Posted on January 26, 2018

Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them all is reborn, the flower of the apple…

Posted on September 4, 2017

On August 21, 2017, many people across the United States were able to view a total solar eclipse. Estimates put the number somewhere in the vicinity of 20 million. I was one of them and I wanted to sh…

Posted on May 27, 2017

On May 26, The Dark Lord was an Amazon Kindle Deal of the Day. There was no prior announcement. We hoped that it meant that we would sell some extra copies. We did what we could to inform people on Tw…

Posted on May 25, 2017

Hi everyone! This is the Harry half of Jack Heckel, and I’m writing this after speaking with John. The other day, a van pulled up and the occupants asked me why Jack Heckel had disappeared from his ow…

Posted on December 28, 2016

She was my first princess, and she is still the image I carry in my mind when the word princess arises in any context. The year was 1977 and I was eight when Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope was rel…

Posted on November 2, 2016

It’s out!!! Check out the Harper Blog today!

Posted on October 28, 2016

There are times that the inspiration of a story can be traced to a single point in time. Stephanie Meyer has revealed that her Twilight series was born from a dream in which she saw a person in a mead…

Posted on October 8, 2016

  Welcome again to Once Upon a Time with… where we interview a fellow author. Today, we welcome Nancy K. Wallace, the author of Harper Voyager’s Fantasy series, Wolves of Llisé. Nancy was signe…

Posted on October 6, 2016

Fear The Dark Lord! In less than a month, the ebook of The Dark Lord will be available (November 1st to be exact!) We are very excited, but we’ve also realized that other than the cover reveal, we hav…

Posted on September 13, 2016

Hi everyone! Today we have a special guest, Liana Brooks, author of the Time & Shadows trilogy. She’s one of our fellow Harper Voyager Impulse authors, and her third book, DECOHERENCE, was release…

Posted on September 8, 2016

The time has come. We’ve received the copy edits for The Dark Lord back from Harper and are doing the final review of the text before everything is set in stone for the November 1st ebook release. Her…

Posted on September 2, 2016

It feels like we’ve been writing and rewriting The Dark Lord forever, but finally, November 1st, ebook release day, is just around the corner. Preorders are available. This is a new series for us, but…

Posted on September 1, 2016

Hi everyone, Tomorrow, we will reveal the cover for The Dark Lord, Jack Heckel’s next book. It’s the start of a new series and our version of a love letter to roleplaying and epic fantasy. The Dark Lo…

Posted on August 27, 2016

Most people know that Jack Heckel is not one person, but actually the name that John Peck and Harry Heckel use for their writing team. If you didn’t know that, you know now. 🙂 Jack Heckel was a name…

Posted on June 8, 2016

In a long tradition…that I am starting now, I’ve decided to do a post-facto running diary of Jack’s crazy couple of days at the Phoenix Comic-Con. Would it have been better to have done a diary that…

Posted on May 17, 2016

Check out @HarperVoyagerUS’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/HarperVoyagerUS/status/732570834146078720?s=09

Posted on April 9, 2016

­­ As Jack Heckel basks in the glow of the release of the ebook version of The Pitchfork of Destiny (Amazon US, Amazon UK, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Kobo), all the while hoping for good reviews, we…

Posted on April 4, 2016

In the immortal words of the Scarlet Scoundrel, “Aha!” On April 5th, the ebook version of The Pitchfork of Destiny finally arrives on iTunes, for the Nook at Barnes & Noble, and for the Kindle on…

Posted on February 29, 2016

An interview with the Harry Heckel half of Jack Heckel. Thanks, Betsy!

