About

Ryan McGowan (R.P. McG) lives in a small town in Texas with his wife and daughter. When he's not doing his day job, he can be found writing books, playing in his band Chasing the Coyote, or playing video games.

Enough of that third person stuff.

When I was a kid, I loved to read. I remember reading Goosebumps and Redwall for fun, but, reading in school was a drag. Do you know how many times I had to read Holes? I missed reading for fun. All of that academic stuff just wasn't for me so I moved on to music. They knew how to party! Rock and roll, you know? Even then, I still lingered around books. I ended up getting an accidental English minor while getting my business degree. I took a bunch of poetry classes to help me learn to write music.

But, what I discovered is that I really just like to create. I'm a builder. I make things. So, one day I decided I was going to write a book. And so, I did. And then wrote another. And another. And the rest is history.

When doing market research for my books, I noticed that the kids section seemed pretty lacking. Sure, there's a bunch of great book series out there, but they were all long… lengthy. I don't remember books being 400 pages when I was 10!

It was then that I decided to write fun, easy to read, books for kids. I also decided that my kids books should be free for those that can't afford them. After all, if kids are supposed to read, they should have easy access to fun books!

I also think adult fiction is stuck. Too serious and too long. Drawn out stories to maximize page reads and sunken cost fallacy for payouts. Everyone is chasing money and it's going to bite the industry hard just like it did with music. Youth readership is decreasing 5% a year and has decreased 5% a year for about a decade. The pool of kids becoming adults that read is shrinking and the in built readership base is aging. So, I hope to write fiction that I want to read that doesn't exist anymore. Shorter. Funnier. Stronger.

“There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.” - Terry Pratchett