We were lucky to catch up with Christopher Hooper recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Christopher thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

Legacy, that which we leave behind when our time on this world is over, is something some people spend too much time thinking about, while others don’t spend enough. It’s something that crosses my mind from time to time, but I try to stay rooted in the present. That’s not to say that I haven’t thought about how I want to be remembered, just that I believe we can’t control the future without living in the ‘now’ first.

As an individual, my hope is that I am remembered as a kind and compassionate person. Someone who helped make the world a brighter place.

As an author, my stories, my works, my writing, those are my legacy. My dream is to have my name, whether that is C.S.Hooper or some pen-name I’ve used, remembered and mentioned alongside the great and inspiring author’s that have shown themselves throughout time. I want my stories to keep inspiring people and to continue fanning the spark of adventure so that it may never die out from the world.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Chris Hooper, and I am the author C.S.Hooper. I created and wrote The Man With Wolf Eyes, which is book one of my series entitled The River Tales Saga. I am an independent, self-published author. I am primarily a fantasy-fiction writer, but I do enjoy branching out and playing around in different genres.

Growing up, I loved telling stories but never imagined myself as an author. That was, until, I started writing TMWWE. It started out as a simple story I was telling a friend, but it stuck with me and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I kept writing and developing the story, until one night, I looked down at the paper I was writing on and saw THE END messily scrawled in the corner. I will admit, it was an emotional moment for me and I teared up a little, but who could blame me? I just wrote a book.

I love sharing stories with the world and creating adventures for people to go on. It’s a true honor to be able to give even just one person an epic tale for them to go on.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I finished writing The Man With Wolf Eyes, I initially wanted to publish through a publishing house, also known as traditional publishing. Unfortunately, in today’s world, traditional publishing is no easy task for new and unrepresented authors. I never truly gave up, but after enough rejection letters, it’s hard not to feel a certain kind of way. Add on top of that, having people left and right tell you how difficult it is to get published and how unrealistic of a goal it is.

Makes it hard to keep a dream alive.

And then, the year the world stood still, 2020 and quarantine.

Quarantine was rough on everyone, there’s no denying that. Some people handled it better than others, some people baked bread, some people just did their best to make it to the next day. During quarantine, on my birthday, actually, I was one of those people just trying to make it through each day. All that kept repeating in my head was the voices of the naysayers telling me that I was chasing an unrealistic goal and was wasting my time.

Something clicked in my head, though, and reminded me- I don’t like listening to people who tell me I can’t do something.

I decided that I wasn’t going to listen to the people who didn’t believe in me and had the audacity to tell me I wasn’t going to make it. In that moment, I decided to take matters into my own hands and take on the challenge of self publishing. Now, The Man With Wolf Eyes is available worldwide and I’ve continued working on my series.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

What is probably the greatest driving force behind my writing, would be my love of story telling. For ages, stories bring people together. Stories give us an escape to other worlds, they teach us lessons, show us perspectives that we wouldn’t normal experience in our lives. Being able to share my stories with the world gives me a feeling that I can’t quite put into words. It’s almost like an obligation I have to fulfill. And if my stories can give even just one person that euphoric feeling that comes from reading, than I count it as a success.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: cshooper_author
• Facebook: C.S.Hooper