Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Seventh Sun
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.kentlester.com/
CITY: Atlanta
STATE: GA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.kentlester.com/kent-lester * https://us.macmillan.com/author/kentlester
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 85138754
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n85138754
HEADING: Lester, Kent, 1953-
000 01047cz a2200193n 450
001 1070245
005 20170117161047.0
008 851220n| azannaab |n aaa
010 __ |a n 85138754
035 __ |a (DLC)n 85138754
040 __ |a DLC |b eng |e rda |c DLC |d DLC
046 __ |f 1953-08-08 |2 edtf
053 _0 |a PS3612.E8196
100 1_ |a Lester, Kent, |d 1953-
370 __ |a Moultrie (Ga.) |e Atlanta (Ga.)
373 __ |a University of Georgia
670 __ |a McGuerty, D. The complete guide to contracting your home, 1986: |b CIP t.p. (Kent Lester) data sheet (b. 8/8/53; res. Atlanta; MBA; markets computer systems)
670 __ |a The seventh son, 2017: |b ECIP t.p. (Kent Lester) data view (Kent Lester was born in 1953 in Moultrie, GA and attended the University of Georgia. He writes both fiction and non-fiction. During his career, Kent has worked in the construction, photography, and computer industries. He has built single family homes, worked in the CAD/CAM construction industry, and consulted with builders on accounting and estimating software.)
953 __ |a bd59
PERSONAL
Born August 8, 1953, in Moultrie, GA; married; wife’s name Penny.
EDUCATION:Attended the University of Georgia.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, novelist, entrepreneur, business owner, consultant, and construction professional. Unitech Associates(a technology consulting firm), founder. Consultant working in digital media and the Drupal content management system. Has owned and operated multiple businesses, including a photography business in Chapel Hill, NC and a homebuilding business in Atlanta, GA. Served on the biosafety board of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta, GA.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Kent Lester is a writer, novelist, entrepreneur, technology consultant, and construction professional. From an early age, he was interested in science and technology and in the way things worked, noted a writer on the Kent Lester Website. “As a kid, he tormented his parents with backyard explosions, cultures of microbes, model rocket launches, and dismantled appliances,” the website writer commented.
Lester attended the University of Georgia, where he initially studied biology and oceanography. After three years, he changed his major to business, with additional studies in chaos and complexity theory, noted the Kent Lester Website biographer.
As a young man, Lester achieved many personal and professional accomplishments, according to the writer on his website. He started his own photography business in Chapel Hill, North Carolina at age twenty-three, and was later involved with developing the Glamour Shots chain of portrait studios. He started a technology consulting firm called Unitech Associates, which is still in existence. He earned his real estate broker’s license and started a home-building business in Atlanta. He also provided software to the construction industry, including accounting programs and some early versions of CAD/CAM software.
More recently, Lester has become deeply involved in digital media and with Drupal, the open-source content management system used in the digital publishing industry. He recognizes how the online line world and digital publishing in general have affected the world of traditional publishing. He realizes that digital publishing, whether online or through electronic media, has created opportunities for authors that did not exist only a few years ago. Writers must embrace an expanded role in the digital publishing world and become willing to not only write, but to function as publicists, promoters, social media experts, and bloggers in support of their work. He frequently consults with authors, business, and others who are involved in revising their work styles and business models to reflect the new realities of electronic publishing.
Lester is the author or coauthor of several how-to books for homeowners or for those who invest in houses and properties for a profit. These books were inspired by Kent’s own experiences with homebuilding and construction work, particularly with what he learned while building his own home at age twenty-six. The Kent Lester Website writer noted that “after building his own home and becoming a homebuilder in Atlanta, Kent saw the need for a book that could take an extremely complex project like homebuilding, and simplify it.”
The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home : A Step-By-Step Method for Managing Home Construction, written with Dave McGuerty, provides guidance for homeowners, property investors, and others who want to take on the responsibility of being their own building contractor. This book is “considered the preeminent book on home construction, having been used as a textbook in several homebuilding courses,” reported the Kent Lester Website writer. Lester and McGuerty cover all the major topics in homebuilding and construction management, including finding the appropriate materials for the project, transporting the raw materials to the construction site, scheduling construction work, and supervising the work of subcontractors, such as plumbers, electricians, and painters. The book provides enough background information to enable self-contractors to communicate effectively with subcontractors and ensure that all the complexities of building a home are handled properly. The authors include a comprehensive glossary of terms as well as a selection of blank forms, such as sample contracts and purchase orders, that can ease the process. A writer in the magazine Sunset called the book a “comprehensive guide to new building.”
