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 About the Author
M. J. Brett
(a.k.a. Margaret Brettschneider)

   
      M.J. Brett comes from a wide variety of occupations--ballet dancer, soda jerk, news reporter, literature and journalism teacher, office steno, think tank member, and ski club sponsor. Now, in retirement, she is a writer of all the stories she didn't have time to write while teaching.
     A thirty-year teaching career, twenty-one years of which were spent in Europe, including seven years on the dreaded Cold War Border with the Department of Defense Dependent Schools (DoDDS), has given Ms. Brett unending potential scenarios for new stories.
     Ms. Brett enjoys stints as guest speaker for several schools, (to keep her hand in, she says), book clubs, service organizations, seminars, historic reenactment groups, and local workshops on the topics of World War II, the Cold War, Family Relationships, and the Techniques of Writing. She can always be reached on this website.
     As an experienced "people watcher," Ms. Brett keeps writing stories she feels "need" to be told...the topics we may misunderstand, the ideas we forget, the items that make us curious, the interesting psychological questions and unending variety of emotion and error inherent in all human relationships, and the events that keep changing history right out from under us. Each of her books reflects this interest in people.
      For instance, watching five friends whose marriages fell apart as their rank increased made her wonder what characteristics in a military marriage caused it to succeed or fail. What are realistic expectations in any marriage? Can an officer's career suffer through efficiency ratings that reflected his private life as much as his command decisions? Out of many discussions with her friends came Between Duty and Devotion, a novel of heartbreaking choices. 
      Both the communist intrigue and the unique camaraderie of those soldiers who defended the Cold War Border brought about Shadows on an Iron Curtain. While Ms Brett originally thought it was sort of a grief-recovery story set in an unusual place (following the sudden, early death of her first husband ), she soon began to see her unique vantage point from which to watch the silent battle that raged across the minefields and barbed wire. She felt the top secret Border story needed to be told to balance the literature in contrast with the very public Berlin Wall.
      Mutti's War was Ms. Brett's first novel, based on the true story of a mother forced to smuggle her children across Europe during WWII. Through interviews and research, she found that earning trust of the elderly Mutti was key to portraying facts of life within the enemy's camp. This novel has won several awards, is in its fifth printing, and is often chosen for schools and book clubs.
      For Street Smart on a Dead End, Ms. Brett went back to her roots as an elementary school teacher in Los Angeles County during the 60's, where teachers encountered a renegade twelve-year-old drug addict and gang member before any of them even were trained to recognize drugs...or gangs. The resulting cultural clash between hard-core Olivia and straight-laced teacher, Kate, brings the whole family into a chaotic and dangerous climax. Ms. Brett was intrigued by the unpleasant truth that sometimes love and hope are just not enough to avert tragedy.
      After four serious novels, Ms Brett felt the need of a comic interlude, and found grist for the mill among her overseas teacher friends who traveled every chance they got. Mama Told Me Not to Come is based on true travels, which if one is accident prone, may be from mishap to mishap. But laughter also becomes an agent of friendship. Probably any of her DoDDS colleagues could write a sequel. Have a laugh on the author with this one.
     What causes an insecure young child to interpret her circumstances as being her own fault...all through her coming of age?
I Think I Can, I Think I Can comes from the story of a young girl, abandoned and betrayed, and how she learns to let go of what she cannot change, change all she can, and gain strenth through forgiving. Again, one can "people-watch" in any large store and see adults speak as though they think a young child will neither understand nor remember what they said. This story disproves that theory and shows that children are much more perceptive than we know.
     Dancing in the Wind is based on so many families of the "sandwich generation," those trying to take care of both elderly relatives and their own jobs and children. It seems that we have difficulty putting ourselves in the shoes of an old woman as she begins to see her independence crumble and doesn't know how to fight back. Ms. Brett gives us a peek into the mind-set of this feisty old lady and helps us understand ourselves as we all struggle to grow old "gracefully."
     All Ms Brett's novels are based on true stories she has witnessed, participated in, or researched.
     After raising her two children "and half the neighborhood" with her first husband, Kenny died suddenly, and this catastrophic event catapulted Ms Brett out of her comfort zone and over to Europe to make a new start. Twelve years later, she met and married an Army pilot, Eric, so she has seen life from all sides, single, married, widowed, single again with the challenge of learning to date again when all the rules changed, then an officer's lady, and now a retired school teacher who enjoyed her students so much that she doesn't quite chase school buses, but almost does.
   She and her husband, Eric, retired from their overseas military lifestyle in 1995 to enjoy life in Colorado Springs with its beauty, its wildlife, its skiing, and its easygoing living. She firmly believes that everyone has a story to write, and as a witness to history, it should be written quickly, before another person dies and another little piece of the great jigsaw puzzle of history is lost.
     So what comes next? Ms. Brett is now wrestling with how to portray a  point of view character (POV) who is a deaf-mute...to tell the story of pride and prejudice during the depression years. It's quite a challenge!
     


Mountain of Authors Poster Margaret and Eric Dodds Reunioon 2011

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