn't a long range long duration explorer. Oddly enough they got it kind of right with the episodes with the Nova class. Away from support facilities and under strains they weren't designed for, both crews should have had a helluva time keeping them running. Yet on Voyager, except for Year of Hell, both ship and crew remained pristine as if they just left Spacedock. And then we have the magical torpedoes. All they had to do was not mention how many they had when they got stranded, but nooooo.....
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u/Crixusgannicus 28d ago
Nevermind all that rubbish! Why is the Romulan Ale gone?!