Author Interview: John Heldt

How did you come up with the idea for Indiana Belle?

I drew inspiration from two movies, Somewhere in Time and Midnight in Paris, and Stephen King's novel 11/22/63. In each work, a man travels to the past on a mission, finds love, and encounters numerous challenges.

Most of your books have to do with time travel. What keeps you coming back to writing about it?

I keep coming back to time travel because I have a never-ending fascination with it. I also like giving my characters responsibilities and challenges that none of us (presumably) will ever have to face. Time travelers have to weigh every action carefully because one wrong move could have a profound impact on others.

What was the hardest thing about writing Indiana Belle?

If I had to pick one thing, it would be describing the era. When you write about a time you did not experience firsthand, you have to rely on other sources to get it right.

What is your favorite thing about being an author?

I'm doing what I love and getting paid to do it. I couldn't ask for more.

Who would play Cameron and Geoffrey in an Indiana Belle movie?

I answer that question in the book. Cameron is compared to the actor Adrian Grenier. Geoffrey is said to resemble Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Candice Bell, for what it's worth, is described as Holly Hunter in Broadcast News.

What three words best describe this book?

I would say enjoyable, inspiring, and memorable.

Which other authors would you say are your biggest inspirations?

Several authors come to mind, including Vince Flynn, John Jakes, Nelson DeMille, Ken Follett, James Patterson, Stephen King, and Clive Cussler.

 

How much historical research went into this book?

I researched Indiana and the 1920s for three months before writing the novel. I read several books and journal articles, listened to music from the time, contacted librarians and subject experts from around the country, and even paid a visit to Evansville, Indiana – after the first draft was written – to pick up anything I might have missed.

About Indiana Belle:
Providence, Rhode Island, 2017. When doctoral student Cameron Coelho, 28, opens a package from Indiana, he finds more than private papers that will help him with his dissertation. He finds a photograph of a beautiful society editor murdered in 1925 and clues to a century-old mystery. Within days, he meets Geoffrey Bell, the "time-travel professor," and begins an unlikely journey through the Roaring Twenties. Filled with history, romance, and intrigue, INDIANA BELLE follows a lonely soul on the adventure of a lifetime as he searches for love and answers in the age of Prohibition, flappers, and jazz.

AUTHOR BIO: 

John A. Heldt is the author of the critically acclaimed Northwest Passage and American Journey series. The former reference librarian and award-winning sportswriter has loved getting subjects and verbs to agree since writing book reports on baseball heroes in grade school. A graduate of the University of Oregon and the University of Iowa, Heldt is an avid fisherman, sports fan, home brewer, 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.

Blog

Facebook

Amazon

Instagram

Goodreads

Tumblr

Twitter

Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases.

Review: The Journey (Northwest Passage #2)

Title: The Journey (Northwest Passage #2)
Author: John A. Heldt
Page Count: 271
My Rating: 4 TURTLES: A great read, I definitely recommend.
*This book was given to me by the author in exchange for an honest review
Amazon

Book Blurb:
Seattle, 2010. When her entrepreneur husband dies in an accident, Michelle Preston Richardson, 48, finds herself childless and directionless. She yearns for the simpler days of her youth, before she followed her high school sweetheart down a road that led to limitless riches but little fulfillment, and jumps at a chance to reconnect with her past at a class reunion. But when Michelle returns to Unionville, Oregon, and joins three classmates on a spur-of-the-moment tour of an abandoned mansion, she gets more than she asked for. She enters a mysterious room and is thrown back to 1979.

Distraught and destitute, Michelle finds a job as a secretary at Unionville High, where she guides her spirited younger self, Shelly Preston, and childhood friends through their tumultuous senior year. Along the way, she meets widowed teacher Robert Land and finds the love and happiness she had always sought. But that happiness is threatened when history intervenes and Michelle must act quickly to save those she loves from deadly fates. Filled with humor and heartbreak, THE JOURNEY gives new meaning to friendship, courage, and commitment as it follows an unfulfilled soul through her second shot at life

Review:

The Journey is the second book in John Heldt’s Northwest Passage series. All the books in this series are capable of being stand alones (in fact, the only thing books one and two are the fact that they take place in the Pacific Northwest and the main characters travel back in time). Since the premises are so similar, though, I was to see how Heldt would distinguish the second book to make it uniquely its own, and he did not disappoint.