The Complete Guide To Remodeling Your Home: A Step-By-Step Manual for Homeowners and Investors, written with collaborator Una Lamie, provides detailed guidance for homeowners, investors, and others who are facing the prospect of repairing, remodeling, and renovating an existing residential structure. The authors present step-by-step guidelines for a remodeling project. They also include important background material, such as information on how to evaluate the potential of a remodeled property and how to turn remodeling homes a profit-making venture.
In The Complete Guide to Being Your Own Remodeling Contractor, Lester gives readers another detailed course in being one’s own building contractor, this time in terms of remodeling and renovating an existing property. Lester emphasizes the importance of planning and preparation in a remodeling project, and includes detailed forms and blank documents that can help make the planning process easier. He describes the requirements for self-managing a remodeling job and gives advice on obtaining materials, managing subcontractors, and ensuring that the work is completed safely, on time, and to the property owner’s specifications.
After these nonfiction books, Lester took a turn as a fiction writer. The Seventh Sun is his debut novel, an ecological and technological thriller. He wrote the book on a dare from a classmate from his days of studying oceanography, the Kent Lester Website writer reported.
Protagonist Dan Clifford is the developer of the Global Assimilation and Prediction System (GAPS), a data-mining system that sifts through enormous amounts of data looking for “black swan” events. These types of events are anomalies, unexpected occurrences that no one could see coming and which the best prediction methods could not foresee. The company he founded, NeuroSys, is enjoying significant success and is about to go public, but when he discovers some irregularities at the company’s assembly plant in Honduras, he is fired with no recourse, even though he was the founder.
Certain that something suspicious or dangerous is going on, he finds out from the Honduran locals that the plant is releasing substantial amounts of pollution into the ocean. This revelation is bad enough, but the discovery of the body of Carl Jamison, a geologist, confirms to him that something has gone seriously wrong at NeuroSys.
Jamison’s death brings his colleague Rachel Sullivan, a beautiful marine biologist, to the scene, seeking answers about what happened to her friend. Clifford teams up with her to investigate Jamison’s death, but they ultimately find more than they could have expected. Widespread corruption surrounding NeuroSys is a minor discovery compared to the biological threat they discover—a threat that could pose a very real danger to the entire planet if it isn’t stopped in time.
On the website Mystery Tribune, Lester commented on the story he relates in his novel. “What makes this story all the more frightening is its basis in fact. While the particular event in this story is unlikely, similar black swan events threaten our world today. The challenge for our species is to open our eyes to the truth.”
In the novel, Lester “has a confident voice” as an author, observed a Publishers Weekly contributor. A reviewer on the website Science Thrillers remarked that Lester “successfully joins real science with action, exotic settings, and the threat of a global catastrophe. I enjoyed every page of this smart, fun thriller novel.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, February 6, 2017, review of The Seventh Sun. p. 47.
Sunset, June, 1989, review of The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home, p. 124.
ONLINE
Bibliophile Gathering, http://www.bibliophilegathering.com/ (April 18, 2017), review of The Seventh Sun.
Bookloons, http://www.bookloons.com/ (November 9, 2017), Hilary Williamson, review of The Seventh Sun.
Kent Lester Website, http://www.kentlester.com (November 5, 2017).
Mystery Tribune, http://www.mysterytribune.com/ (November 9, 2017), review of The Seventh Sun.
Science Thrillers, http://www.sciencethrillers.com/ (November 5, 2017), review of The Seventh Sun.
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Kent LesterAuthor & Futurist
Kent is a published non-fiction author with F+W Media and a thriller author with Tor-Forge.
From an early age, Kent had a fascination with the way things worked. As a kid, he tormented his parents with backyard explosions, cultures of microbes, model rocket launches, and dismantled appliances. A fan of Jacque Cousteau and the TV show, Sea Hunt, he began scuba diving at age fifteen.
He studied biology & oceanography at the University of Georgia for three years before eventually changing his major to business, but he never lost his fascination with the the natural world. He has studied Chaos and Complexity theory. His thirst to understand the world around him led to an eclectic career that spans many disciplines. His activities include:
Starting his own photography business in Chapel Hill, NC at age twenty-three.
Building his own house at age twenty-six.
Obtaining a real estate broker’s and pilot’s license.
Starting a homebuilding business in Atlanta, GA.
Selling accounting and CAD-CAM software to the construction industry.
