John A. Heldt

Like my brother-in-law, who can trace his lineage to the Mayflower , and millions of others, I am a fan of genealogy. For many years, I taug...

I exceeded Stephen King's ninety-day limit on drafts and departed from my "plotter" outline on more than one occasion, but in ...

For me, the comma has always been the most problematic of punctuation marks. As a newspaper reporter in the 1980s and 1990s, I was taught to...

"Progress," Victor Hugo wrote in Les Misérables , "is not accomplished in one stage." I consider that a good thing. Give...

I like sports. I played them as I kid. I tried to play them as an adult. I watch them now. I like everything from the competition on the fie...

Each autumn I hear its siren song -- and each autumn I resist it, though I must admit it's getting tougher. Despite the allure of being ...

If there is one thing I like about Nelson DeMille, it’s that he manages to get my attention just about when I am ready to give up on him. Tw...

In rankings of U.S. presidents, Ulysses Grant typically finishes at or near the bottom. Most contemporary historians have little use for the...

If there is one thing I like about being an indie author, it is having the freedom to dance to my own drum. Last spring, I faced a choice — ...

History, I think it is safe to say, favors the winners. It remembers and rewards those who try and succeed, not those who try and fail — or ...

While most news organizations this past week focused on two objects in the sky, at least a few paid lip service to an object in the ocean an...

For most of my life, Las Vegas, Nevada, has been a footnote. In 2001, I spent part of my fortieth birthday at Treasure Island and beat the ...

I admit it has always been a challenge. When you write multi-genre books in a single-genre world, you sail into the headwinds of an industry...

Summer, I think it is safe to say, is not the productive season. People take vacations in summer. They set school aside. They leave the heav...

Like most writers of fiction, I prefer to see a town before I write about it. There is nothing like walking the streets, smelling the air, a...

I like history. I like it so much that I majored in history in college, read a hundred historical fiction books as an adult, and wrote ten m...

For me, each new novel begins not with a keystroke on my laptop but rather with a book, a web site, or even a movie. It begins with an effor...

When it comes to reading thrillers, I must admit I’m a creature of habit. I am far more likely to read the ninth novel of an author I like t...

As a blogger and an author, I am occasionally invited to participate in activities designed to raise the profiles of bloggers and authors. S...

If there is one thing I’ve learned about readers in the past five years, it’s that they like books in bunches. So for the second time in two...

Like every other writer on the planet, I am often advised to write what I know. For more than five years, I have proudly ignored that advice...

I remember the day like it was yesterday. I clicked a button on a web page in the morning, waited impatiently for several hours, and finally...