John A. Heldt

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing a writer of historical fiction is creating a sense of time and place. How do you write about a time tha...

There is undoubtedly a point where every author stops reading the reviews of his or her works. The reviews become too numerous or, in some c...

Today the winners of the third-annual Indie Reader Discovery Awards were announced. The Mine fell short of an award in the Popular Fiction ...

One of the things I most enjoy about starting a new work of historical fiction is jumping into a time that is not my own. I learned a lot ab...

Today the only grandfather I ever knew would have turned 120. Andy Hoeme was one of those elderly icons every family seems to have: a good-h...

I don't read much non-fiction. I can count the number of non-fiction books I've read in the past decade on one hand. Those I've ...

The Happy Ever After blog at USA TODAY has gone through a few changes since it reviewed The Mine last April 21 . It has a new URL and a n...

John Corey is not the only thing that draws me to the works of Nelson DeMille , but he's the biggest thing. Few characters in contempora...

It's been nearly a year since a reader first suggested that I write a sequel to The Mine . She said, in so many words, that this is a st...

As my daughter Amy made clear to me a year ago, The Mine is a romance novel. The relationship between Joel Smith and Grace Vandenberg is no...