Posted on February 20, 2016

This is more of an update than a true blog post, but it’s been since December, so it seemed like a good time to reconnect with the world. We’ve been diligently working on edits and revisions to Pitchf…

Posted on December 12, 2015

Hi everyone and happy holidays! Today, we have a guest post from one of our fellow Harper Voyager authors, Bishop O’Connell. Additionally, he’ll be doing a book signing/reading with the Harry Heckel h…

Posted on December 8, 2015

Hi everyone! We hope everyone’s having a great holiday season. We’ve been busy with edits for Pitchfork of Destiny. We hope everyone thinks of A Fairy-tale Ending as a fantastic stocking stuffer, and…

Posted on October 4, 2015

As I always say, clothes make the man. Of course, it goes without saying that the sentiment applies to the fairer sex as well.  -Prince Charming, Happily Never After Okay, I have a confession: I am on…

Posted on October 1, 2015

Map Royaume: Harper-Collins 2015 “Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.” -Gilles Deleuze In a letter…

Posted on September 13, 2015

Jack Heckel’s quest for publication began sometime in 2008, when we first had the idea for our novels. Most of the writing was done in 2009, probably bleeding into the early part of 2010. There were b…

Posted on August 26, 2015

A quick note to everyone. Yesterday saw the ebook release of A Fairy-tale Ending, which collects Once Upon a Rhyme and Happily Never After in the same volume. It includes some edits and a new map. If…

Posted on August 14, 2015

It’s been a long time (last November) since we’ve been able to say a new Jack Heckel book is coming out. However, a new Jack Heckel book is being released this August, only it’s actually two old Jack…

Posted on July 25, 2015

Welcome dear readers to another fairytale story-themed interview, Once Upon a Time with… where we interview a fellow author. Today, we’d like to welcome W.R. Gingell, a Tasmanian author who lives in a…

Posted on July 1, 2015

Today, I am having a special Once Upon a Time With… interview. That’s because not only  am I getting the chance to interview one of my favorite new authors, A.F.E. Smith, but it’s her RELEASE DAY fo…

Posted on May 29, 2015

Hello? Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone at home? – Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb Comfortably Numb is a Pink Floyd song from the album The Wall, which somehow seem…

Posted on May 23, 2015

Welcome to the story-themed interview, Once Upon a Time with… where we interview a fellow author. Today, we’d like to welcome Katherine Harbour, author of the fantasy novel Thorn Jack and the upcoming…

Posted on April 26, 2015

So, I (the Harry Heckel half of Jack Heckel) spent this last weekend at a wonderful sci-fi, fantasy and horror convention. For the last several weeks, I’ve been dealing with allergies and some related…

Posted on March 28, 2015

Happy March! I’m pleased to announce to the world that Pitchfork of Destiny (available for pre-order on Amazon), Book 3 of the Charming Tales, has made it into the hands of our editors. We fell quiet…

Posted on February 4, 2015

Welcome to February, the month of holidays celebrating dead presidents, groundhogs and romance. After minutes of deliberation as to which of these three worthies to celebrate in blog form, I decided t…

Posted on January 9, 2015

As I was taking the Christmas tree down I realized that I never had a chance to tell everyone about my guest blog on the Supernatural Snark website. Rather than give my standard spiel about the book,…

Posted on January 9, 2015

So, recently a reporter from the Digital Journal approached your old pal Jack and asked for my thoughts on Disney’s movie, Maleficent. I, of course, was far too busy working my fingers to the bone on…

Posted on December 27, 2014

Hi everyone, In order to fill your e-Stockings, Harper Collins has put both Once Upon a Rhyme and Happily Never After on sale until Jan. 5th. Here’s the link below: http://wmmorrow.hc.com/voyagerdeals…

Posted on December 23, 2014

As you know, Jack is a big fan of fairytales, and he has been waiting for Disney’s big screen version of Sondheim’s Into the Woods for some time. He couldn’t wait, so has posted an article on the TOR…

Posted on December 10, 2014

I was spending some time wondering about how I could get more people to know about Once Upon a Rhyme and Happily Never After. I kept thinking if only the right person would read the book and tell the…

Posted on November 25, 2014

Aha! The release date of Volume II of the Charming Tales is here! Follow the link under our books page to get your copy today.  And, if you didn’t get the reference to “Aha!” then you obviously haven’…

Posted on November 7, 2014

Welcome to our story-themed interview, Once Upon a Time with… where we interview a fellow author. Today, we’d like to welcome Bill Bridges, co-creator of the Fading Suns RPG and developer of Werewolf:…

Posted on October 31, 2014

I’m guest posting over at SurLaLune Fairy Tales Blog today – go take a look!

