From Burnout To Book Deals + Resiliency with Teri Brown (part 1)

Burnout can feel like a locked room; Teri Brown found the key on a tandem bicycle. After years in an emotionally abusive marriage, she rode 3,102 miles across the United States and came home with a bolder truth: the hardest part isn’t “can I do it?”—it’s “what do I want?” From that moment, the words flowed, and a novelist’s voice took shape.

We dive deep into how Teri crafts character-driven fiction that feels timeless. She shows why people in the 1890s and people in 2025 share the same emotional DNA: grief, love, hunger, hope. You’ll hear the origin of Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, a Ukrainian family saga inspired by three pages of real events wrapped in eighty-two thousand words of imagination. Teri explains how she trades perfect, unbelievable protagonists for flawed, compelling humans, and why she’ll delete tens of thousands of words to protect a character’s voice.

Creativity lives in the margins of our lives, so we talk about widening those margins. Teri “storms” along the beach to clear mental noise, writes in long, intuitive bursts, and uses retreats and coffee shops to put distance between the page and the laundry buzzer. We face the guilt many of us—especially women—feel about putting art before chores, and we offer practical ways to build boundaries that honor your work. Then we pivot to play: Little Lola and Her Big Dream, a children’s story about a train who wants to be an astronaut. The twist? NASA later announced its lunar rail concept, turning Lola’s “impossible” dream into a near-future headline.

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Chapters

• 0:06 Lighting The Inner Fire
• 0:18 Welcome And Episode Focus
• 0:41 Meet Hosts Natalie And Pam
• 0:56 Short Weeks And Overloaded Mondays
• 1:34 Introducing Author Terry Brown
• 2:47 Childhood Dream To Become An Author
• 4:07 Life Detours And Harmful Marriage
• 5:11 The Tandem Bike Journey Across America
• 6:21 Choosing To Write And First Novel
• 7:06 Early Reading Obsession And Influences
• 9:04 Character Growth Over Plot Perfection
• 13:04 Sunflowers Beneath The Snow Origin
• 15:24 Learning Through Bad Drafts
• 17:09 How She Builds Realistic Characters
• 18:50 Universal Human Emotions Across Eras
• 20:11 Shifting To Children’s Books
• 21:16 Lola The Train And Keeping Big Dreams
• 22:36 From Rulebook To Kid Series Possibility
• 23:08 Humor, Menopause, And The Next Novel
• 24:08 Process: Dictation From Characters
• 25:15 Pantsing, Binge Writing, And Voice
• 26:58 Walks, Waves, And Clearing Mental Clutter
• 28:23 Retreats, Coffee Shops, And Focus
• 30:18 Permission To Prioritize Creativity
• 32:04 Guilt, Caregiving, And Taking Time