We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kathy L Brown. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kathy L below.
Kathy L, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the decision of whether to donate a percentage of sales to an organization or cause – we’d love to hear the backstory of how you thought through this.
I donate a percentage of my royalties from two of my books: The Resurrectionist and The Big Cinch. I write historically based supernatural mysteries, and both of these stories drew on my research. The Resurrectionist takes place as the Historic Missouri State Penitentiary, a fascinating building with an infamous past. This building is in poor repair and was further damaged by a tornado around the time my book was published. It is a popular tourist attraction and fundraising for preservation is on-going. The Big Cinch focuses on St. Louis’s history as Mound City, the site of a prehistoric indigenous peoples’ mound-building civilization. White colonists destroyed dozens of mounds here; Sugarloaf Mound is our only remaining mound. The Osage Nation has taken over control and administration of the mound, and fundraising efforts aim to restore the site and provide educational features. I donate to this effort as well.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I write speculative fiction with a historical twist. My hometown— St. Louis, Missouri, USA—and its history inspire my fiction.
A Sherlock Holmes story collection captivated me as a ten-year-old. If every story has a maker, I resolved to be a maker, too. I immediately wrote a knock-off Sherlockian story, which was greeted with wide critical acclaim (by my teacher). That was it, really. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had ruined me for honest work.
However, I came of age in a tumultuous time. Despite the encouragement of the nascent women’s liberation movement, I convinced myself I had nothing to say to a world in upheaval.
Thus, as a new college graduate, I landed a job as a book editor, an ideal pairing of the desire to read all day and a personality that picks at small details. Those skills served me well in a subsequent (and better paying) medical research career.
However, the need to make stories never truly left me. The haunted 1920s world of my book series, The Sean Joye Investigations, was conceived in a 2004 beginners’ creative writing workshop.
My supernatural noir stories’ gestation and birth took years (and years). Meanwhile, I earned a creative writing certificate and wrote various fantasy stories for magazines and anthologies. Under my own imprint, I published two short Sean Joye adventures while working on a novel, The Big Cinch. The Big Cinch’s publisher, Montag Press Collective, contracted my novel in 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world, and they published it in December 2021.
Taking a well-deserved break from monsters and mobsters, I spent the pandemic editing and publishing a secondary-world young adult fantasy, Wolfhearted, as well as drafting the next Sean Joye novel, The Talking Cure.
We live in an exciting time for stories, and I want to be part of it all. I strive to produce more stories, more quickly, and in more formats, such as serials, audiobooks, and games. I’d love to learn from an experienced mentor, share my insights with new creatives at conventions, seminars, and workshops, and shift some of the promotional and marketing burden to professionals.
Bibliography
The Sean Joye Investigations:
The Big Cinch (2021), Montage Press Collective, Oakland, CA.
Water of Life (2019), Otter Springs Publishing, St. Louis, MO.
The Resurrectionist (2019), Otter Springs Publishing, St. Louis, MO.
Novellas:
Wolfhearted (2020), Otter Springs Publishing, St. Louis, MO.
Anthologies:
“Big Magick” (2025) in Weird STL, St. Louis Writers Guild, St. Louis MO
“The Haunted Guild” (2024) in 2024 St. Louis Writers Guild Members Anthology, St. Louis, MO
“Welcome to Earthport Prime” (2020) in Love Letters to St. Louis. St. Louis Writers Guild, St. Louis, MO
“The Djinn in the Wheel” (2016) in The Great Tome of Forgotten Artifacts. Julie Dawson, ed. Bards and Sages Publishing, Bellmawr, NJ.
Periodicals:
“Catwoman” (2007). Hippocrene 2007. (Out-of-print)
“The Flying Wallendas’ Death Defying, High-Wire, Seven-Man Pyramid” (2009). Hippocrene 2009. (Out-of-print)
“Mémorial de la Déportation” (2009). Mused, 2(3).
“At the Old Gallows Tree” (2011). Golden Vision Magazine (15). (Out-of-print)
“Bata Scoir” (2011). Bards & Sages Quarterly, October 2011. E-book.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
“The sweet convivium [i.e., banquet] . . . is the food of good will, the seasoning of friendship, the leavening of grace, and the solace of life.” (Marsilio Ficino, 1433-1499)
Story feeds my soul, and you’re invited to the feast. Please gather in and take your place at the table. Conviviality—a banquet for the mind, heart, and senses—is my mission: to honor stories and the souls that create them, to uplift my fellow artists, and to delight my fellow readers.
I lift up writers through manuscript critiques, book reviews, and social media support. I pay artists, editors, and sensitivity readers fairly for tasks beyond my skills. I patronize indie bookshops.
I cherish readers—I share insights for enjoying art as well as book reviews to steer readers toward books worth their time.
I value story as I write about people who put others first; they seek a higher justice than human laws.
I honor our history as I remind people that we’ve traveled this way before, and if we can’t learn from the past, we’ll keep making the same mistakes.
I respect diversity and inclusivity in story through empathy, listening, and imagination, yet avoid drawing conclusions about life experiences I can’t share. Such striving is bound to be imperfect, but I’d rather fall short of the mark than not try at all.
I demand high production values in my books. I can’t enjoy a poorly made book and refuse to inflict them on other people.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
The St. Louis Writing Guild as well as the St. Louis Publishers Association are examples of writing and publishing resources that have been so helpful to me in recent years. If only I’d know about them from the start! (Although I would have likely been too shy to go to a meeting; building enough self-confidence to reach out is often job one for creatives.)
Both these organizations provide information through monthly workshops as well as online resources. But more than that, they foster community and networking opportunities. They create an environment in which the creative individual can find people that “get it,” who understand the creative experience, first hand. Ideally, we all have supportive friends and family, but unless they also aim to create art as a business, they can’t completely share our journey. And, unfortunately, not everyone has their own personal pep squad; joining a professional organization can provide that encouragement.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kathylbrown.com
- Instagram: kathylbrownwrites
- Facebook: @kbKathylbrown
- Other: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18298845.Kathy_L_Brown
Image Credits
Kathy L. Brown. Thelys Brown.