Bio Page

J. (Jeffrey) Allan Danelek

So you want to find out what kind of person you're dealing with here, do you? Okay, but remember, you asked for it.

A native of Minnesota but a resident of Colorado since 1969, my life has been a journey that has taken me down many different paths—some good and some not so good—but all of them useful in my journey. After a stint in the Navy (as a navigator and, briefly, an air traffic controller) I attended the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, specializing in illustration and graphic design. Since then, I have worked for a wide array of employers, from the public school system to the aerospace industry. I even worked for a couple of years laying out an international magazine for a local televangelist (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty). Besides doing free-lance graphic work, I'm currently working as a part-time driving instructor for MasterDrive of Denver—the premier driver education company in all of Colorado! I currently live in Lakewood, Colorado (a suburb of Denver) with my wife, Carol, and our two sons.

Besides writing, my hobbies include—but are not necessarily limited to—art, politics and political history (I can name all 44 presidents along with the years they were president and what party they were, none of which has proven useful to date), world and military history, religion and spirituality, numismatics (coin collecting) paleontology, astronomy (and science in general) and Fortean subjects such as Bigfoot, UFO's and things that go bump in the night. I enjoy writing both fiction and non-fiction, much of it with decidedly spiritual, religious, cryptozoological, historical and/or paranormal themes, and consider writing to be my life's passion.

I'm ashamed to admit I didn't pursue my writing career with the prerequisite determination until fairly recently (I like to think of it as a progressive learning thing) with my first published feature article appearing in the March, 2002 issue of Fate magazine. Striking up a good relationship with Fate's parent publisher, Galde Press, I decided to submit an entire manuscript for consideration and in September of 2003, I was blessed with my first book, Reconsidering Atlantis: A New Look at a Prehistoric Civilization*. Later I was able to get a larger publisher (and one known for its paranormal-theme clientele), Llewellyn International, out of St. Paul, Minnesota, to look at some of my ideas, the result being that I have since managed to add five more titles to my repertoire: The Mystery of Reincarnation (May, 2005), The Case for Ghosts, (July, 2006), Atlantis, Lessons from a Prehistoric Civilization (June, 2008—basically a rework of my first book), UFOs: The Great Debate (December, 2008) and 2012: Extinction or Utopia (November, 2009). I also have a book dealing with the mysterious sighting of "airships" reported over California and the Midwest in the winter of 1896-97 (the first UFO flap or something else?) entitled The Great Airship of 1897 (from Adventures Unlimited Press), a book that I had the dubious honor of not only writing, but laying out and doing all the illustrations for (and no, it wasn't self-published in case that's what you were thinking). My hat goes off to David Childress at AUP for letting me take the book from concept to final product. Not many publishers are willing to do that nowadays. (In fact, I can't think of any full service publishers who do!) I also am working on several not-yet-but-hopefully-soon-to-be-published novels that my agent is currently marketing to several of the larger publishing houses. All in all, things seem to be moving along pretty well, making me very enthusiastic about the coming years. (Oh, and did I forget to tell you that I'm a member of the Author's Guild?)

Perhaps the best part of being a writer has been the opportunities it has afforded me to meet a host of interesting people in the literary and paranormal community, among them real life ghost-hunters, past life regression hypnotists, Wiccans, and everything in between. It has also provided me the chance to do lots of radio (I'm told I have the face for it); over the last few years I've repeatedly been a guest on Coast to Coast with George Noury and have appeared on Whitley Strieber's Dreamland Radio Show, the x-zone with Rob McConnell, EUP Radio with Scott Colborn, Erskine Overnight, Para-X Radio with Rusty O'Nhail, and have done numerous other shows, conventions, and podcasts as well. I've also had the opportunity to speak at several seminars (most recently at a paranormal conference at the haunted Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado as well as onboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach) and am giving a series of lectures on ghosts, UFOs and reincarnation at Colorado Free University. All-in-all, alot of fun.

My personal philosophy is that life is about learning and growing, both intellectually and spiritually, and that is the perspective from which I approach each project I undertake. As for writing, fame and wealth are not the goals (though they are acceptable consolation prizes). The point of the exercise is to give others a piece of yourself in the hopes that in your words they'll find something that speaks to their needs, answers their questions, or even touches their heart. To have a stranger come up to you and thank you for expanding their awareness or giving them an answer to a question they have been pondering is what writing is all about, and if you can happen to make a living doing that in the process, then it's worth all the effort. At least, that's how I see it.

* Out of print.

Your clearinghouse for ideas about the paranormal, the unexplained, and the just plain weird!

Your clearinghouse for ideas about the paranormal,
the unexplained, and the just plain weird!