Local author Mike Brown, also known as T. M. Brown, was recently awarded certificates for the best historical fiction novel, best fiction cover, and Spotlight on Georgia Fiction by the Georgia Independent Author Association for his novel The Last Laird of Sapelo.
“To get The Last Laird of Sapelo recognized at three levels was a great honor,” said Brown. “I immediately sent an email to Lauren Sheldon, who created the cover that won an award, after the first two announcements. I then heard The Last Laird of Sapelo being announced as the winner of Spotlight on Georgia Fiction and that really struck me. I wrote this novel because history matters, Georgia matters, and family matters, which are three key elements in everything I write.”
Set in the mid-19th century, The Last Laird of Sapelo is based on the story of Randolph Spaulding, the youngest son of one of Georgia’s most well-known coastal planter and political figures Thomas Spaulding, as it delves into his legacy and the struggle of the island’s enslaved inhabitants. The novel covers themes of slavery, war, the Old South, and morals, but also highlights the beauty of the island, of change, and of resilience.
“I am a visual writer and I love history,” said Brown. “I left the corporate world right before 9/11 and I ended up working in a seminary that brought me back to my roots, working with small communities, which inspired my Shiloh mystery series.
“The idea behind The Last Laird of Sapelo occurred in the summer of 2020 when I visited Darian looking for a new venue for my Shiloh characters. While there, I had an opportunity to visit Sapelo Island through a sponsor,” said Brown. “Our sponsor was in the lineage of the first overseer, Bilali Mohammed, of the island while Thomas Spaulding was still alive. He opened my eyes to the Spaulding and Geechee legacy.”
During his promotion of the book, Brown was invited to Milledgeville by Georgia’s Old Capital Heritage Society to speak about the history leading up to its plot at their annual Evenings with History.
One month after this event, Brown and his wife sold their home in Grantville and moved into a new home in Milledgeville.
Since then, Brown became a member of the GOCHC board and regularly travels to speak about his novels.
He has also been a member of the Georgia Writers Museum in Putnam County since his debut novel Sanctuary, which was the beginning of the Shiloh mystery series he continues to write to this day.
“I was as naive as I could be when I began writing,” said Brown. “I thought Sanctuary was a one-anddone book, a legacy to my grandchildren. I had invested three years of my life to make it happen… and the first book event I ever did was held in Sparta because the old courthouse serves as the cover. To this day, that event is still the number one. I could feel the love and adoration for their courthouse and the excitement behind its visual inspiration for my novel.”
Brown describes the Shiloh series as a compilation of experiences he has had. He is currently working on the next installment in the series, which will focus on one of the character’s mental health and journey through grief. The next novel is inspired by a story shared to him about his family members Fred and Kay Wallace who purchased an old bus and went through a chaotic journey to pick-up the bus and bring it home.
“A year ago, Fred’s sons told me the story behind the purchase of this bus. I started laughing and told them, ‘This is a grim-wall tale.’ They spoke about how their dad wanted to buy the bus and he ran into the dilemma of how to get it from California to northern Pennsylvania.
About a month later, he flew 11 members of his family to California and planned this trip that would take them about 10 days in late June to early July to get back with various stops and stories in-between,” said Brown.
“While it is inspired by this trip, I’m using my Shiloh characters to offer more latitude to the story and explore the development of a character that was already spiraling at the end of the last novel.”
Brown and his wife, Connie, will take an extended vacation to retrace the same trip in reverse, with small changes to the route to map it exactly to where the Shiloh characters would travel. During the trip they will write commentary and stop for the same experiences, to add a deeper personal inspiration to the book.
The book is planned to be released next spring.
“I prefer to work on one novel at a time but I am also in the research process of the next Sapelo story that I will begin next fall,” said Brown.
While details on the next Sapelo story are a work in progress, the historical fiction novel will discuss Putnam County’s Joel Chandler Harris’, author of the Uncle Remus stories, visit to Sapelo Island and potential connections that can be drawn to his works.