For one thing, the first two books encapsulate the two different theories about time travel. Not to get too nerdy, but, for example, in the first book in the series, the main character’s travel through time does not change the future when he goes back to it since his time travelling had already made these changes before he went back in time in the first place. (Think Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban. Apparently, the official term for this is the Novikov self-consistency principle, but I digress). The Journey, however, is completely different in that as the main character changes things when she goes back in time, she changes how the future is written (think Back to the Future). This was something that wasn’t explored in the previous book, but I thought it was really interesting and made for some things that I definitely did not see coming.

It’s hard for me to find anything to complain about in this book. It was clever, poignant, downright heartbreaking at times. A lot of people ponder what they would tell their younger selves, and I loved how Heldt explored how this time traveling woman was able to influence the life of her teenage self and high school friends. I would definitely recommend this book and will be continuing on with the series myself.




Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases. 

Review: The Mine

Title: The Mine (Northwest Passage #1)

Author: John A. Heldt

Page Count: 288

My Rating: 4 TURTLES: A great read, I definitely recommend.

Amazon

*The author gave me this book in exchange for an honest review

Description:

In May 2000, Joel Smith is a cocky, adventurous young man who sees the world as his playground. But when the college senior, days from graduation, enters an abandoned Montana mine, he discovers the price of reckless curiosity. He emerges in May 1941 with a cell phone he can't use, money he can't spend, and little but his wits to guide his way. Stuck in the age of swing dancing and a peacetime draft, Joel begins a new life as the nation drifts toward war. With the help of his 21-year-old trailblazing grandmother and her friends, he finds his place in a world he knew only from movies and books. But when an opportunity comes to return to the present, Joel must decide whether to leave his new love in the past or choose a course that will alter their lives forever. THE MINE is a love story that follows a humbled man through a critical time in history as he adjusts to new surroundings and wrestles with the knowledge of things to come.

Review:

At the time John Heldt approached me to ask for a review, I was trying not to take on more review books since I already had a lot on my plate. When I read the synopsis, though, I knew I would regret not agreeing to review it and would probably end up purchasing a copy myself, so I took him up on the opportunity. I haven’t read a lot of books involving time travel, but I do watch a lot of Doctor Who, and I find the dramatic irony that the time traveler and the audience go through as they know an event that is about to occur delicious or cringe-worthy, depending on the event. Either way, it is a scenario I enjoy immensely as I reader, and this book has plenty of it!

I thought this story was really cleverly crafted, and it is always a pleasure to read a book set in places I’ve actually been to, even if it is in the 1940’s and not the 2010’s. I loved how distinctive each of the characters were and how Heldt showed Joel cope with being sent sixty years into the past. This book gripped me in a way I’m not often with books, especially the second have, and it just catered a lot to my preferences as a reader. I burned the midnight oil to finish this one, and was so geared up and happy at the end that it took me even longer to fall asleep!

There just a few distracting things that made this book come shy of four and a half starts for me. Especially in the beginning, there was a bit too much telling and not enough showing for my liking, and at times the dialogue was written in a way that made it hard for me to tell who was speaking. The characters are also referred to a lot with epithets like “the sales wundkind” or “the man in a cowboy hat” and I think the author was doing this to not have a character’s name appear too much on one page, but it was a bit distracting for me, but I suppose that comes down to preference. I had also wished that Joel would have talked a bit more about the prejudices of the time. I suppose most of the historical fiction books I’ve read have female protagonists, so they notice these things more acutely. And it does get talked about to some extent, but for me personally it would have been interesting to see a bit more.

Overall I would certainly recommend this book, especially for fans of time travel stories. The characters are the age for New Adult, and there is sex in the story but it is all off-screen, so I would say this story could be enjoyed by young adults as well.  I will definitely be reading more by this author in the future.




Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases.