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Nelson Richard DeMille (born August 23, 1943) is an American author. DeMille was born in Jamaica, Queens and resides in Garden City, New York, a village on Long Island. He attended Elmont Memorial High School in Elmont, New York, is a graduate of Hofstra University and served in the Vietnam War. He is also a member of Mensa. DeMille has also written under the names Jack Cannon, Kurt Ladner, and Brad Matthews. DeMille often uses Long Island as a setting in his novels, for example in The Gold Coast , Plum Island , Word of Honor , and Night Fall . His most recent novels have followed two main characters, John Corey and Paul Brenner. At first, the story lines were completely separate, but there have been hints in the novels that they are part of a larger "DeMille Universe" that references events and characters in earlier novels, such as "The Gold Coast" and "The Charm School." DeMille has written himself into Up Country and Wild Fire. He takes about two years to write books because of extensive research, and because he writes them longhand on legal paper with a number one pencil. Most DeMille novels, especially the more recent, avoid "Hollywood endings" and instead finish either inconclusively or with the hero successfully exposing the secret/solving the mystery while suffering in their career or personal life as a result. There are generally loose ends left for the reader to puzzle over, Night Fall being a perfect example. The fictional Army post in The General's Daughter was a combination of Fort Benning and Fort Stewart.
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