I'm a retired attorney. I grew up on a Wisconsin dairy farm in an environment which allowed my curiosity and creativity to flourish. I served four years as a United States Marines. My military duties included transporting infantry as a tactical vehicle operator at Camp Pendleton California. I also served on Marine Security Guard Duty at the American Embassies in Ankara Turkey and Bonn Germany, and the Law of the Sea Conference in Geneva Switzerland. For those security duties, I held a Top-Secret Security clearance.

I ran my law practice for most of my legal career. While practicing law for a broad spectrum of clients throughout the US, Asia and Europe, I earned an international reputation for outstanding service by providing sound legal solutions for immigration and business concerns. In addition to my legal background, I attained a Master and a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. I'm also a licensed electrician. I obtain my electrical license while working my way through my undergradute program as an electrician in Alaska.

My journey into writing books happened by chance. It started with my mother's book, Tears & Joy. Her Book is an autobiography which tells her story of growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm, marrying, raising her twelve children on a Wisconsin dairy farm, and then retiring. Had it not been for helping my mother with her Book, and having researched my family's history, I do not believe I would have written any books, and certainly not The Head Dragon Series. Currently, I have written fourteen books: five non-fiction and nine fiction novels.

I started writing The Head Dragon Series in March 2012. I was 56 years old at the time. I never intended to write a book, or a series of books. I intended to write a story, something short like one would submit in a college writing course.

While growing up, I spent most of every day in silence, or listening to the whirl of machines running, or the sounds of animals going about their day, or the sounds found in the environment. There was one old radio in the barn and another in the house. There were no portable music device like today. As I worked, I entertained myself by telling myself stories, and that is what I planned to capture on paper. So, one day, I got up early in the morning. I took my coffee and sat outside. There in the quite and darkness, the process of spinning a tale began. When my head was full, I started to write. Sometimes I couldn't write fast enough to keep up with what was pouring out of my head. I never followed lines on paper. I just wrote as fast as I could. The next day, I went through the same process, or sometimes on the same day, but typically in a different location, like the shower, or driving to work, or while mowing the lawn. Once my head was full, I wrote. That process continued until I had five fiction novels. I wrote the entire The Head Dragon Series by hand, with pen and paper. Each Book took six months to write. The process of writing the Books to first draft was fun, and very entertaining, and I greatly enjoyed myself. To this day, I am surprised that my simple writing project turned out to be five fiction novels. I really don't know why that happened, or why so much information poured out so quickly

My five works of non-fiction would not have been possible without the burst of computer technology and the arrival of the Internet. That occurred during the fifteen-year period that it took me to research and write those Books. The Internet and email allowed me to access people and data that were otherwise unavailable to me, for example, all the Swedish and Norwegian researchers, and the federal homestead database, and an array of other databases, government and non-goverment. The advances in computer technology allowed me to do work I would have had to pay professionals to do. Originally, I planned to print all the Non-Fiction Books in hard copy using a professional printer and graphics person. I planned to write the text, but I expected the graphics person to process all the pictures and handle the layout. I also expected the graphics person to work with the printer in printing the final Non-Fiction Books. I obtained several bids over a 5–10 year period. The quotes were always high, actually too high to make printing a small number of the books realistic. By the time I was finally ready to print the Non-Fiction Books, technology had progressed to the point where I could prepare the Non-Fiction Books (text, graphics, & layout) in an electronic format myself. Printing them in an electronic format was realistic and perhaps preferred. Certainly, it was substantially less expensive. In the end, I prepared the Books in an electronic format compatible for commercial printing, printing using a home computer, or reading electronically. I burned the electronic files to DVDs and sent them to family members, and made them available through download from my website. None of this was possible when I started working on the Books.

I cannot say that I regret the inquiry into my family history, or the work required to create the Non-Fiction Books. Combined, the five Non-Fiction Books contain over 2,000 pictures and documents. I worked over fifteen years on the material and spent at least $20,000, not to mention travel costs, or the number of software programs and the amount of computer hardware I bought and had to learn, or the number of times the hardware and software changed over that fifteen-year period. I travelled to various parts of the United States looking for family graves to collect information on those identified by their markers. I took photos of gravestones. I met with and collected photos from family members. I learned a lot about my family history from those folks. I spent hundreds of hours talking with extended family members and researchers by phone. I conversed by email and regular mail with them. I worked with many different people to collect and compile the information in the Non-Fiction Books. Just managing a project of that size was an experience in itself.

Learning my family history was interesting particularly when read in conjunction with early European and early American history. To wit, I read quite a number of European history books covering the 1400s through the 1800s. Researching my ancestors’ lives (including their wealth, religiosity, and children) brought insight, particularly in the context of world events. It was easy to see how world events devastated individual and family lives, especially economic events. I could see a young man’s aspirations wiped out by events so beyond his control that he and his family appeared to be nothing more than leaves blown away by a hurricane. The historic information definitely changed how I view an individual’s life. Still, though it was interesting, exciting, challenging and informative, I would never do it again, not ever!

I believe my aunt captured the essence of family research best when she said, “After all these years, I think the person who gains the most from the research is the person who did the research.” I spoke with other people about family research. One person was the fellow who help me make copy negatives and prints of the old family photos and negatives. He had just finished compiling and printing old family photos for his family. He said in reference to family research, “No good deed goes unpunished” and then he proceeded to tell me of his ordeal.

My own thought is, never do work for free. Then, why did I do it, and for free? Well, it caught my interest, especially the old photos. I wondered about the people in those photos, and the trials and tribulations which they endured. At the time, I was representing foreign nationals immigrating to the United States. I could see the burdens they endured. I listened to their reasons for immigrating. I wanted to understand, or at least, to try to understand my ancestors’ reasons, and to learn something about them.

I spent a year or two reading numerous books on old European history, and considerable early American history for the areas where my ancestors lived. Learning the history helped me understand the time during which they lived, and why and how they moved to the United States from Europe, and why they moved across the United States. I also did the work for those who will come after me. I have no children, but there will be others like me who will wonder as I did.

In 2003, my sister, Dr. Carol Landry, was in her masters program. As part of that program, she was required to build a relational database. Carol asked if she could use the photos and research that I had gathered to build a relational database for a website. I sent her the information and photos. I also purchased the domain name, Reinholds.us.com, and paid for the website's hosting. Carol and her peers created the relational database for Reinholds.us.com.

Reinholds.us.com was up and running for a few years before we took it down due to the cost and maintenance. I saved the website files, and most are included in this website. Some pages had to be scrapped due to the obsolete technology upon which the website was based, but many pages remained functional while others had to be repaired. Still, a very large quantity of her original content remains in its original format, design and layout.

As part of Reinholds.us.com, they created a page entitled "Aboutus." You can read their description as originally written. I added the content from the now defunt Reinholds.us.com to this site so people viewing this site can get a glimpse of the material in my five non-fiction books. All of the pictures, descriptions and document contained in my sister's website, and now on this site, and a lot more information regarding my family research is contained in my five non-fiction books.