The author was born and raised in the Chicago area. As a child he was only a sporadic reader due to numerous distractions such as baseball, Dungeons & Dragons, more baseball, salvaging arcade video game components from the Bally/Midway dumpster, acquiring pirated versions of Commodore 64 games, listening to Heavy Metal music, and frequent trips to Rolling Stones Records.

After high school the author attended Northern Illinois University for a few years, where he double-majored in keg-tapping and whichever department interested him at the moment. He then transferred to Elmhurst College. By then he had become a much more serious and voracious reader. He settled on one major, eventually earning (after a grand total of 6 years of on and off schooling) a bachelor’s degree in English literature.

He worked as a technical writer for a number of years in and around Chicago, for companies big and small, as a permanent employee, contractor, and consultant.

The author later moved to Los Angeles to take an extended weather vacation, and to attend the University of Southern California where he earned a Masters in Professional Writing.

Recently, the author retired from his career as a technical writer to become a stay at home dad. He now resides near Lansing, MI.

When not writing and reading, the author enjoys spending time with his wife (his biggest cheerleader and critic) and their toddler son.

To contact the author, send email to: richardhellinga at gmail dot com.

To read the author's daily musings and rants, go over to his blog Honest Errors. To read the author's infrequent posts about politics, go over to Michigan Liberal, where he is one of the Front-page Editors. His books reviews are published in PopMatters.