John A. Heldt

One of the most enjoyable things about producing novels is enlisting the help of others on jobs that, frankly, should be left to others. And...

An author friend recently asked me if I had any writing goals for 2014. I thought it was an odd question at first. Most authors have at leas...

Two projects months in the making each came to fruition today with the preliminary release of The Mine audiobook and the completion of the ...

One thing I've learned in nearly two years of writing and publishing novels is that you should never let an opportunity slip through you...

There is something both satisfying and sad about bringing a continuing story to a close. The satisfying part goes without saying. Authors ha...

Like a lot of people, I don't read many classics. Classics are books we remember fondly (or maybe not so fondly) from high school -- not...

As I head into the fall and begin to market my fourth novel in earnest, I feel indebted to a group of people who have helped me to get even ...

If there is one thing I've discovered in producing four novels in two years, it's that writing leaves precious little time for readi...

The mountains are calling and I must go. -- John Muir As one who has spent nearly his entire life in the Pacific Northwest, I am no stra...

More than five months of work come to fruition today with the release of The Fire , the sequel to The Journey and the fourth book in the No...

One of the things I like most about blogging is that I can draw attention to persons, places, and things that deserve all the attention th...

Now that I've written The Fire and sent it to the first of several beta readers, I've had the opportunity to devote more time to th...

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...