In this episode of Plot Twist Radio, I sit down with Teri M. Brown—author, speaker, and storyteller whose journey to becoming a published writer is anything but ordinary.
After spending years in an emotionally abusive relationship, Teri made a life-changing decision: she got on a bicycle and rode over 3,000 miles across the United States. What started as a physical challenge became something much deeper—a journey of healing, self-discovery, and ultimately, transformation.
We talk about how that experience reshaped her life, her path to becoming an author, and why storytelling can be one of the most powerful tools for processing trauma and reclaiming your voice.
Teri also shares insights into her writing process (spoiler: she’s a full-on “pantser”), the inspiration behind her books—including 10 Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure—and how themes of resilience, courage, and identity naturally find their way into her work.
If you’ve ever felt stuck, uncertain, or like it’s too late to start over… this episode is for you.
🎧 In this episode, we cover:
- Turning pain into purpose
- The cross-country bike journey that changed everything
- Writing as therapy and self-expression
- Finding your voice later in life
- The reality of the creative process
🔗 Connect with Teri:
Website: www.terimbrown.com
🎙️ Plot Twist Radio brings you the stories behind the stories—real conversations with authors, creators, and fascinating voices from every walk of life.
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Welcome to Plot Twist Radio, the show where creativity,
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storytelling, and the unpredictable path of the
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creative life all collide. I'm your host Aaron Egnatz.
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Some stories are written on paper and some are lived mile by
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mile across thousands of miles of open Rd.
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Today's guest didn't just find her voice, she fought for it.
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After years of silence, self doubt and survival, she made a
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choice that would change everything.
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She got on a bicycle and rode across the United States.
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But this isn't just a story about endurance.
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It's about rediscovery, about resilience, and about what
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happens when you finally decide your story deserves to be told.
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Terry M Brown is an author, speaker, and storyteller whose
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work blends history, heart, and deeply human experiences.
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From powerful novels rooted in resilience to her transformative
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journey captured in 10 Little Rules of a Double Buttered
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Adventure, her stories remind us that it's never too late to
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rewrite your life. In this episode, we talk about
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healing through storytelling, the courage to begin again, and
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why sometimes the most important journeys don't start with a
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plan. They start with a single
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uncertain step. Hello, Terry, and welcome to the
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show. Thank you so much for having me.
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I'm excited to be here. Aaron, it's great to have you.
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Before we get going, can you tell everyone a little bit about
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yourself? Oh, so yeah.
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Like, how long do you have? No, I'm, I'm an author, I'm a
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podcast host. I'm a public speaker, but I
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always tell people I've also so many other things.
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I'm a grandma, I'm a mom. I'm.
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I love to play bridge. I walk on the beach.
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I just have a lot of things that really interest me, but
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authoring and writing and things right early really send me over
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the edge. I mean, those are the things I
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love the most. Gotcha I I love that.
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So you like to walk on the beach?
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I just got back from the beach and I miss it so much.
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So I I live 8 miles from the Atlantic and I walk on it most
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mornings. This morning is not one of those
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mornings because it's cold, but most mornings I like to go out
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and walk. Oh, I love it.
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I, I told my husband when we were down there, it was like,
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you know what? I'm moving here because I live
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up in Chicago and it's cold and I don't like.
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It. No, I can't imagine.
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So where where were you? At the beach.
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We were in Fort Lauderdale, but can you tell me you were in
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North Carolina, right? I am, I'm, I'm on the coast,
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North Carolina. It's beautiful here.
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It is. It is for my other job, which a
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lot of people on here know me about, is a ghost hunter and I
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went down to I think it's the battleship North Carolina and
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Wilmington I enjoyed. It's about an hour from where I
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live, so yeah. So yeah, it's beautiful there,
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isn't it? It is.
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It's a great area. I love it.
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I'm very jealous. Without getting back to you,
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what first drew you to storytelling in the beginning?
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You know, I think that I've always been a storyteller.
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I've, I've been telling stories since I was a little girl.
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I, I said I wanted to be an author when I was a little girl.
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However, I also said I wanted to be a heart surgeon and I don't
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like the sight of blood. So I don't think I really knew.
