John A. Heldt

Time-travel extraordinaire

Friday, August 14, 2015

Heading down new roads

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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...
4 comments:
Saturday, August 1, 2015

Review: The Finest Hours

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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 ...
Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Finding a place in Princeton

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When you write historical fiction, you are immediately confronted with at least two challenges. The first is to describe a time. The second ...
Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Giving animals their due

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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...
Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Book Seven: A midterm report

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Of all the rules Stephen King has laid down for writers, none gets my attention like this one: "You have three months." That’...
Friday, May 8, 2015

Breaking through the 'block'

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Oxford defines writer’s block as "the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing." It ...
Thursday, April 9, 2015

Review: Second Honeymoon

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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...
Monday, March 2, 2015

My go-to place for info

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I have sought its assistance when writing every book. When preparing The Mine and The Mirror , I asked it for information on the peacetim...
Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Review: Winter of the World

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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...
Sunday, February 1, 2015

A plotter, not a pantser

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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...
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Sunday, January 25, 2015

Review: The English Girl

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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...
1 comment:
Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Three Things on HEA

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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...
Thursday, January 1, 2015

A news series for a new year

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Author Sally Koslow once compared writing a book to "giving birth to an elephant." Even as a father who has seen the inside of ...
6 comments:
Wednesday, December 24, 2014

A timeless Christmas story

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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 —...
Monday, November 10, 2014

Beta readers and covers

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The errors are usually minor: an anachronistic figure of speech, an unnecessary adjective, a missing preposition, or an incorrect date. On o...
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Friday, October 24, 2014

Selling books in a global village

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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...
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Wednesday, October 8, 2014

On-site inspection

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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...
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Monday, September 8, 2014

Dealing in disaster

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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...
1 comment:
Saturday, August 2, 2014

The road to Dixie

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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...
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Friday, July 4, 2014

Saying goodbye to a city

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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...
Thursday, June 26, 2014

Saying goodbye to a home

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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...
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Thursday, June 19, 2014

My Writing Process blog tour

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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...
3 comments:
Tuesday, June 3, 2014

The Journey at the 2014 IRDAs

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For the second consecutive year, I fell short of ultimate success in the Indie Reader Discovery Awards competition. IRDA judges selected Th...
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Thursday, May 1, 2014

Review: The Awakening

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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...
Tuesday, April 15, 2014

A day to remember

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Whether reading, writing, or viewing movies and TV programs, I never tire of exploring the past. I majored in history in college not because...
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Thursday, March 20, 2014

Explaining the NW Passage

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The questions almost always start with "why." "Why time travel?" "Why the Northwest?" "Why male protagoni...
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Saturday, March 1, 2014

Number five goes live

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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...
4 comments:
Monday, February 17, 2014

Review: Isaac's Storm

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The thing I like most about researching possible settings for new novels is discovering works I might have otherwise ignored. Isaac's St...
Thursday, February 13, 2014

The writing road at Milepost 2

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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...
Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Next stop: 1964

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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...
Saturday, January 25, 2014

The Wright person for the job

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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...
1 comment:
Monday, January 6, 2014

New goals for a new year

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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...
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Tuesday, December 17, 2013

December milestones

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Two projects months in the making each came to fruition today with the preliminary release of The Mine audiobook and the completion of the ...
Friday, December 6, 2013

A new look for an old book

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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...
Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Looking in The Mirror

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There is something both satisfying and sad about bringing a continuing story to a close. The satisfying part goes without saying. Authors ha...
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Sunday, October 13, 2013

Review: The Great Gatsby

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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...
Wednesday, October 2, 2013

An overdue thank you

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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 ...
Monday, September 23, 2013

Review: Esperanza

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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...
Monday, September 16, 2013

Back to the Bitterroots

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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...
Sunday, September 1, 2013

The series continues

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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...
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About Me

John A. Heldt
John A. Heldt is the author of twenty-six bestselling time-travel novels. The former reference librarian and award-winning sportswriter has loved getting subjects and verbs to agree since writing book reports in grade school. A graduate of the University of Oregon and the University of Iowa, Heldt is an avid fisherman, sports fan, coin collector, and reader of thrillers and historical fiction. When not sending contemporary characters to the not-so-distant past, he weighs in on literature and life at johnheldt.blogspot.com.
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