I am always looking for new digital mentors in the writing domain. Two of my mentors I’ve already discussed—J.R.R. Tolkien and Steven Pressfield—but I have others, including Dan Brown, Seth Godin, and C.S. Lewis.

I am now going to add a sixth: the novelist James Rollins.

Why him?

Perhaps because he is a productive author who writes two novels a year. Or perhaps because he’s able to combine leading-edge scientific information with deep historical threads.

But mostly, I think, it’s that he is a veterinarian, and one who was able to successfully pivot his career towards being a master storyteller.

Now, that’s someone I want to learn from.

(N.B. For me a mentor doesn’t have to be someone I have met face-to-face, or someone who is even alive. They simply have to be someone who I deeply respect who also has the ability and willingness to share domain-specific knowledge.)