Have you seen the meme from Gladiator where Russell Crowe, in the middle of a combat arena, shouts to the crowd “are you not entertained?” The image of a Roman arena—full of noise, blood, threat, and spectacle—is an interesting one and a rather personal one now to me as a

I was talking to one of my brothers and his family recently and learned that his baby daughter’s first words were “Alexa-stop!” While working at Intel, I learned a lot about AI (artificial intelligence) and how computers were able to learn and do many tasks better than humans. When I

Not many people know the story of how I became a full-time author. It’s a story about setting goals, failing, trying again, trying new things, failing again, sticking with it. It’s full of twists and turns, a lot like my novels. For years I have wanted to tell the story,

Thank you for stopping by. I wanted to share some news first of all. The last short story I’ve written about Ankarette from the Kingfountain series will be coming out in a stand-alone Kindle version. She’s one of my all-time favorite characters and a fan favorite as well. In fact,

You know, short stories have been on my brain recently. I invited my bud Charlie Holmberg here to blog about them a few months ago. I also finished reading, for the first time, Stephen King’s memoir “On Writing” and he had some really practical advice to new writers about starting

It’s been a busy summer and I haven’t written a blog posting in a while. My family moved from California to the Rocky Mountains this summer. After being in our last house for 16 years, it’s been quite an adjustment. I also just returned from a trip to New York

Finding Your Own Voice (or, in other words, how to make characters feel real) by Jeff Wheeler Inside almost every work of fiction, usually on the copyright page, is a disclaimer that publishers put there to deflect potential lawsuits stating that the incidents and people represented in the work are

I’m a fantasy author, but it may surprise you to know that my first love was science fiction. I still have strong memories and impressions dating back to 1977 when I was sitting in the Century movie theaters on Winchester Blvd in San Jose (which, incidentally, kind of looked like

Today is pub day for my novel, The King’s Traitor. Everything about the Kingfountain series has been a risk for me. Writing from the point of view of an eight year old protagonist? And a boy at that? Thwarting the love interest in book two and making everyone (including myself)