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Michael Lee Nelson

Goodreads Author

Born

in North Bend, OR, The United States

July 10

Website

http://michealleenelson.net/

Twitter

LeeNelsonAuthor

Genre

Science Fiction, Christian, Nonfiction

Influences

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
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Member Since

January 2017

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/michealnelson

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Lee Nelson resides near Baton Rouge, Louisiana near his son. He enjoy's the single life, Jeep Life, Cajun Cuisine, cooking, eating, and writing military scifi like it's the end of the world.

A contrarian to the mass Scifi Action & Adventure market, Lee is writing to infuse the galaxy-wide setting of his Ceres novels with a hopeful, positive, and spiritually rich flavor of life.

**Pen name of Micheal Lee Nelson, adopted due to ubiquitous misspelling issues ...more

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Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Michael Lee Nelson A: During my teen years, I brainstormed and worked out my own answer to an old unanswered literary question I identified.

Plato said "Necessity... the…moreA: During my teen years, I brainstormed and worked out my own answer to an old unanswered literary question I identified.

Plato said "Necessity... the mother of invention." If so, I wondered, then who or what is the father?

I tucked that question away in the back of my mind, hoping to find or create the answer. I thought about this over, perhaps ten years, when I finally ran over the right word in the right context, and, out came my answer, and my own quote:

"Desperation is the father of invention."

Desperation is necessity multiplied by urgency. In a life or death scenario, the priority shifts. Solving this problem becomes both important, and urgent. A whole new set of hormones and brain processes activate, to help us find the solution, right now!

This is when brainstorming feels amazing, as if we are hunting! We decide between fight or flight? We fight! With our minds, on overdrive!

As I wrote scifi and Star Wars^tm fanfiction, in the back of my mind this idea of writing my own scifi creations lingered. I wondered, how to set up a story someday for a character to utter my phrase? Now this question percolated slowly in the back of my coffee pot mind.

I wanted to design a scene where the hero falls, wounded, and utters this as his last words. As with all good speculative fiction, it begs many more questions, which the writer uses for further worldbuilding and character building.

What happened that the hero has a moment to speak that line, before he passes out or dies? Clearly, some dramatic action happened, yet did not kill him outright.

As much as I grew up enjoying all forms of Scifi and fantasy, I also watched a lot of cowboy westerns and TV shows with my dad. I had the idea of a laser gunfight- a duel!

I’m of the “Han shot first!” camp, by the way, just so we’re clear. But what if both duelists hit each other? Would this give the hero a moment for uttering that line?

What did he invent, as alluded to in the quote? I decided my hero, a pilot, needed to recognize the other gunfighter as the faster draw. My good guy was sure to lose, and he knew it!

But my hero is creative, in his desperation, in the prep-time awaiting "high-noon," he “MacGyver’s^tm” his gear and comes up with something. A “tool” hack, an exploit, a chance to win!

This character driven brainstorming and scene writing led to more questions: Who was he fighting and why? Historically, the usual answer among humans is, it was over a good girl, or a good place, or good resources. If my hero is at all heroic, he's trying to save the woman, right?

From what? The other guy. And what does that say about the other guy? Is he a kidnapper, a slaver, a pirate? From that comes character driven world-building of the pirate gang. The entire premise and plot of Act One grows out of this, setting up the duel. The entire book grows out of that.

If the expectation is my hero is good enough to be heroic, but can tell the antagonist is faster, doesn’t that imply a natural, observable reason? Here comes the “sci” part of scifi.

If a human had been born on a higher gravity world and came to Earth, his strength and reflexes would likely be faster than normal. This helps design the antagonist: he is shorter, wider, more muscular- a stout, massive, strong body built in/for/by high grav. Maybe he doesn’t even have a neck?

He might be noticed for these differences, and human nature shows people get defensive when picked on for being different. Thrown in among regular humans, such a small, odd-looking, but very strong person might become a bully, cruel, willing to fight to prove his strengths.

He might assert dominance over others like some pack animal, to take their women from them to prove there is nothing they can do. And so, our first nasty antagonist is born.

These clues and character designs help me subtly show my world-building and a touch of the scientific thought going into my setting.

The Expanse^tm TV show does this by depicting Belters as over 8 feet tall, with long faces and long, thin bones. They have low mass muscles (read: thin and weak) made for low or no-G, which cannot stand up to planet Earth’s gravity.

Such details make characters seem to live in the reality of their setting. Or so my readers have told me, too.

My hero realizes he has a big problem and comes up with a tricky way he might win anyway. But there are consequences. Heroes still get shot. So, mine falls down, at least wounded, and utters his quotable line.

This is just the peak action of Act One.
[Stop here to avoid spoilers RE how it works out for the story to continue.]

Does the woman he dueled for nurse him back to health? How and where did she learn those skills? This implies further world-building and character driven questions. Allowing her to do that, the bad guy's group must, therefore, have a code of honor?

Earlier, we decided this first antagonist represented his pirate gang. They may be slavers too, but dueling is part of their culture? The hero won, and he is let to live? Now the prize-girl is his prize. The winner takes the spoils.

Character moral dilemma: Does the hero take her as his slave? If he does is he not just another one of the bad guys? Is she eye-candy? A damsel in distress? Those are old misogynist concepts from last-millennium fiction, fallen out of favor in modern days.

