Today we’d like to introduce you to Megan Brown.
Hi Megan, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I read voraciously as a kid and teenager. Stories, I think, let my brain chew on interesting problems instead of spiraling around the same anxious worries. I had time, then, for luxurious binge reading—like reading all of The Lord of the Rings in one day.
One summer when I was fourteen, head brimming with the idea for a story, I borrowed—er, perhaps stole—my mother’s old electric typewriter. Thanks to the nature of the typewriter, I couldn’t go back, edit, and endlessly revise. I wrote page after page until I had the first draft of my first novel. That was a huge moment for me. I had a stack of papers proving I could write an entire book. It wasn’t a brilliant novel, but I learned scads by writing it.
I could summarize everything else as “I kept writing.” Now I have several novels, a slew of short stories, and more than one writing award to my name.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Nearly every author I know has a bumpy career path. Editors retire, agents scale back their client list, and magazines lose revenue and stop publishing. I’ve had all three of those things happen. Currently, I’m in the process of changing the name I write under.
This is also a field where rejection letters are also ubiquitous. While I’ve had projects scooped up by the first person who looked at them, often it takes time to find the right publisher. When I was starting out, I kept my rejection letters in a folder where I could easily count them. Their bulk served as an oddly encouraging reminder that I was writing—I’d created something, learned how to present it to editors and agents, and had done the work of submitting it. I couldn’t control whether an editor said yes or no, but I could set goals to keep sending out stories and grow my folder.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m thrilled whenever anyone compares my work to The Princess Bride or Studio Ghibli. At college, I studied archaeology, and that gave me a sturdy foundation from which to build interesting worlds and interesting magic systems. I’ve written stories for tween through adults in fantasy and science fiction, and I often write about neurodivergent characters and family relationships. My two best-known novels are The Redwood Palace and Drift. Much of my short fiction is available online. “Golden Chaos” is a good example of the kinds of stories I often write; it’s free at Podcastle as both a podcast and written text.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
I appreciate every single person who’s left me a book review at Goodreads or Amazon! This helps readers find my books. I’m usually at the annual LTUE writing conference in Utah, which is one of my favorite ways to connect with writers, talk craft, and learn from each other.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mkbrownwrites.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mkbrownwrites/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MKBrownWrites/about/