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But I loved books and I love the art of storytelling, and I like
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oral storytelling. I love to go to events where you
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can listen to people tell stories.
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I there's just something really magical about falling into
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someone else's world. And I like to become the
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character and experience all the things that the characters are
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experiencing. Then I started writing for small
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businesses when my kids were little.
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I was a homeschool mom and I needed an income.
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The Internet was new. All of these businesses were
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putting their stuff out on the Internet and they were doing a
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poor job of it because they didn't know what they were
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doing. And I thought I can help them
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make their websites look better or their little promotional
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pamphlets and things. So I started working for small
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businesses and all that time I kept thinking, I want to be an
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author. I want to be an author.
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Unfortunately, I was in an emotionally abusive relationship
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for 14 years and there was no way I was going to put myself
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out there. You know, when you're writing
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non fiction, you're not really putting yourself out there, at
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least if you're not doing like creative non fiction or
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something. But if it's just, you know, ten
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ways to, you know, sell real estate, then it's not anything
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that is you. When I got out of that
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relationship, I started writing and but I was still terrified.
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I wasn't going to show it to anyone.
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I didn't believe in myself. I met Bruce, who became my
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husband. He and I rode across the United
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States on a tandem bicycle. So we went 3102 miles from the
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coast of Oregon to Washington, DC And at the end of that trip,
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me, who had not been on a bicycle in 40 years when I met
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him, said they can do anything. I mean, I just rode across the
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United States. What do I want?
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And the answer was, I want to write, I want to write, I want
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to be an author. I want to take these manuscripts
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that I've been writing and turn them into books.
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And 14 months later, my first novel came out.
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That's incredible. That's an incredible story.
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So for you, do you feel, and I think I already know the answer
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to this, that writing is therapeutic because for me it's
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very therapeutic. Even if it's fantasy and I'm not
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technically the character, I escape into that world and it
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becomes very therapeutic for me. I think, I think it is very
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therapeutic. I think it's a good way to
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explore emotions, to explore feelings, to try to explore the
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what ifs. You know, I had this tendency.
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I'm I'm a what ifer and I can sometimes what if myself into a
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corner that gets very scary. But if you put it down on paper
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and then you can what if it out there and and characters can
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take care of it and it does kind of like help you get rid of all
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of those crazy questions that fly around in your head.
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And I think for me it actually was therapeutic also in the way
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that I felt that I was a good storyteller, but I didn't have
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anyone telling me so. And now that I have the books
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out and when someone says to me, oh, I read your book and I loved
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it, it kind of validates who I am on the inside.
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Absolutely, absolutely. I feel the exact same way.
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So your novels span some really emotional and historical
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terrain. What draws you to historical
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fiction? It's like I started with
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historical. I tell people really what I am
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is character driven fiction. I love a good character, but
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when I first started writing, and I'm getting better now, but
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I'm not super good at setting. Setting is something that I
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think partially because a lot of books when I first started
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really reading, they were those, the classics where you had to
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read 4 pages about the flocked wallpaper and I didn't like it.
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You know, I would skip until I got to the character I wanted
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know what are the characters doing?
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I could care if the wallpaper was green, Blue Flock didn't
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matter to me. So when it came time for me to
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write my own books, my settings was flat.
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I didn't know what to do with it.
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And so historical kind of gave me the setting.
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So it was a matter of can I research the pieces that I need?
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And I love to research. So it kind of married the the
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research portion that I love and the writing portion I love.
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I've since gotten better at the setting.
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I now know how much is necessary that I don't have to save 4
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pages of the wallpaper in order to to get the point across.
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But I think that's why I started there was that was part of it.
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And then the other part is my characters tell me where they
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need to be. You know, if I have a character
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in my head, I just wrote one that will be coming out real
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soon and it is contemporary, so it is not.
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But this character could not be in the past.
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She she wasn't the kind of character that could have been
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in the 1800s. So my characters really dictate
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a lot of where I'm going to. That's that's actually a good, a
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good point because you don't realize it when you start in
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writing how hard it is to do the setting or you know, what the
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person was wearing or whatever. I know that that was something
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hard for me was describing like the characters looks, you know,
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I would say, you know, she had like, brown hair, but I didn't
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realize how much some people really wanted to know what this
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person looks like. Yeah.
