A New World – Contact by MD Neu – Guest Post and Giveaway

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A New World – Contact
MD Neu
Publication date: February 4th 2019
Genres: LGBTQ+, Science Fiction

A little blue world, the third planet from the sun. It’s home to 7 billion people with all manner of faiths, beliefs and customs, divided by bigotry and misunderstanding, who will soon be told they are not alone in the universe. Anyone watching from the outside would pass by this fractured and tumultuous world, unless they had no other choice. Todd Landon is one of these people, living and working in a section of the world called the United States of America. His life is similar to those around him: home, family, work, friends and a husband.
On the cusp of the greatest announcement humankind has ever witnessed, Todd’s personal world is thrown into turmoil when his estranged brother shows up on his front porch with news of ships heading for Earth’s orbit. The ships are holding the Nentraee, a humanoid race who have come to Earth in need of help after fleeing the destruction of their homeworld. How will one man bridge the gap for both the Humans and Nentraee, amongst mistrust, terrorist attacks and personal loss? Will this be the start of a new age of man or will bigotry and miscommunication bring this small world to its knees and final end?

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Inspiration behind A New World: Contact

I love a majority of Sci-Fi stories, however what I love most is watching the Sci-Fi shows that have these hopeful futures and exciting adventures. I’m not a big fan of dystopian, I like to think we have a much more hopeful future. Anyway, seeing them in the theater or even watching the various TV shows that were on is great fun. Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galatica, Babylon 5, The Orville, Buck Rogers, every one of them showed us a future, our potential future, and it was fantastic, but what it never showed (however it’s gotten much better in recent years) was queer characters. And I wanted to change that.

My goal wasn’t to write a Sci-Fi romance or anything like that. There is a ton of books like that out there and that isn’t what I want to write. I want to tell a story with a main character who happens to be queer. I didn’t want his being gay to be the focus on the story. I wanted to tell an adventure, a ‘what if’ story, something that anyone could read and enjoy. Yes, Todd is gay, yes Todd is married to a man, yes they have a gay friend Dan. But that is the world we live in, most people know a queer person. So, why not have a likable queer main character that everyone can relate too. However, that is only a small part of the story, the rest of the story is about aliens coming to earth and us humans having to learn to deal with this new world, this new reality.

Much like Star Trek and the other Sci-Fi movies and TV shows, I wanted to create my own universe with a huge cast of characters, in the novel I have three main point-of-view characters of which Todd is one, even though it’s his story we aren’t only seeing the world from his point-of-view. It could easily be said that this book is Mirtoff’s (the alien speaker general) story. Or, Mi’ko’s (the alien vice speaker) story. So, if people cringe a bit at the idea of this story having a main character who is queer, these readers can look at it this other way. We get to see large parts of the world I created from the alien’s Mirtoff and Mi’ko, we get to know the aliens and we get to see our world through their eyes, and I’m not sure we are going to like what we see.

What I wanted to do was write a ‘what if’ story that reflected our world today and to show we are all people with our own hopes and dreams. This story, as much as it’s a Sci-Fi story (with a lot of great space tech and ships and all that) it’s about us, and I don’t think we get to see enough of that, which is really what inspired me to write this book and this series.



Author Bio:

M.D. Neu is a LGBTQA Fiction Writer with a love for writing and travel. Living in the heart of Silicon Valley (San Jose, California) and growing up around technology, he’s always been fascinated with what could be. Specifically drawn to Science Fiction and Paranormal television and novels, M.D. Neu was inspired by the great Gene Roddenberry, George Lucas, Stephen King, Alice Walker, Alfred Hitchcock, Harvey Fierstein, Anne Rice, and Kim Stanley Robinson. An odd combination, but one that has influenced his writing.

Growing up in an accepting family as a gay man he always wondered why there were never stories reflecting who he was. Constantly surrounded by characters that only reflected heterosexual society, M.D. Neu decided he wanted to change that. So, he took to writing, wanting to tell good stories that reflected our diverse world.

When M.D. Neu isn’t writing, he works for a non-profit and travels with his biggest supporter and his harshest critic, Eric his husband of eighteen plus years.

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