Zero (Hal Spacejock, #0)

How far would you go to make your dreams come true?
On Hal Spacejock's home planet, efficient and highly intelligent robots have taken all the jobs.
Hal's one of the lucky ones, because he works as a cargo loader at a third-rate spaceport.
Lucky perhaps, but not satisfied. Because instead of loading freighters, Hal wants to fly them, exploring the galaxy in his very own ship.
But how can he possibly save for a spaceship? Hal can barely make rent, and his boss will use any excuse to get rid of him.
It all seems like an impossible dream, until Hal intervenes in a one-sided fight in the shadow of a battered old freighter...
Zero is a standalone novel in the Hal Spacejock series.

Simon Haynes lives in Western Australia, where he divides his time between herding deadly spiders, dodging drop bears, and making up wildly inaccurate sentences like this one.
By day he's an author. By night he's also an author.
He loves wry, dry humour, and his hobbies include daringly inserting the letter U into words where -- in some parts of the world at least -- this simply isn't the done thing.
As for his genre-spanning novels, they include epic fantasy (with robots), scifi comedy (also with robots), middle grade humour (featuring robots AND the wanton use of the letter U), as well as a series of historical mystery novels set in 1870's London. (No, of course there aren't robots in those. He's not completely out of his mind.)
When he's not writing Simon is usually renovating his house, sim-racing online, using twitter (@spacejock), gardening, tweaking his book covers, pondering the meaning of the universe and reading, and if you think it's easy doing all that at the same time you should see what he can do with a mug of coffee, a banana and a large bag of salt.
When he's not making outlandish claims he likes to count how many novels he's written, and how many genres he's written them in. (Lots and too many.)
Finally, if you want to hear Simon reading one of his award-winning stories, you'll find an enticement to join his newsletter here: spacejock.com.au/ML.html