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About The Author

My main reason for writing this aside is to explain my pseudonym John Argo, which has a very special historical, literary, and Internet context.

John T. Cullen I publish my websites as John T. Cullen, as well as my nonfiction and thriller fiction. I've used John T. Cullen in the English-speaking world most of my life. If I am in Québec, or in France, or in Belgium, I go by (see next). It gets more complicated, but I'll spare you.

Jean-Thomas Cullen. I've written a few romantic suspense tales under my real European-U.S. birth name, Jean-Thomas Cullen. I was born in post-World War Two Germany, the son of a U.S. Army soldier stationed there. My mother was Luxembourgeois (from Luxembourg, a sovereign nation not part of Germany). Long story short, I lived in Europe much of my first decade. My first language was Luxemburgish, but then in first grade all Luxembourgeois children start learning Germany (oh those Umlaute!), followed by French in second grade in the École Primaire. When my father retired, we moved to his home town of New Haven, Connecticut, where I spent my adolescence and early twenties. I learned English around age ten. Oh, and my two grandfathers, after whom I was named, were Jean (in Luxembourg) and Thomas (in New Haven); hence, Jean-Thomas.

Who is John Argo? Most of my Speculative Fiction (SF or SFFH) and some suspense fiction has appeared under the pseudonym John Argo. And there's a very special story behind that.

I've been a professional writer, poet, and editor most of my life. Back in the mid-1990s, with my talented friend Brian Callahan (webmaster, author, artist), I started publishing my material online. At the time, the Web (Internet) was such a breath-taking new experience that I decided to adopt a very special pseudonym for my online stories. John is obvious.

Argo was the Ship of Wonder (as in Sense of Wonder) that sailed the primordial Aegean Sea in search of adventure during the Bronze Age. A thousand years after climate change destroyed Bronze Age civilization (around 1200 BCE), and after a long dark age (about 1200 to about 800 BCE), a new Aegean civilization arose that included Classic Athens and later Rome, to name a few big players in the name game. Audiences in Fifth Century BCE Athens were hungry for grand epic tales from the long-ago, mythological Bronze Age, filled with superheroes and goddesses and amazing tales.

Those epics or myths included Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. They also included stories about Jason and the Argonauts (lit. 'Argo Sailors,'aboard the Ship of Wonder Argo, which set out in the mists of long ago on the Aegean and Pontic Seas in search of the Golden Fleece and other adventures. Those stories are so hot that still today, Hollywood has been making wonderful movies about them. So you see why I chose the pen name Argo in this new Age of Wonder (the early Internet, before e-commerce, before hackers and other slime balls, before cyber crime, during a still-innocent time of endless possibilities for good and heroic deeds).

Thanks for visiting. I like to think of myself as a world citizen. I hold U.S.-E.U. dual citizenship, speak several languages, and have three college degrees (B.A. English/History University of Connecticut; B.B.A. Computer Information Systems National U in San Diego; M.S. in Business Administration from Boston University, earned through its Overseas Div while serving as a U.S. Army soldier in Cold War Germany). I've lived in Europe and North America, both for many years, and have a tolerant, open, progressive understanding that people everywhere are the same (good and bad like any place; mostly just fine folks).

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