Hello! I’m Teri M Brown, the author of three historical fiction novels. What’s crazy is that I don’t consider myself a historical fiction author. Instead, as my website states, I introduce readers to characters they’d love to invite to lunch. In other words, I’m a character-driven fiction author with an idea for a contemporary comedy, a YA dystopian, and even a book that delves just a bit into the fantasy genre!
Although I said I wanted to be an author as a child, those plans got waylaid by life. Raising my family took precedence, as did removing myself from a very toxic relationship. In 2017, when I found myself newly separated and empty-nested, words started falling onto the page. Five years later, my first novel, Sunflowers Beneath the Snow was born.
However, the transition from writing to published wasn’t easy. After fourteen years living in an emotionally abusive relationship, I didn’t have much of me left. I certainly didn’t have any belief that I could succeed as a writer. But I met my now husband, Bruce, and things slowly began to change, especially once I signed on for a huge adventure.
In the summer of 2020 – you know, COVID summer and political unrest summer – my husband and I rode across the United States on a tandem bicycle. Yes! I roe 3102 miles on a 2-seated bicycle pulling a bike trailer with all of our camping gear from the coast of Oregon to Washington DC. I thought I needed an adventure to show the world that I still had something left. In actuality, I needed the adventure to prove that to myself.
As a self-proclaimed desk jockey, riding a bicycle nearly every day for three months was well beyond my comfort zone. The experience made me dig deep and find strength I didn’t know I had. As we approached our destination, my husband pointed out the flag that was part of the Marine Corps Memorial where we would stop. I began to cry and laugh and cry and laugh. I realized that I had made it. And just as quickly, I realized that I could do anything I set my mind to. It was no longer a matter of “if” but “what.” What did I want to do next? The answer was simple. I wanted to be an author. Fourteen months later, Sunflowers Beneath the Snow debuted (Jan 2022) and within the year, it won a dozen awards. Since then, I’ve written An Enemy Like Me (Jan 2023), which has won 26 awards so far, and Daughters of Green Mountain Gap (Jan 2024), which has already won its first award.
As part of this author journey, I’ve also become a host for the Online for Authors podcast, a show where I chat with other authors about their books. And, I’ve begun helping other authors with marketing seminars. As much as I adore this author journey, I see myself as far more than an author.
I am also a wife, mother, and grandmother who loves word games, reading, bumming on the beach, taking photos, singing in the shower, hunting for bargains, ballroom dancing, playing bridge, and mentoring others – especially youth and women who are having trouble discovering their worth.
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Title: Daughters of Green Mountain Gap
Author: Teri M Brown
Genre: Historical fiction
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Book Blurb:
Appalachian granny woman. A daughter on a crusade. A granddaughter caught between the two.
Maggie McCoury, a generational healer woman, relies on family traditions, folklore, and beliefs gleaned from a local Cherokee tribe. Her daughter, Carrie Ann, believes her university training holds the answers. As they clash over the use of roots, herbs, and a dash of mountain magic versus the medicine available in the town’s apothecary, Josie Mae doesn’t know whom to follow. But what happens when neither family traditions nor science can save the ones you love most?
Daughters of Green Mountain Gap weaves a compelling tale of Maggie, Carrie Ann, and Josie Mae, three generations of remarkable North Carolina women living at the turn of the twentieth century, shedding light on racism, fear of change, loss of traditions, and the intricate dynamics within a family. Author Teri M. Brown skillfully navigates the complexities of their lives, revealing that some questions are not as easy to answer as one might think.
Excerpt
By the time the snow began to melt, Maggie knew what she had to do. She packed some of her belongings, just those that would help her eke out the barest existence, and loaded them into the wagon. Then she headed for the tiny cabin built by Henry all those years ago.
The small one-room building stood empty except for the animals who found refuge from the weather. Maggie pushed open the door, hauling in the blankets, one large stockpot, a cast iron pan, and an assortment of other necessities. Then, she made her way to the barn, which was more akin to a lean-to. The years of neglect caused the south wall to collapse.
“It will do,” she thought as she led the mule into the space.
Though not banished in the same way as Waya, having to live among the trees on the edge of civilization, Maggie determined to live out her days in the small cabin. She did not want room and ease and a large garden. She did not want a front porch for sipping lemonade or a kitchen table large enough for guests. She didn’t want to be reminded of her family or the storeroom of herbs. She simply wanted to be left alone to atone for her sins.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
· Author Website: https://www.terimbrown.com/daughters_of_green_mountain_gap.html
· Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/book/1144304086?ean=9798891320567
· Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/daughters-of-the-green-mountain-gap-teri-m-brown/20744004?ean=9798891320567
Author Biography:
Teri M Brown published her debut novel, Sunflowers Beneath the Snow (Atmosphere Press, 2022), a historical fiction set in Ukraine, which has won 12 awards including 1st place 2022 Incipere Award for Historical Fiction. Her second novel, An Enemy Like Me (Atmosphere Press, 2023) takes place during WWII and explores war from the eyes of a German immigrant to the United States. This novel has won 26 awards Finalist for the 2022 Hemingway CIBAs. Her latest novel, Daughters of Green Mountain Gap (Atmosphere Press, 2024), a generational story about Appalachian healers has already received the 2024 International Impact Book Award. Additionally, many of Teri M Brown’s works have been included in short story and flash fiction anthologies. A TEDx speaker, podcast host (Online for Authors), and book reviewer, Teri calls the North Carolina coast home.