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Yeah. That's really complicated.
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And for me, it's like, well, she's your imagination.
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What do you want her to look like?
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That's what she looks like. It's fine.
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Like I was so my editor with my very first novel, when I sent it
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to her, she came back gently and let me know that we needed more
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about what people looked like, where they were, what, what did
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her apartment look like, those kinds of things.
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And I thought, why? Who cares?
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So I listened to my editor because I think that's a good
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thing to do. And I added those things in and,
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and the second book, she told me the same thing.
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And by the 3rd book, I didn't get as much of that feedback
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because I was starting to recognize as I was writing.
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I bet this would be a good place to do a little bit of, of
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setting, you know, and then I would do that.
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But it doesn't come naturally for me.
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Yeah, me either. That is hard because I'm like
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you. I'm I'm wanting to imagine my
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own, I guess my own self in there.
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Yes, yeah, that's like, whoa, she's got brown hair and brown
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eyes and I'm blonde haired and blue eyed.
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Well, now I can't be that character.
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So I often it's funny when I'm reading a book, at the end, if
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you ask me what the character looks like, I can't remember
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because that part didn't matter to me.
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And she's me anyway. And so it's like, well, she
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looks just like me. Exactly.
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Yeah. So it's good to see a fellow, I
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guess, dreamer in there. I don't.
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Know, I don't know what it is, but it's, I think, I think it's
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really hard to become a character if you can't see
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yourself in it. And so for me, it's just easier
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to ignore, you know. Oh, she was petite.
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Well, I've never been a petite a day in my life.
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And so, you know, I don't think of her.
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It's that way. And sometimes I'll be reading
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and the petite comes in and it'll almost be like, that's
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right, she is tiny. So across all your books, your
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stories seem rooted in resilience, courage and
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identity. Are those themes you consciously
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write towards, or do they naturally rise to the surface?
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I think they naturally rise to the surface.
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And I suspect a lot of that comes from the fact that I spent
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14 years in that emotionally abusive relationship.
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And I'm not the only person that that's happened to.
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And I know there are a lot of women out there who who wonder
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about like, what's coming next in their life.
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You know, even if they've had a decent life, you get to a
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certain point and you look back and you think, like, what else
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is there? And the idea of having these
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strong women characters who find a way up and beyond and and they
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don't even have to be doing anything, you know, superhuman.
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Sometimes it's just fine figuring out how to live again,
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you know, when something horrible has happened to you,
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how do you now pick up the pieces and find a way to move
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forward? And I just love stories where we
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have women who have the strength and the resilience and just the
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grit to say, this isn't going to knock me down.
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So I think a lot of that does come from just my own personal
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experience. And then I want to pass that on
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to people because I know that there are people struggling with
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it. And so if you can read a book
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and you can find a character and you can say, oh, maybe there is
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life on the other side of this thing that has me down that, you
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know, isn't that perfect? That would be wonderful for me
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to be able to do that for someone.
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Oh. Yeah, absolutely.
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So let's talk about writing process a little bit.
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Are you kind of an outliner or are you kind of like me and a
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pancer and we just see? What happens?
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I am such a pancer that it's probably scary.
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I just tried outlining and it does not work for me.
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My characters line up against the wall, tap their feet, and
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wait for that little experiment to be over.
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They just refused to participate.
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I think that my intellectual me is.
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So I'm very rigid in my in my real life.
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I have lists. I know what I'm doing every day.
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I like things to be just so. And my writing life is 1000%
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opposite. Like I am free for all, what
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comes, what may. I don't even write every day.
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I write when the mood hits me and then I might write for 14
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hours that day because the mood hit me.
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I'm I'm a binge writer. I would not recommend what I do
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to anyone, but it is what works for me.
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And I think it's because it is so polar opposite of the the me.
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The the me that runs my world and the me that runs my world is
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not a great storyteller. You know, I, I'm too rigid.
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I know what needs to come next and I don't allow it to come.
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I force it. And so the the writing me is
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just a let's just write and see what happens.
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I have to put the the Terry you're speaking to now has to
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leave the room for me to write. I love the way you say that
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because that sounds exactly like me.
