John A. Heldt

One of the first things I learned as a self-published author three years ago was that I was more than an author. I was a businessman who had...

As I noted in a review of Timothy Egan’s The Big Burn more than two years ago, I don’t read many non-fiction books. And, when I do, I tend ...

When you write historical fiction, you are immediately confronted with at least two challenges. The first is to describe a time. The second ...

I admit I’m not very good at keeping track of these things. Had I not seen an obscure Internet reference yesterday, I would have never known...

Of all the rules Stephen King has laid down for writers, none gets my attention like this one: "You have three months." That’...

Oxford defines writer’s block as "the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing." It ...

There was a time when I went through James Patterson novels like some people go through newspapers. In a stretch of five years, I read thir...

I have sought its assistance when writing every book. When preparing The Mine and The Mirror , I asked it for information on the peacetim...

To say that Ken Follett is one of my favorite authors is a serious understatement. I have read eighteen of his novels, including four of hi...

E.L. Doctorow once said, “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whol...

A few years ago, before I began writing novels of my own, I used to jump on every thriller that hit the bestsellers list. Vince Flynn became...

Of all the bloggers I've worked with in the past three years, few have been more helpful than Joyce Lamb. The curator of USA TODAY’s Hap...

Author Sally Koslow once compared writing a book to "giving birth to an elephant." Even as a father who has seen the inside of ...

This time of year there is no shortage of stories about the magic of Christmas. No matter where you look — in the news or in everyday life —...

The errors are usually minor: an anachronistic figure of speech, an unnecessary adjective, a missing preposition, or an incorrect date. On o...

Of all the things I appreciate about being an author in the digital age, nothing beats being able to reach a global audience. I have never b...

To be sure, Galveston, Texas, is not the place it was 114 years ago. Like every other mid-sized city in America, it has modern buildings, st...

There is nothing like a disaster as a backdrop for a book or a film. Disasters are, by definition, dramatic. They bring out the heroes, cowa...

I admit the cat’s meows took some of the bloom off the rose. So did the endless construction, the commuter traffic in several cities, and dr...

I admit that my first impression of Helena, Montana, was not a good one. I was approaching the city on Interstate 15, bound for a job interv...

If I remember nothing else, I’ll remember the rooms. I found it impossible this week to walk through the quiet, empty rooms of my Montana ho...

Since taking up novel writing two years ago, I’ve been asked many times to weigh in on the writing process. More often than not, those doing...

For the second consecutive year, I fell short of ultimate success in the Indie Reader Discovery Awards competition. IRDA judges selected Th...

If there is one thing I like about reading classics, it’s that they don’t go away. They remain in libraries, stores, and the minds of reader...

Whether reading, writing, or viewing movies and TV programs, I never tire of exploring the past. I majored in history in college not because...

The questions almost always start with "why." "Why time travel?" "Why the Northwest?" "Why male protagoni...

There is something liberating about ending a series. When you bring a story to an end, you can focus solely on the task at hand and not what...

The thing I like most about researching possible settings for new novels is discovering works I might have otherwise ignored. Isaac's St...

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...

If there is one thing I enjoy most about writing historical fiction, it's that it allows me to build a story around actual historical ev...

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...