About John

In which the author relates many delightful facts and experiences from his past.

The Short & Sweet Press Version

John Brown is the author whose debut as a novelist includes the forthcoming epic fantasies from Tor (an imprint of St. Martin’s): Servant of a Dark God, Curse of a Dark God, and Dark God’s Glory. The first should appear in the summer of 2009.

Brown’s short work has appeared in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Best of the Rest 4, and The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. He also received a first prize in the Writers of the Future contest and was published in vol 13 under the name Bo Griffin. Brown currently lives with his wife & four daughters in the hinterlands of Utah where one encounters much fresh air, many good-hearted ranchers, and an occasional wolf.

Members of the media will find a press kit here (in a few days).

Now, if you have time and interest, the long version follows. It’s a sizeable thing for a mere debut artist. But what else have you got to do? You are, after all, surfing the internet.

You May, If You Desire, Sing

It is an odd, but actual phenomenon that upon learning the author’s name, many cannot help but break forth and sing a line or two of one of the following ditties to the author:

• John Brown’s baby had a cold upon it’s chest…
• John Brown had a little Indian…
• John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave…

It’s happened hundreds of times. So if you’re feeling the urge, by all means, go wild. The world will be brighter for it, I guarantee, and we will still be here when you get back. Here are some handy helps if you’ve forgotten all the lyrics.

Okay, feeling better? Here we go. 

Growing Up With Flowers and Fists

Born in Utah in 1966, John Brown was named after his great grandfather, a lawman who lived through many colorful early-1900 episodes featuring chases, escapes, saloons, runaway convicts, American Indians, pugilists, and moonshiners. It’s uncanny that Brown married a woman by the name of Nellie, just as his great grandfather did (I mean, what are the odds–how many Nellie’s are out there?).

Brown’s father and grandfather were both florists. This meant he grew up working with pansies and fitzers in the family business. But his father and grandfather were also boxers, which meant he also heard the family’s many true-life man tales, which, interesting enough, were always about facing an assortment of brutes outside the ring. And so Brown grew up cherishing carnations and lilies as well as the ideals of staring down cowards and the bare-knuckled laying of men’s noses to their sides.

During his middle grade and High School years Brown spent a great amount of time hanging out, dating, singing in the school choirs, lifting weights, and dreaming of becoming an animator. Alas, so ends a legacy, for Brown never bloodied any of his knuckles in an honest fight and has too many injuries of his own making to want to do so now.

Brown’s parents were literature nuts. Most of the family vacations were four-day visits to Cedar City, Utah to enjoy the hotel pool during the day and Shakeperian plays and ubiquitous tarts (pastries, not people) in the evening . Furthermore, Brown’s mother did decorate the basement family room with three-foot high character illustrations copied from some old collection of Chaucer his grandmother kept about. Illustrations that scared the soup out of him as a child (still scare the soup out of him), and left him thinking The Canterbury Tales were tales of horror and dread. Nevertheless, at no time was Brown one of these people obviously destined to write from his youth.

He didn’t really start reading until he found The Hobbit in sixth grade. Even then he was a slow reader and produced no texts. Yes, the Rankin-Bass Christmas specials (Rudolph, Snow Miser-Heat Miser, Santa Claus is Coming To Town) awakened in him the desire to create films featuring cute reindeer and song, but such dreams were easily obstructed when his 8mm movie camera (for which he labored many hours in the hot sun as a nursery water boy) got crunched in the luggage conveyor belt at the Athens, Greece airport.  Not many years later the dreams were laid aside.

Dutchmen, Bicycles, and Rancher’s Daughters

At 19 Brown left for a two-year LDS mission in the Netherlands and Belgium. Serving (on foot and bicycle) in the cities of Nijmegen, Amersfoort, The Hague, Gent, and Rotterdam, Brown became fluent in Dutch, grew great thighs of power, and fell in love with the natives, both European and Indonesian.

After his mission, he pursued his education at BYU. His thighs transported him up and down the rugged trails about Provo, Utah on his mountain bike. There truly are few things as glorious as pedaling along an alpine trail, the walls of rock rising about you, the stream burbling and crashing at your side, the wind rustling the leaves of the aspens, and the sun shining down in glory. Brown will forever be thankful to the Dutch for introducing him to the gift of two wheels and a set of gears.

Of course, the mission brought even greater blessings than the legs of a Greek god. It landed him a job at the Provo, Utah LDS missionary training center (a delight in and of itself) where he became friends with another former missionary who sparkled with wit and beauty but also knew how to drive a tractor and push cattle (not insignificant charms to a city boy). It wasn’t long before Brown, in the spring of 1989, married Nellie Johnson whose family had ranched and homesteaded one of the coldest parts of Utah.

Nellie wore white in the temple ceremony (nothing else is allowed in Mormon temples), but in the brides’ room deep in the bowels of the temple she changed into her black wedding dress and, traversing the halls, emerged, as some of the shocked and aged patrons mentioned at a later time unknowingly to her father, like a denizen of the underworld. A very pretty denizen, but a denizen nevertheless. All of which illustrates the fact that Nellie is like a number of the horses she grew up with–beautiful, strong, and liable to kick you in the head if you get her dander up (hee-yah!).

(um, yes, it’s been verified the author will be sleeping on the porch tonight for that one.)

Monkey Fascination & Being a Potential Cult Leader

To be continued…