What if she wanted to appear weak because she’s surrounded by this huge pirate gang? To avoid further aggressive treatment and stronger imprisonment, she went along, seeming passive, hiding her strengths and abilities for now.

She needed to fool not only the bad guy, not just all of his pirate gang, not only the hero, but you, the reader, as well. Hmm? Never saw that coming did you?

Like some of my pleased beta readers, reread the chapters above, my “Act One,” and check your assumptions: Was the duel for her hand, her idea in the first place? How exactly did the woman convince him to fight for her if they never spoke?

Maybe you’d better pay closer attention to her if she is pulling his strings, leading him so subtly he doesn’t even realize it. Is she secretly acting like a general, sending forth her troops to do the front-line battle work for her?

And here he thought he was the hero! Now free of the pirates, now that she has groomed her heroic pilot to fly her away, what else will she get him to do?

Ceres 2525 is out as a Kindle eBook now, at http://amzn.to/2n4LdXt

Follow Author Micheal Lee Nelson on Social Media:

https://twitter.com/MicheaLeeNelson or @MicheaLeeNelson

https://www.facebook.com/MichealLeeNe...

Website: http://michealleenelson.net

New information is added to the Ceres 2525 setting at his Wikia:
http://ceres-2525.wikia.com/wiki/Cere...
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How do you get inspired to write?

Michael Lee Nelson Ongoing? Stuff just pops into my head. Usually when moving. I like to take walks out of the neighborhood. I've learned to take a notepad and pen or my…moreOngoing? Stuff just pops into my head. Usually when moving. I like to take walks out of the neighborhood. I've learned to take a notepad and pen or my phone to jot a note, because they come often.
Talking about things helps me brainstorm, so walking and talking with my fiance'e about a world, tech, or character building problem I'm writing helps unstick me.
Thomas Edison said "Ideas come from space." His friends said that was his way of expressing that God dropped inspiration out of nowhere into his mind. I would agree with that.
Another time ideas come is when laying down to sleep. We get the conscious mind out of the way and can hear our subconcious tell us what we were too busy to bring to conciousness. I think this is what Edison meant. He had tricks for using sleepiness to force ideas. Read about him.

How did I get inspired to write my novel?
I am a contrarian. Over 40+ years of enjoying reading and watching scifi, I often had the thought: “One day if I write a novel, I’d do this that way…” I had reactions to “Hitchhiker’s Guide,” Star Trek, and some major themes of the scifi genre in general, which helped me slowly build my galaxy/worlds in my mind.
What happened to me is, these “what if” questions about the past and future of mankind have percolated in the back of my head for a long time, questions inspired by the genre, my contrarian nature, and my observations as I simmered through life. I needed to catch fire!
Then along the journey, I conceived of my own kind of heroic character. I took the name of the largest Asteroid in Sol system, Ceres, and added the name of one kind of surviving remnant of a supernova, the T-Tauri star, and named him “Ceres Tauri.” I feel this name carries major expectations for him.
He is like my imaginary friend, and he tells me these crazy stories! I got excited thinking of him and how he would live in this speculated future of Earth I imagined! I wrote it down. I told others, showed more still. They caught my enthusiasm for my character, my story. They encouraged me to share it with you, the reader, the sci-fi fan, the world! They got me fired up to write more!
I imagined, what kind of MFL, main female lead character, would Ceres match up with best? One day I was writing a kind of fanfic, casting about for a character hook and saw a great example come on TV, the “Lord of the Dance” on HBO. There we go: Tall, Irish, Redhead, Dancer. Great character hook.
I imagined what might the classic Irish folks become if there was a colony full of them on some dangerous planet? I think I created a good foil for Ceres. She has abilities of her own that complement but fustigate his. He can be all Mr. Bond James Bond on the asteroids but she works from a different skillset that baffles him.
So, the basis of ongoing inspiration is, I am creating this grand Galactic setting that I enjoy world building. I have these great characters who live there (yes in my head) They go on being themselves and the interactions are high drama and action and great dialogue.
I often leave bed at 11 pm and run to the computer to jot down notes for a scene that just popped in my head out of space. Some of my best work comes that way. *Poof* Thank you, God.

Ceres 2525 is out as a Kindle eBook now, at http://amzn.to/2n4LdXt

Follow Author Micheal Lee Nelson on Social Media:

https://twitter.com/MicheaLeeNelson or @MicheaLeeNelson

https://www.facebook.com/MichealLeeNe...

Website: http://michealleenelson.net

New information is added to the Ceres 2525 setting at his Wikia:
http://ceres-2525.wikia.com/wiki/Cere...(less)

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Average rating: 4.33 · 12 ratings · 7 reviews · 2 distinct works

	Ceres 2525 4.33 avg rating — 12 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Michael Lee Nelson's Blog: Ceres' Worlds

Is this Christian Scifi?

Ceres 2525 eBook Edition by Micheal Lee Nelson

They told me, if you can't find the book you want to read, write it! So I did: Ceres 2525.
Contrary to most of the SciFi market, I wanted to read about how Christianity *thrives* in our future, not swept aside, mocked, blasphemed as most SciFi mistreats our faith.
I wanted to read about a positive future of mankind, neither Utopian nor Dystopian.
I wanted to read about a Christian hero who strong Read more of this blog post »

3 likes · Like • 1 comment • flag

Published on June 04, 2017 20:32 • Tags: action, book, christian, novel, romance, scifi

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