John A. Heldt

In The Great Gatsby , F. Scott Fitzgerald depicted the Roaring Twenties in sharp contrasts. "The parties," he observed, "were...

The holidays are under way. No matter where you look, you can see the trappings of the season. Those of us who cannot see snow or Christmas ...

I like history. I like studying it, writing about it, and visiting it -- or at least visiting the places where it was made. For that reason,...

The first draft is the easy one. It's the rough, unpolished blob a writer pushes out in a manic frenzy. It's the tentative opening a...

The questions from readers usually begin with why. Why so many characters in your books? Why so many points of view? Why so many settings an...

Artists, it is said, are only as good as their tools. With good ones, they can soar. With bad ones, they can't leave the ground. Write...

For years, I've had a fascination with the 1920s. I don't know if it began when I read The Great Gatsby , watched people dance the C...

When it comes to selecting settings, I am a creature of habit. I usually pick the time and place of a novel weeks, if not months, in advance...

Even now, I can rattle off the names like days of the week: Wallace. Galveston. Princeton. Evansville. Gulf Shores. Chattanooga. Flagstaff. ...

According to an old proverb, too many cooks spoil the broth. While that may be true with some things, I have not found it to be true when ar...