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Because I will sit down, I will write, and you know, I'll come
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back up for air in like 16 hours.
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Like what am I? Where, Where am I?
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And when I'm done writing that whatever stamped that was, I
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really don't have anything else to say.
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And it might be several days before I have anything else to
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say again. You know, I'm, it's not that I'm
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not thinking about it. And sometimes I'm trying
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scenarios in my head. I'm not even really aware I'm
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doing it. I'm washing the dishes and I
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realize I'm thinking about the next scene.
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And then it'll be like, yeah, that's not going to work.
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And, you know, I'm doing things and all of a sudden it'll be
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like, and I sit down and I write again.
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So I would not recommend my method.
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I don't think it's probably very, it's just not a, it's not
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one that you can write a book on and say this is the method that
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Terry M Brown uses. I mean, and it's just not not
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pretty. Yeah, it's not, but you're not
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the only one. That's good to know.
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It's nice to know. That there's a kindred spirit
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out there. Usually when I ask people, even
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if they're, you know, the pancers, you know, they have
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like a set time and it's going to be like this and this.
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And I'm like, oh man, I must be like, here's something.
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No I I really I don't understand my method or why it works for
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me. I do know that I have tried
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other things because people tell me, oh, you would be so much
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more efficient if you could do. And so I've tried.
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I've tried very loose plotting. I have tried sitting down at my
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computer every day for two hours.
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I throw everything away that it that's written and I do not have
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two hours every day to throw away everything that I write.
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So I just go back to my method. Yep, and it seems to work so.
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There you go, it's working so I like.
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I wouldn't recommend it so anyone listening I would not try
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this method just because, but it does work for me.
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For sure. So what is your your favorite
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part of the writing process? I really like the messy first
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draft because I enjoy seeing what's going to come out on the
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page. I'm as surprised as as anyone
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reading the real book the first time because I don't know what's
00:14:42
coming next. And as it's coming up and these
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new things pop up, I am just I'm as excited as if I'm reading a
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book like it is like, oh wow, look at what's happening next.
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So I really love that. I also, though I don't in it's
00:14:57
hard for me that the editing, I like the final edits when I have
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gotten it to my developmental editor and she has said, here
00:15:06
are some some holes that I see. I like fixing those and seeing
00:15:11
what happens to the story at that point because she does
00:15:14
things for me that I can't do for myself.
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You know, I, I don't see it. If I saw it, I would have fixed
00:15:20
it on my own. And so she'll point something
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out and then I sit with it for a while and I think, well, how can
00:15:26
I, how can I do that so that people aren't feeling the wrong
00:15:30
way about the character or who can see the arc of this
00:15:33
character or who you know, And then I go and fix it.
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And I love seeing that finished product then and say, that's it.
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That's really what I was trying to do.
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So I kind of the the very first of the stuff and then the very
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end of it. And then, of course, who doesn't
00:15:49
love getting their book in the mail for the first time?
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Oh yeah. Oh I cry every time.
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I have yet to not cry. Really.
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My God, that's my book. Yeah, I don't know.
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So I hope I do that for the rest of my life.
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Absolutely. That.
00:16:01
No, that shows that you have so much passion for what you do.
00:16:04
It's a good thing. Yeah.
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And I love it. I, I love being an author.
00:16:08
I am so grateful that at this point in my life that I finally
00:16:13
said yes to that piece of me. And, you know, people ask me,
00:16:17
well, how long do you think you'll write?
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And I said, I hope until the day I die, like I hope in my
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deathbed, I am croaking out the last two sentences of the last
00:16:27
manuscript that, you know, like, let's do it.
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I don't know. That's just I really want, I
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love it. I want to keep doing this.
00:16:34
I love that. So I have to ask about the title
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of your book. Little Rolls for a double Budded
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Adventure. Where did that come from?
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So I wrote a blog the whole way across the United States and I
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called us double budded adventures because two butts,
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you know. So 1 bike off we go on an
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adventure. And then I got involved with a
00:16:58
publishing company called 10 Little Rules and I had written,
00:17:02
I called them guides or ideas or lessons and I had written and
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then I hadn't done anything with it.
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So I had written my blog. Then I came home, I realized I
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learned all these life lessons. I wrote down a lot.
