Hoosier begins life as a novelist after 70

Oct. 29—A framed photograph sits on a table in the writing room of John Kelly's Indianapolis home.

It shows a 20-year-old guy with longish hair and sunglasses walking through a field, with the dome of the Vatican in Rome in the distance.

It's Kelly. He was a University of Notre Dame junior then, with a year to study abroad while living in Rome, tour Europe and the Middle East and just explore.

"It was the best time of my life," Kelly said last week, reclined in a chair in his living room.

Kelly, now 73, is offering others a glimpse of the countries, as well as his Hoosier homeland, that served as the backdrop to his own youthful adventures. In retirement, he's become a novelist. A prolific novelist.

He's written a series of five mystery thrillers in less than three years. Each novel is connected by core of characters, European locales and the summer vacation spot his Terre Haute family enjoyed for generations — Lake Maxinkuckee in the northern Indiana town of Culver. Kelly hopes his sixth book, already in progress, will be finished early next year.

If it follows the first five, Kelly's sixth novel will feature protagonist Jack McCabe, whose vacation home is on Lake Maxinkuckee; Interpol chief Sam Aritan and others; and international crime, terrorism and mystery.

As a reader review put it, "Oh, my goodness, these books are full of adventure, intrigue, blood and gore."

Life as a suspense novelist (under his pen name "J.T." Kelly) diverts from Kelly's previous, decades-long career in marketing, publishing, advertising and his own multimedia business — a path that included residing in Tucson, Denver and finally Indianapolis. Kelly continues to live there and his wife Jane — a fellow Terre Haute native he met, ironically, in Denver — who is "very proud" of his new writing pursuit. Their son Ryan and daughter Courtney live in the area, as well.

Kelly retired in 2019 at age 70 and considered consulting work, but didn't find those options appealing. Then, during a workout session, a friend started talking about a global network of terrorists and its infiltration into multiple entities worldwide, unbeknownst to the general public. Kelly started research to write a fictional tale centered on that theme.

Kelly's experience of running a business from home, for years, and writing advertising and marketing copy helped.

"It kind of instilled a work discipline that made it easy for me to write a book, because I got into that world," he said. But, "I had a lot to learn, as far as writing books because I didn't really have any training."

His brother back in Terre Haute, Daniel Kelly, had written an "inspirational thriller" novel in 2017, "The Beauty Beneath." Like John, Dan also has a vocation other than writing books; he's the Vigo County Juvenile Court magistrate.

"That kind of stuck with me and inspired me," John Kelly said. "I thought, 'If he could do it, maybe I could do it.'"

So in late 2019, just months after retiring, Kelly started working on his debut novel, "Fair Ways and Foul Plays." He independently published it spring of 2020. He wrote and released "Deadly Defiance" and "Suite Suspicion" in 2020 and 2021. This year, Kelly completed and published "Formula for a Felon" and "Diamond Destiny."

"All of my books involve a lot of research, because I'm writing about subjects I don't already know about, and based in countries I need to learn a lot about," Kelly said.

Still, his own travels as a young college student and later, as well as his family's longtime summer vacation tradition at Lake Maxinkuckee, help Kelly paint the settings for the stories. "Seeing all those places [then], it's so much fun to relive a lot of these areas, but enriching it with these details," he said.

The plots of the books all contain a link to Lake Maxinkuckee, protagonist Jack McCabe's fictional getaway place, too.

Kelly grew up in Terre Haute in a family of nine children, and attended St. Patrick School, then Schulte High School and Notre Dame, where he studied fine arts, filmmaking and photography, graduating in 1971. His grandfather, the late John F. Kelly, owned an asphalt business in Terre Haute and bought a house on Lake Maxinkuckee, a place generations of the Kelly family visited until it sold in the 1990s.

The references to the Lake in the J.T. Kelly novels "conjured up many happy memories," Dan Kelly said last week. "In fact, the preponderance of three generations of home movies were taken there."

Back then, the idea that John Kelly would write fictional thrillers about Lake Maxinkuckee never occurred to his brother, Dan. "I did not know that either of us would ever decide to write a novel," Dan said.

Action in each Kelly novel begins at the lake community and then extends to European cities such as Munich, Prague, Cannes, Paris and Venice. Yet, each book stands on its own and would not require readers to have read his earlier books. "They're completely different stories, even though they involve Jack McCabe and Lake Maxinkuckee," Kelly said.

Storytelling keeps him busy. "I do write all the time," he said.

He's also become an intense reader of suspense novels himself, especially those by Dan Brown, John Grisham and J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series.

Kelly gave his own readers a different twist with "Diamond Destiny," his latest novel, released in August. "It has more of a feel-good component," Kelly said. He's considering building that sensation into his sixth book.

Regardless of the vibe, Kelly tries to expose readers to exotic parts of the world he roamed all those years ago.

"I definitely want the reader to feel like they're going on a trip and to experience a new place," Kelly said.

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.