About Me

It all started at age 10...

I had just finished reading The Hobbit for the first time.

What and adventure!

The sense of wonder, the emotional weight of a satisfying ending, and the accomplishment of reading - what I deemed at the time - a real "grown-up book" hit me all at once like a speeding freight train.

I'll never forget that feeling.

I decided then and there; I wanted to be a writer.

Someday, I wanted someone else to read something I had written - something I had made - and feel the same feelings I had upon finishing - what I now know to be - a simple fairy tale for children.

I've been writing stories ever since.

Of course, along the way, I realized that any good writer needs to be a good reader as well.

I quickly took up reading the other works of Tolkien, followed by those of C. S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Bryan Jaques and many more. My thirst for fantasy was insatiable, and my desire to create mythical worlds of my own went unchecked.

I burnt myself out.

By the time my teenage years rolled around, I wasn't reading much, and the quality of the stories I was writing was actually worse than it had been in middle-school. Video games and heavy metal became my new obsessions, though I swore that I would finally finish a decent story someday. 

By my early twenties, I was miserable. 

I was run-down, worn-out, and convinced my future lay in the middle management of a bagel shop I was working at. Quite frankly, my creative juices had run dry. 

Later, I would discover that it was because I hadn't read anything that truly inspired me.

I had read the big, contemporary, door-stopper fantasy novels of the time - Brandon Sanderson, George R. R. Martin and such - but nothing that had given me the same fire that Tolkien had sparked in me that fateful day at the age of ten. 

Then I bought a collection of Robert E. Howard's original Conan stories. 

My mind was blown.

I felt like a kid again. 

Those pulpy, trope-laden stories - nearly a century old - gave me everything I loved about the modern fantasy novel, but in a shorter, sleeker, more unapologetically violent package. 

How were people able to write like this 90 years ago?!?

My thirst for fantasy redoubled, I sought out the other works of what I soon learned was the wonderful genre of Sword-and-Sorcery:

Poul Anderson, Fritz Lieber, Michael Moorcock...

I finally got into sci-fi as well!

H. P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson... 

I was reading more than ever, and had all the inspiration I needed to write a proper story that I could believe in! 

In 2020, smack-dab in the middle of the pandemic, I started publishing my own short stories online. In 2021, I compiled three of them into a fix-up novel: Salamander Shall Kindle.

I've been publishing stories ever since.

Perhaps one day it will all fall into place.

(Fingers crossed!)

My Name is T. H. Brandt.

(Although, there are some who call me Tim.)

I am an independent author of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and anything else that's weird and wonderful.

If you like your heroes heroic, your villains villainous, and your stories short, sweet, and full of old-fashioned action and adventure, I think I may be able to accommodate you.