Scott Martelle, a freelance writer and Los Angeles Correspondent for Sphere (an AOL-owned news site), is a veteran journalist, including a dozen years as a staff writer for The Los Angeles Times, where he covered portions of three presidential campaigns. He also writes history books. His first, Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West , explores a largely forgotten moment in American history when a Colorado coal strike turned into a guerrilla war, killing at seventy-five people. His forthcoming book, The Fear Within , is a narrative retelling of the first Smith Act trial of the leaders of the American Communist Party, which helped usher in the McCarthy era. When not writing, Martelle teaches a journalism course at Chapman University and leads a summer nonfiction storytelling workshop through UCI’s Literary Journalism program.