Last week, I came to an agreement with a publisher for the English-language (original) version of my first memoir, which is titled Prague: My Long Journey Home. The publisher is Abbott Press, a division of Writer’s Digest, located in Bloomington, Indiana. We will be publishing both a hard-cover book and a trade paperback; at the same time,…

Following the successful launch of the Czech-language version of my first memoir, we are in the final stages of preparing for publication in the U.S. the English-language version. The book’s title will be: PRAGUE: MY LONG JOURNEY HOMEA Memoir of Survival, Denial and Redemption The current publication target is late October 2011, with an earlier…

Having survived World War II, 13-year-old Ota Karel Heller was told to forget everything that happened when he and his parents left for the United States in 1948. Now in his mid-70s with a successful stateside career, Charles Ota Heller — as he is now called — revisits his past with all its blemishes in…

For my Czech-speaking readers: you may be interested in a two-part interview which appeared on the website TOPZINE. Here are the links: http://www.topzine.cz/charles-o-heller-svuj-vystrel-na-nemeckeho-vojaka-si-pamatuji-jako-by-se-to-stalo-vcera http://www.topzine.cz/charles-o-heller-za-komunismu-me-sebrala-stb I would be interested in your comments.

Several friends who have followed my blogs about my “magical book tour” have asked why I haven’t shown the photo on the cover of my book. Thank you all for the heads-up. Here is the beautiful, melancholy image of a family on the bank of the river Vltava by Czech photographer Pavel Kolin.

In order to save shipping costs for Czech-speaking North Americans who wish to purchase Dlouha cesta domu, we have made arrangements with a Canadian book-selling web site from which the book can be ordered. Please go on                                               http://www.czech-books.com/ and request Dlouha cesta domu by Charles Ota Heller. Thank you.

On the way to the Prague airport at five in the morning, I asked our friend Vlada to turn on the radio in order to catch the weather forecast. The first announcement we heard was: “Osama bin Laden is dead!” After a brief celebration, I experienced a selfish reaction. “Why couldn’t they have waited a day?”…

The formal book tour finished, Sue and I are free to spend the weekend with friends. Saturday is devoted to time with my distant cousin, Sylva Pustina (right in bottom photo), her husband Karel, and son Daniel (left in photo). All escaped from the communist regime and reside in Germany. Sylva and Karel have been at…

I have Friday morning off. Sue and I walk to Josefov, site of a memorial where the names of 77,000 Czech victims of the Holocaust are printed on walls, in the manner of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. The martyrs are listed by their home towns. Each time we go, I find another member of…

I have reserved most of Thursday for our traditional loop of Prague-Kralupy-Melnik-Kojetice-Prague. My father was born and grew up in Kralupy. Melnik castle sits high on a hilltop, overlooking the confluence of the nation’s two great rivers — Vltava (Moldau) and Labe (Elbe) — and overlooks the mountain Rip, which is important both in the…