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I kind of had a very rough first draft of this and then did
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nothing with it. Didn't really know where to go
00:17:21
with it. Met Carol from 10 Little Rules
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Publishing. She read it.
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So 10 Little Rules for Double Budded Adventure was just
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exactly what it is. And these are it is about my
00:17:32
bicycle trip, but it's more about lessons I learned about
00:17:35
life while on a bicycle trip. And so you don't have to be a
00:17:39
cyclist to say, oh, this is the book I want to read.
00:17:42
What you have to be is someone who feels a little stuck, who
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says I want to be more adventurous in my life.
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And adventurous can be something like moving to a new city or
00:17:52
changing jobs or deciding you want to learn to watercolor.
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I mean, it doesn't have to be riding a bicycle.
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And then it's it's lessons that I learned.
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What happens to you and what you can do to be more adventurous I.
00:18:09
So the book is much more about cycling, as you just pointed
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out. At what point did you realize
00:18:14
that this trip was becoming a deeper personal story?
00:18:17
You know, I don't think I realized it while I was riding
00:18:20
because when you're riding it's, it's hard.
00:18:23
It was a very difficult thing for me.
00:18:25
I'm not an athlete. I am not a cyclist by by trade
00:18:28
in any stretch. When I met Bruce, I hadn't been
00:18:31
on a bicycle in 40 years, and so this was huge for me.
00:18:34
And so each day you wrote each day.
00:18:36
I mean, that's what it was at the end of the ride that we've
00:18:40
made it. And I'm having trouble putting
00:18:42
it all together into one event because we rode Tuesday and then
00:18:47
we put Tuesday away and we rode Wednesday and we put Wednesday
00:18:50
away. And it was like, I know I rode
00:18:52
it, but I couldn't. I couldn't put it together.
00:18:55
So I started reading my blog, thinking if I read my blog, I
00:18:59
could see the trip as a whole instead of these individual
00:19:03
days. And while I was reading my blog,
00:19:05
I started noting these lessons that I was learning and I began
00:19:09
jotting them down. And after I had like 3 or 4 that
00:19:13
I saw, immediately it was, you know what?
00:19:15
This could be a book and this I knew that the journey had
00:19:21
changed me on the last day when I realized I wanted to be an
00:19:23
author and I had the guts to do it now.
00:19:25
But I realized that the journey also could help other people
00:19:29
about two or three weeks later as I'm reading this blog going.
00:19:33
But even though I realized that in 2020, this book didn't come
00:19:37
out until 2025. And partially it's I wrote it
00:19:41
and then I didn't know where to go with it.
00:19:43
I didn't want to self publish it.
00:19:45
I didn't know where to put it. And so it just kind of sat there
00:19:47
waiting for a home. And then I met Carol from 10
00:19:50
Little Rules Publishing, and it was like, that's the home,
00:19:52
that's the home. And so it worked out really well
00:19:55
for me. That's brilliant.
00:19:57
It's always great when you find that that publisher or you know,
00:20:00
editor or whoever it is that you just mesh with so.
00:20:04
Well, yes, yeah. And, you know, this is where
00:20:06
this book belongs. And and so 10 little rules
00:20:08
publishing has a lot of 10 little rules for books.
00:20:12
And it's, you know, different, different people from different
00:20:15
walks of life who have these 10 rules for even, like, finding a
00:20:19
new job or changing, you know, these kinds of things.
00:20:22
But it was like, she knows how to help me market toward the
00:20:26
kind of audience that's going to read a book like this.
00:20:29
And so it was. It was perfect.
00:20:31
Yeah. That's wonderful.
00:20:32
So when readers pick up a Terry M Brown book, what do you hope
00:20:37
they come away feeling? I hope they come away feeling
00:20:39
like they really know a character that, that this is a
00:20:42
character that they wish they could invite to lunch, like this
00:20:45
is someone that they would love to sit down with.
00:20:48
That's one. I also hope they come away
00:20:50
learning something about themselves.