Building a technology consulting firm called Unitech Associates, which is still active
Helping to develop a national chain of portrait studios. (Glamour Shots)
Writing the bestselling how-to book, The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home.
Becoming a media consultant and evangelist for the Drupal content management system
Authoring
Kent Lester's writing career followed a circuitous route. During his early entrepreneurial years, writing a book was the furthest thing from his mind. But after building his own home and becoming a homebuilder in Atlanta, Kent saw the need for a book that could take an extremely complex project like homebuilding, and simplify it. He teamed up with friend Dave McGuerty to write The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home. Now in its 4th edition, Contracting has sold over 350,000 copies and is considered the preeminent book on home construction, having been used as a textbook in several homebuilding courses.
On a dare from an old oceanography classmate, Kent decided to write his first novel. Joking that a good author writes about what he knows, Kent made a list: complexity, travel, scuba diving, oceanography, the environment, biology, genetic engineering. He drew from prior college studies, research into complexity theory, and a stint on the biosafety board of St. Joseph’s hospital. The final result was a disturbingly realistic plot that blurs the line between fact and fiction. Many of the fictional scenes in The Seventh Sun have foreshadowed recent events.
Media and Web Consultant
The roles of authors, publicists, readers, and publishers have been upended with the growth of the Internet and digital publishing. It’s not enough anymore to simply be an author. One has to be a public relations expert, a promoter, a social networker, a blogger, a publicist--the list goes on. As an evangelist for digital media and Drupal, Kent consults with businesses and authors who are reinventing themselves to match the new social paradigm. He is the co-founder of the Atlanta Drupal User’s Group and works actively in the community.
The terms “futurist” or “generalist” are unfamiliar to most, but they accurately reflect the latest trends in science. The Internet and social networking have highlighted the unique properties of complex networks. (Something that nature has known about for millions of years.) After managing several businesses and construction projects, Kent became fascinated with the similarities of these diverse but complex entities. The same tenets of complexity could be applied to an organism, a social network, a photography business, a house.
Computers have made it possible to study these tenets in detail. Chaos theory describes the inherent unpredictability of chaos, while Complexity theory highlights the unique ability of complex systems to self-organize. It is the unique interconnectedness of diverse systems that leads to unpredictable outcomes and fascinating insights. The new, social web, is dramatizing these insights to the public; insights that have remained elusive since the origin of life. Kent has become an authority on complexity theory and is planning several non-fiction works on the subject. He provides consulting to businesses who are looking to join the new “connected marketplace.”
Kent currently lives in Atlanta with his wife Penny. He continues to write and consult.
Favorite Authors: Douglas Preston, Lincoln Childs, Michael Crichton, Tess Gerritsen, Richard Preston, Ridley Pearson, John Case, Ken Follett
Favorite travel destinations: Tahiti, New Zealand, Bay Islands of Honduras, Ireland, England, Munich, China, Hawaii
Kent is represented by Russ Galen of Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency.
Follow Kent on Facebook
Recent content
Debut Book Signing for The Seventh Sun
2 weeks 5 days ago
The Seventh Sun has officially launched
3 weeks 4 days ago
Seven Rules for Science Based Fiction
3 weeks 5 days ago
Inspiration for Writing The Seventh Sun
3 weeks 6 days ago
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4 weeks ago
Palm Beach Peril was a Success
1 month ago
Visiting the Savannah Book Festival
2 months 1 week ago
New Kindle Version of Contracting
3 months ago
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3 months ago
Is the Printed Word Dead?
3 months ago
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Copyright 2017 by Kent Lester
10/5/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1507259854741 1/2
Print Marked Items
The Seventh Sun
Publishers Weekly.
264.6 (Feb. 6, 2017): p47.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Seventh Sun
Kent Lester. Forge, $25.99 (416p) ISBN 978-07653-8222-1
Lester's imaginatively plotted if flawed first novel, an eco-thriller, introduces computer scientist Dan Clifford. A genius
programmer with a personal bartending robot and a wise Native American mentor, Dan is blindsided by some
unethical choices made by the new president of NeuroSys, the Atlanta-based tech company he founded. His
investigations and some strong coincidences lead him to the body of geologist Carl Jamison, who perished in
Honduras. This, in turn, leads him to Carl's colleague Rachel Sullivan, a gorgeous marine biologist with a penchant for
taking dangerous risks. As Dan and Rachel dig deeper into the mystery of Carl's death and NeuroSys's issues, they
come across not only corrupt businessmen and politicians but a potential biological threat to all humankind. Lester has
a confident voice that works as well for delivering business and technical plot concepts as it does for action sequences,
but his characters fail to develop beyond their broad outlines. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Literary Agency.
(Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Seventh Sun." Publishers Weekly, 6 Feb. 2017, p. 47+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480593834&it=r&asid=37c1450359da6fa6a718d98efec22089.
Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480593834
---
10/5/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1507259854741 2/2
The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home
Sunset.
182.6 (June 1989): p124.
COPYRIGHT 1989 Sunset Publishing Corp.
Full Text:
The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home, Kent Lester and Dave McGuerty (Betterway Publications, Inc.,
White Hall, Va., 1986; $18.95). Subtitled "A Step-by-Step Method for Managing Home Construction," this 279-page
volume is a comprehensive guide to new building. A preface describes day-to-day issues such as getting materials to
the site and scheduling and supervising subcontractors. The heart of the book, Project Management, features 27
chapters, each covering a basic trade from excavation and electrical to drywall and custom cabinetry. The book
concludes with a glossary of construction terms and scores of reproducible forms- materials- and labor-estimating
outlines, and sample contracts and purchase orders.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home." Sunset, June 1989, p. 124. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA7605385&it=r&asid=e21b325df8b8359271e434f9bbaa37c3.
Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A7605385
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The Seventh Sun
by Kent Lester
Publication date: April 2017
Category: Science thriller
Summary (from the publisher):
A seemingly random murder alerts scientist Dan Clifford to a global conspiracy that stretches from the halls of Washington to the Honduran coast. Illegal, undersea activities have unwittingly uncovered a primordial secret that is wreaking havoc on aquatic life and the local human population.
When the CDC and the full resources of a U.S. “threat interdiction” team fails to uncover the source of the devastation, Dan and a brilliant marine biologist, Rachel Sullivan, must race to unravel an unimaginable, ancient mystery in the murky depths. It’s up to them to stop this terror before a determined multi-national corporation triggers a worldwide extinction event, the Seventh Sun of ancient myth.
ScienceThrillers review:
Kent Lester, author and fellow ThrillerFest attendee, told me a story about his debut science thriller novel The Seventh Sun. For a long time, his working title for the manuscript was The Seventh Plague, a title which certainly fits this page-turner that climaxes with the threat of an extinction-level epidemic.
Then James Rollins came out with his next Sigma Force novel. It was called The Seventh Plague. Clearly the underdog here, Lester changed his title but followed up with Rollins and ultimately got an endorsement from the New York Times #1 bestselling author.
Sharing a title isn’t the only thing Lester and Rollins have in common. Fans of Sigma Force will find a lot to like about The Seventh Sun.
The protagonist Dan Clifford is a level-headed scientist with a strong sense of ethics and a claustrophobic streak. Completely dedicated to his work (which has something to do with a massive detection and computer processing system that might predict earthquakes, among other things), Clifford doesn’t really want to stick his nose into the shady financial and political dealings of his corporate boss. But he does, scheduling a scuba diving trip to Honduras in order to visit the company’s manufacturing facility there. While diving, he finds a dead body. (In a book where the idea of “black swans” comes up repeatedly, this belief-shattering coincidence is perhaps a good example of such an unlikely event, but this reader was happy to forgive the coincidence as just one of those things you sometimes have to accept to make a good story unfold.)
Lester writes plenty of action and intrigue in a variety of arresting scenes that tickle the imagination. His settings include laboratories, rock climbing cliffs, scuba diving, boats of all kinds, deep-sea submersibles, medical facilities, a computer chip factory, a Congressional committee chamber, and more. (I don’t know if MOBIDIC, the Mobile Infectious Disease Interdiction Center is a real thing or not, but it totally should be!)
Of course I’m attracted to the science elements of the story. I’m pleased to say such elements are abundant, accessible, and accurate. How can I not love a novel in which the origin of eukaryotic life is a major plot point? Most impressive of all, in this book Lester successfully navigates what I call the “killer virus ending” problem. Plenty of plague thrillers release a deadly infection on the world, but few of them plausibly put the cat back into the bag. Lester manages this with technical sophistication and flair.
The Seventh Sun stumbles a little with actions that can’t quite be justified but are required by the plot, and an odd story structure which makes the book feel like two novels in one with a preliminary climax halfway through.
But these flaws are far from fatal. The Seventh Sun by Kent Lester successfully joins real science with action, exotic settings, and the threat of a global catastrophe. I enjoyed every page of this smart, fun thriller novel.
Support ScienceThrillers.com and the book’s author: Click to buy Seventh Sun from amazon.com
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