Social Media Links
Amazon Author: https://www.amazon.com/author/terimbrown
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Title: An Enemy Like Me
Author: Teri M Brown
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Book Blurb
How does a man show his love - for country, for heritage, for family - during a war that sets the three at odds? What sets in motion the necessity to choose one over the other? How will this choice change everything and everyone he loves?
Jacob Miller, a first-generation American, grew up in New Berlin, a small German immigrant town in Ohio where he endured the Great Depression, met his wife, and started a family. Though his early years were not easy, Jacob believes he is headed toward his 'happily ever after' until a friend is sent to an internment camp for enemy combatants, and the war lands resolutely on his doorstep.
In An Enemy Like Me, Teri M. Brown uses the backdrop of World War II to show the angst experienced by Jacob, his wife, and his four-year-old son as he leaves for and fights in a war he did not create. She explores the concepts of xenophobia, intrafamily dynamics, and the recognition that war is not won and lost by nations, but by ordinary men and women and the families who support them.
Excerpt
Finally, his daddy squatted down and scooped William into his arms. He held him so tightly that had the rock not been in this throat, he was sure his few bites of breakfast would have popped out the top. He put his head on his daddy’s shoulder, forcing the tears to stay inside his eyes, while his daddy cried into his hair, making streaks on William’s cheeks.
He whispered to William like he had whispered to Mommy. He told him secrets, but these secrets were not sad like Mommy’s secrets. They were words that made him brave. His daddy trusted him to take care of his mommy and be a soldier just like him.
Without warning, the train whistle blew, startling everyone on the platform. Passengers, mostly men heading off to war, gathered their things and moved toward the train. Without another look at his family, his duffle slung over his shoulder, his daddy handed a ticket to the uniformed man on the train. The whistle blew one final time and began to move slowly down the tracks.
Puffs of black smoke bellowed out of the engine, spilling gray ashes across the brims of the hats and shoulders of the families left behind. Everyone, William included, frantically waved at the train until there was nothing left but a few distant puffs of smoke.
His thoughts, as he walked dry-eyed back to the car with nothing but his father’s words echoing in his ears, were that Uncle Otto told the wrong people not to cry.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub)
Author Website: https://www.bookbub.com/books/an-enemy-like-me-by-teri-m-brown
Title: Sunflowers Beneath the Snow
Author: Teri M Brown
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Book Blurb:
A Ukrainian rebel. Three generations of women bearing the consequences. A journey that changes everything.
When Ivanna opens the door to uniformed officers, her tranquil life is torn to pieces - leaving behind a broken woman who must learn to endure the cold, starvation, and memories of a man who died in the quintessential act of betrayal. Using her thrift, ingenuity, and a bit of luck, she finds a way to survive in Soviet Ukraine, along with her daughter, Yevtsye. But the question remains, will she be strong enough to withstand her daughter’s deceit and the eventual downfall of the nation she has devoted her life to? Or will the memories of her late husband act as a shadow haunting everyone and everything she loves, including Ionna, the granddaughter that never knew him?
In Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, Teri M Brown explores the tenacity of women, showing that even in grueling circumstances, they can, and do, experience all the good things life has to offer - compassion, joy, love, faith, and wonder.
Excerpt:
Lyaksandro was aware of just three things. The slit of sun sneaking through the hurriedly closed curtains in an otherwise claustrophobic room. The air sucking into his lungs only to escape again in uneven gasps. And the unsympathetic, unyielding metal pressed against his temple awaiting his decision.
How had he gone from a simple man – Lyaksandro Hadeon Rosomakha – a university employee, a son, a father, and a husband – to a man facing a decision at the end of a gun? What had pulled him into a life littered with secret meetings, men with no names, and information passed in the hours between darkness and dawn?
Undoubtedly, the state police would slap an informant label on his forehead despite the mundane activities he was called upon to perform. His treachery was not the kind to find its way into the banned spy novels still wending their way through the eager hands of boys wanting to prove they were men. No, rather than the high-tension, clandestine meetings of books and movies, he merely passed along innocuous information on loose pages of lined notebook paper carefully taken from the university library that employed him.
In this moment, though not for the first time, he wondered if the information was actually worth dying for.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub)
Author Website: https://www.terimbrown.com/sunflowers_beneath_the_snow.html
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3s18nzG
Thank you, Teri, for sharing your writing journey and books with our readers!