00:20:52
In my novels, I'm often talking about, you know, like you said,
00:20:56
resilience. I often know also, so we'll pull
00:20:59
in some social issues, racism or xenophobia or, you know, those
00:21:05
kinds of issues. But you know, maybe that you can
00:21:09
look at things just a little differently than you did when
00:21:12
you got started. I want them to have a good
00:21:14
experience reading the book. And if that's what you want and
00:21:16
you just want a good story, I think that I've got that too.
00:21:19
But if you want a little more, I hope that that you can walk away
00:21:22
with that. That's wonderful.
00:21:24
I love that. So what's next for you?
00:21:26
Well, I have a book coming out in April called Peg Unhinged and
00:21:30
it is about a woman going through menopause and it is just
00:21:33
very funny, tongue in cheek. I'm really excited about it.
00:21:36
It's a story that I've had in my head for a long time, and I have
00:21:39
finally gotten it out on paper, so that feels good.
00:21:42
I'm going to a writing retreat both in April and in July, and
00:21:47
during that time I hope to write my at least get out my first
00:21:51
draft of my next novel. And it is going to be a dual
00:21:55
timeline, so present and his historical.
00:21:58
And it's about a I'm still, I'm still, it's still very vague in
00:22:03
my mind. There's something called a kipu,
00:22:06
which are like knots that people used to tie to keep count of
00:22:10
like how much cattle they had and that kind of thing.
00:22:12
But they have since learned that some of those Kipu tell actual
00:22:16
stories. So I have a woman who finds one
00:22:19
and she's trying to figure out the story.
00:22:21
But we go back in time and we see the story as it's being
00:22:25
written on the Kiku. Really.
00:22:27
But it's very vague in my mind. I know I'm a pancer, so I really
00:22:31
don't know what's going to happen with it.
00:22:33
Very interesting though, I've never even heard of that, but
00:22:36
now I'm going to look it up. I'm a historian, so you know.
00:22:39
So it was, it was like the Aztec era and and people they kept
00:22:44
like macrame knots almost. But for the longest time we
00:22:49
thought that it was just mostly mathematical things like, you
00:22:52
know, how much cattle and what we sold and that kind of thing.
00:22:56
And I read an article where it said that they believe that some
00:22:59
of them actually tell stories, like historical stories, and
00:23:03
that that's what just caught my attention because I thought, Oh
00:23:05
my gosh, stories and knots. Is that just amazing?
00:23:08
And then bam, I have this idea of, oh, I've got like an
00:23:12
anthropologist who's looking back and sees it and somehow I'm
00:23:15
going to have her connected to the story.
00:23:17
Maybe it's going to be like her ancestor.
00:23:20
I don't know, Just I I just, I have to write it.
00:23:23
Yeah. So we'll see what happens with
00:23:25
it. Well, I look forward to that one
00:23:27
for sure. So where can the listeners find
00:23:29
you? Best place is my website, so if
00:23:32
you go to terrymbrown.com and that's Terry with one RI am
00:23:36
everywhere. So you can see my social media
00:23:38
there. You can buy my books there.
00:23:41
You can sign up for my newsletter.
00:23:43
You can see my podcast can even just have a contact me page if
00:23:47
you just wanted to reach out and say, hey, I have a quick
00:23:49
question for you. So that's the easiest place to
00:23:51
find everything. And then from there you can like
00:23:54
go off and do other things. Thanks and I will make sure
00:23:56
that's in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining
00:23:59
me. I've enjoyed this.
00:24:00
Thank you so much for having me, it's been wonderful.
00:24:03
There's something powerful about a story that doesn't just
00:24:06
entertain, but transforms, and today, Terry reminded us that
00:24:10
resilience isn't always loud. Sometimes it's quiet, sometimes
00:24:15
it's messy, and sometimes it looks like getting back on the
00:24:17
bike and choosing yourself again and again.
00:24:21
From surviving to thriving, from silence to storytelling, her
00:24:26
journey is proof that it's never too late to reclaim your voice
00:24:29
and your life. If this episode resonated with
00:24:33
you, make sure to check out her work, especially 10 Little Rules
00:24:36
for a Double Budded Adventure, and connect with her online.
00:24:39
You'll find all the links in the show notes, and if you're
00:24:42
sitting there wondering if it's your turn to take the leap, this
00:24:45
might just be your sign. Until next time, keep chasing
00:24:49
the story you were meant to live.