Posted on October 26, 2014

Although it was two weekends ago, I feel like I’m still recovering from New York Comic Con. It was fun to be Jack Heckel and get to meet so many fans of fairy tales. I had a number of great talks with…

Posted on October 18, 2014

Once upon a time, Jack Heckel, in his guise as Harry Heckel, was invited to New York Comic Con. After much celebration and tremendous effort, he made it there (and if he can make it there, he should b…

Posted on October 17, 2014

The fifth in Jack’s series of articles for TOR is up.  This one is entitled: “Are All Princesses Really Waiting For Their Princes To Come?”  and explores/challenges traditional views of what a fairyta…

Posted on October 7, 2014

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the main character of Once Upon a Rhyme. The post broke down into a heated debate between Will Pickett and Charming, and of course, an argument could be mad…

Posted on October 4, 2014

There’s a new article up on Tor.com – Slarom, the Backward Morals of Fairytales.

Posted on October 2, 2014

Lots of interesting things going on, but first, everyone should know that copyedits have been completed on Happily Never After. It was an intense September with lots of work on The Charming Tales but…

Posted on September 19, 2014

Welcome to the Meet My Main Character blog hop! Thank you to Katherine Harbour for inviting me. She’s one of my fellow Harper Voyager authors and shares my love of fairy tales, inviting her readers in…

Posted on September 18, 2014

Hi everyone, We’d like to thank Katherine Harbour for linking to us on her blog hop.Tomorrow, we’ll have our version of Meet Our Main Character featuring Will Pickett from Once Upon a Rhyme. Today, we…

Posted on September 14, 2014

It only seems like yesterday that we were staring at the websites for Amazon, Amazon UK, iBooks, Barnes and Noble while coming up with more sites and wondering a singular question: Is Once Upon a Rhym…

Posted on August 26, 2014

Once Upon a Rhyme is released and available for download as of today. Thank you to all of our readers, and of course to Harper Voyager!http://harpervoyagerbooks.com/2014/08/26/fairytale-rewrite-once-u…

Posted on August 24, 2014

Thanks to A.F.E Smith for the Barren Island Books interview!

Posted on August 23, 2014

John Scalzi mentioned Once Upon a Rhyme on his blog! His book, Lock In, comes out on the same day. Coincidence? Who knows, but I’ll take it! I encourage everyone to check out some of these cool titles…

Posted on August 22, 2014

I have a new post up at Tor.com – “Fairytale’s Most Wanted: The Five Most Well-Known Character Types.”  Enjoy!

Posted on August 19, 2014

Once upon a time, way back in 2009, John Peck and Harry Heckel decided to write a book about a fairytale gone wrong. In one week, that book will be published as Once Upon a Rhyme. It feels incredible,…

Posted on August 14, 2014

Here is an article I did that Tor published. If you have the time check it out. This is the first of a series of five on fairy tales.

Posted on August 8, 2014

My Harry Heckel alter-ego will be at the Hanover Book Festival tomorrow – here’s the official information: The weather forecast calls for rain tomorrow. Are you looking for a great indoor activity for…

Posted on August 7, 2014

“Forty-two!” yelled Loonquawl. “Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?” “I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I…

Posted on July 29, 2014

“My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.” -Jane Austen This last week, on Thursday, July 23rd, a…

Posted on July 23, 2014

Hi everyone! As we count down to our San Diego Comic-Con panel (in 2 days), we have some great news! A rough draft of the prologue and chapter 1 of Once Upon a Rhyme are available free in Voyager: A S…

Posted on June 29, 2014

Big news here from the land of Charming: one of my alter-egos, John Peck, has been invited to speak on a panel at the San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) about fairy tales. He joins some really talented author…

Posted on June 27, 2014

Although fairy tales are doing quite well today, when The Charming Tales were first being drafted in 2009, the explosion of shows like Grimm, Once Upon a Time, and movies like Frozen and Maleficent (b…

Posted on June 15, 2014

The question that comes up when people learn that Jack Heckel is the pen name of two different people is: how do you collaborate? It does seem right for a comedic fairytale to have some collaboration….

Posted on June 14, 2014

Once upon a time… The Charming Tales were born about five years ago in a time before the world had gone fairytale crazy with Frozen and Maleficent (two movies that I adore) or even Tangled or Once U…