We recently had the chance to connect with Brandy Ange and have shared our conversation below.
Brandy , it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What are you being called to do now, that you may have been afraid of before?
I fell for the hustle culture trap at a really young age. Lately, I really feel like I’m being called to take a step back and prune hard. I’m entering into a season of cutting back on a lot of the things I say yes to, in order to be able to spend more time focusing on the things that are really meaningful and important to me. I’ve always been a bit of a “yes” person. So its a little scary not only saying no to new things, but also having to tell people that I am no longer going to be doing things that I’ve been dedicated to in the past. For “yes people” it is dangerously easy to start spending so much of our time and energy helping other people that our own ship can start to sink. At some point you have to take that step back and start bailing out the water so that you still have a ship to use to help others, and of course yourself. Those boundaries can be really hard to set for some of us. I just want to help everyone, but it’s gotten out of hand. As scary as it is, I have to take a step back to take care of my own business (not just vocationally, but family, and just life and health as well).
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am equal parts author and business nerd. I am the founder and CEO of Maturia Publications, through which I publish my fiction books; which at the moment are my Fantasy/Supernatural Thrillers The Kingdom Come Series. Under that same umbrella (Marturia) I encourage and support other authors with business development and strategic growth resources. I lead Conspire Con, a strategic business planning conference for authors, every Jan. (I’d be remiss not to mention that registration is open now!) I am launching a Kickstarter in Jan 2026 for The Conspire Planner, strategic business planner specifically for authors, which uses my same methodology from the conference in a self-guided product. And I recently started offering more free resources through the Conspire Podcast! I geek out over business, strategy, and marketing every bit as much as I nerd out over fantasy world building, so it really allows me to have a lot of fun.
Okay, so here’s a deep one: Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
As a kid I always had this veracious imagination. I grew up on an island on the Outer Banks, and a lot of it still hadn’t really been paved or developed. We were the latchkey kid generation and we ran positively wild. I remember just running the island barefoot, building forts in the woods, and collecting tadpoles after ever storm to raise frogs in my backyard. I hated being locked up inside, and just felt like the island if not the world was my oyster. The possibilities for each day were endless. Hard work was rewarding in itself, watching a fort come together, and paid off in the long run when I’d see those little tadpoles grow into adorable baby frogs. I was wild and full of hope and optimism. Of course the older I got, the more I was disillusioned. Life wasn’t so simple, and expectations got warped. I had to grow up fast, and moved out on my own at fifteen. But, I like to think that little girl is still in there. I still believe in possibilities, and I still have one heck of an imagination that I love to escape into. I may not be as wild and untamed, but I hope I still carry that spark.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
One of if not the darkest periods of my life was graduating from college in the midst of a recession. My generation was super sold the idea that you “had” to go to college to get a good paying job, to then pay off your student loans. But finishing school in the middle of a recession, there weren’t really any good jobs to be had, you just had to take what you could get. For a lot of us, that was pretty much the same jobs we had in college, for me it was working for barely over minimum wage at Starbucks. From there I found an office job. But I still had to work multiple part time jobs in addition to be able to afford housing, and pay those student loans. I was working myself to the bone, and into the hospital and felt like I was still grappling for purchase and making no progress. I hated my life. I hated that every week looked the same and wasn’t creative, it wasn’t fun, there was absolutely no joy. That was when I realised that I had put my faith in a lie. I had settled for “Plan B” before ever even daring to try “Plan A”. Hitting that rock bottom it what propelled me forward though. Being desperate enough to brave the scary thing is what motivated me to finally publish my first book. Covid was another rough time for a lot of people. But lockdown also gave me a taste of that freedom I had as a kid. I looked at my savings (I’d been saving up to take a year off to travel- which didn’t sound appealing anymore), and thought, I have a safety net- why not jump? I got a taste of what it would be like to write full time, and I wanted it. So in 2021 I quit my dayjob, and I haven’t looked back since!
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
Just like world building for a fantasy series, or plotting out a novel, I am getting really intentional about crafting my life. I want my life to be purposeful. Though it may seem like a lot of random things I want to do, or a lot (too many) businesses I want to to start, they are all connected. They all service the mission. Like I said, I am a business nerd. I like the idea of honing a mission and vision statement for my life. In life there’s a lot of moving parts, but like a well oiled machine, they should work together to serve each other. Hence, my current pruning process. One of my favorite movies as a teenager was The Italian Job remake with Mark Wahlberg. I love when he has the mechanic guy sup up the mini coopers for the job and he is able to make them faster and more efficient for the job by pruning out a lot of the body fat to make them lighter, so they can carry the weight of the gold. I think that’s what I’m trying to do. I want to get rid of anything unnecessary so that I can bear more weight, more reward. I want to help as many people as possible. And that is going to happen by being strategic, and saying no to some individuals, so that I can help greater collectives for more impact. It’s going to mean pruning my schedule so that I can make room to start new ventures, which will hopefully be the most impactful undertakings I’ve ever worked toward. I don’t like the saying of sacrifices being made for “the greater good”, it just rubs me the wrong way. But I think there is definitely something to be said for pruning a tree hard, so that in the future it will bear even more fruit. So I am making room for more business ventures, more books to write, and more authors to help. Everything I do and want to do revolves around Literature and hospitality, helping others and loving on those who need to be refreshed and encouraged. So it might look like a lot of unrelated things, but it all comes back down to that core desire.
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. Have you ever gotten what you wanted, and found it did not satisfy you?
Of course! I think that is one of the most common experiences for those of us who are goal or task oriented people. I used to dream about being a published author. It seemed like such a lofty unattainable dream for a long time. Now I don’t even blink twice about having a book signing event, it’s just “another day at the office”. I often have to remind myself that I am living, and complaining about, the life I used to pray for. Once a goal is achieved, it’s always off to the next thing, and it can be hard to even stop long enough to celebrate achieving it before I’m already resigned to it not being fulfilling. But I think that is the crux. I don’t know that anything in life is really going to scratch that itch. We are always going to have new dreams, to keep moving forward. If I “have arrived” in my 30s, what the heck am I going to do for the rest of my life, just perch on this plateau and be bored to death? No thank you. So, though I am trying to do better about celebrating the wins, and living in a spirit of gratitude that I have been able to accomplish some pretty incredible things that I’ve worked really hard for, I don’t want to stop dreaming. I don’t want to stop moving forward and learning to dream bigger and bigger. Hopefully I have a lot of life left to live, and a lot of impact left to make. So that lack of satisfaction, when kept in check and not permitted to turn into discontent or complacency, can be a really good motivator toward innovation.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://brandyange.me/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vagabee/?hl=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@brandyange1753
- Other: https://marturiapub.com/ Home of Conspire Con, The Conspire Planner, and The Conspire Podcast
