On Writing

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Thank you for visiting my site. Hopefully, you’re here looking for a book or two—or maybe just curious to see what I’ve been up to. If it’s the latter, I’d love for you to subscribe to my newsletter.

People often ask why I write. The simplest answer is: because I want to. But honestly, I love writing. When I’m pounding away on my little MacBook Air, the world just feels right.

Writing sparked for me over thirty years ago when I wrote my first song. After that, I kept going—dozens more songs, and a briefcase full of poems.

My first published piece happened to be one of those poems. On a whim, I sent a few to a greeting card company and, to my surprise, heard back from an editor. They offered me a contract, which I eagerly signed, giving them the right to use my poem—and they even gave me credit on the card. I thought I was on my way! Well… not quite. Today, those poems and lyrics are sitting in that same old briefcase somewhere in my basement. Maybe one day I’ll dig them out, type them up on my laptop and format them into something to share online. It’d be a project—but who knows, maybe someone would give it a read.

I wrote my first novel twenty-five years ago—a clunky little story about the personification of Death (because that’s never been done before, right?). The writing was rough, the grammar worse, but I was having fun. And then—disaster. With about 80% of the draft finished, my hard drive crashed. This was before Dropbox, before cloud backups, even before decent backup software. I still have that hard drive tucked away, along with a hope of recovering what was lost.

After nearly finishing that novel, life got busy, and about a decade passed before the writing bug bit again. I still remember the day—it was during a family vacation in Virginia Beach. A story popped into my head that nagged enough to put some words down. Using an iPad, I jotted out the opening scene. And that was it—I started writing and didn’t stop for another 100,000 words.

These days, I try to write and read a little every day. Life is still busy, and my lofty goal of writing a few thousand words often turns into just a few hundred. But that’s okay—well, mostly okay. I do the best I can with the time I have.

Thanks again for stopping by. Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter, and feel free to reach out if you have a question—I’d love to hear from you.

About Me

Who are you? Who Are you?
I'm a Walrus!

Brian Johnson - The Breakfast Club

I live in Virginia and get up early every morning for coffee and to sit down with my co-writers—our calico girls, Febs and Fennec—to write a few lines. On good days, it’s a couple pages. On others, I’m just happy to get something down, as long as I’m writing.

I may be living in Virginia now, but my heart’s still in Philadelphia—that’s where I grew up, went to school, married my best friend, and started our family. These days we’re rooted in the D.C. area, with our kids and their families close by. Still, I like to think there might come a morning when the sunlight through the window is shining over the Philly skyline once again.

A little about me—about writing, and more importantly, about reading, which didn’t come easy. As a kid, I loved short stories, but the words were a struggle. I had a secret. A quiet, painful one. I was the kid in the back row, silently moving my lips with the class during read-aloud time, hoping no one would notice I couldn’t really read along. But they noticed. They always did.

By fourth grade, my secret was out. The teachers knew something wasn’t right. Dyslexia. The fix? I was held back a year and started special reading classes three times a week. And it worked. Once I finally started reading, I never stopped. Piers Anthony, Dean Koontz, Stephen King—even the Judy Blume books my sisters tossed aside—I devoured them all.

I’m still a terribly slow reader and often write faster than I can read, but school was never a problem again.

These days, I work as an engineer. In my off hours, I write, edit, and chase new ideas. I’ve written more than two dozen books, including some that were good enough to get published while others sit quietly in a drawer. Not bad for the kid who once couldn’t read a single page.