Recovering the Self - Mike Nelson - The RV Book Fair 2025

In many ways, my life has dictated the course of my writing. I have held many occupations over my seventy-four years. I have worked on six of the seven continents and visited all fifty states. I’ve worked as a skilled criminal, a machinist, a soldier, an engineer and finally a physician. After thirty-eight years of medical practice a major health crisis struck me down and forced me into my most difficult occupation yet—that of a retiree. In truth, I never aspired to become an author, and I never enjoyed writing so much as a postcard, but writing for me became more of a compulsion than an aspiration after just one minor incident.

At end of his life, my father presented me with a diary that he had kept during the time he was flying bombing missions over Europe during WWII. He was a tail gunner and the life expectancy of a tail gunner was five missions—he flew twenty-six. In the diary, he described some of the most ghastly and harrowing events you can imagine, and always with the last line of each entry—“We go again tomorrow”. Those entries gave me a different picture of the man, I now realized, I barely knew. There is little doubt that if I had known some of those things, my understanding of him and our relationship may have been vastly different. It also made me regard my own life from a different perspective.

Because my children came to me later in life, they only knew me as a doctor. I went to work in a clinic and I enjoyed some notoriety in my community. I was not always so though and my father’s diary convinced me that at least my children should be given the opportunity to see me in a different light. I decided to document small episodes of my ‘previous’ lives so that if they chose, they might get to know me better. One story led to two and I started to get a ‘head of steam’, and the stories took on a linear quality. I began to see that there was a universal theme that ran through the stories, that of compelling moral conflict.

Moral conflict is something we all face periodically in our lives. Often it comes with a choice, good/bad, virtuous /evil but most of all moral/immoral. Thankfully most of those conflicts that arise are minor, but some are not. As my writing began to develop I found a character that could be both good and bad, an anti-hero. He landed in my stories and took over the scenes. He became a person that you wanted to cheer for even though you knew you shouldn’t. Emmett Casey is the anti-hero of my first three novels, and Thomas Quinn is our character in the fourth.

I was lucky because I already had a good story line that was entertaining in and of itself. I was able to create the scenery and put the writer right in the middle of the excitement because I had experienced the scenery myself. I could allow our anti-hero to dominate the scenes. By doing that I took what was already a good entertaining and exciting novel and gave it a three-dimensional character that added depth and substance. And people liked it.

“This book tore me apart and put me back together again. Emmett Casey is one of the most complex and haunting characters I’ve ever read. From the dark alleys of Chicago to the jungles of Vietnam, his story captures the raw essence of survival, guilt, and redemption. The author doesn’t glorify violence or trauma—he reveals the cost of it, the way it claws at a person’s soul. I found myself rooting for Emmett even when I didn’t want to. That’s powerful writing. The pacing is intense, and the emotional weight stays with you long after the final page. A gritty masterpiece that refuses to sugarcoat reality.” Agnes Adams

Those four novels were fun to write and I believed that I told the story that I wanted to. They addressed the conflict that many experience between forgiveness and redemption. However, I also intended to write about my relatively new experience of family and parenting. I wanted to create a story that expressed the depth of my father/daughter relationship. I went back to my own experiences. I took the get-away vacations that my own daughter and I went on every year from the time she was eight.-years-old. Each destination was unique and exciting to learn about. I created a magical fantasy set in today’s time, a treasure hunt for a magical treasure guarded by the witches and druids. The story is complete with fairies, elves and dwarves all striving against the forces of evil.

The hero in these next two novels is Annie Abbott a thirteen-year-old girl who along with her father discovers that she is a witch and not just any witch. A most powerful witch but with no knowledge of how to use her power much less control it. They set out on a quest to find a teacher who can help her learn, all the while racing to stay ahead of the evil forces that would subjugate her and her powers into slavery. The drama and excitement is fast paced and the bond between father and daughter is the focus of the books.

Now as winter approaches for we in the north woods; activities move in from out of doors, and the next two novels beckon me back to the keyboard. The next Annie Abbott fantasy is due out in the early summer of next year. Shortly after that, the new Thomas Quinn novel from Deathbed Confessions should finish up by Christmas of next year.

After writing a crime-fiction trilogy under the pen name Michael Deeze, retired physician and veteran Dr. Mike Nelson has shifted his focus to young adult fantasy. A natural storyteller who draws on experience, imagination, and heart, he was named one of Indie Authors Magazine’s “25 Hottest Indie Authors of 2018.”

As his daughter Isabelle entered her senior year of college, the two teamed up to co-write Annie Abbott and the Druid Stones (2022), launching a new YA series. Their collaboration continued with Annie Abbott and the Race to the Red Queen (2023).

Earlier, Mike’s own life experiences shaped the Emmett Casey trilogy—Bless Me Father, For I Have Sinned, and The Heretic—chronicling a troubled child’s evolution into a war veteran and a man confronting his past.

After decades in rural Wisconsin and a period near Chicago, Mike is now back in Wisconsin, living southwest of Madison and enjoying life as a devoted father of three.

Find more at https://authormikenelson.com.

Article published in The Relatable Voice Magazine - December 2025 as part of The RV Book Fair 2025. Downolad the full magazine at https://www.relatable-media.com/the-relatable-voice-magazine