Inspiration to take on the daunting, daresay maddening, task of completing a novel can strike in the oddest of places. For me, that place was an Amazonian lodge tucked in the jungles of Ecuador. Writing has always been a hobby, not a profession. While I dabbled here and there, I’d never found the time to put 100,000 words down on paper, edit it, edit it again, and again, and give it my wholehearted stamp of approval... until recently.
Looking back, my author’s journey actually started during my senior year in high school. A life or death bout with cancer quashed my athletic ambitions, my plans to earn a journalism degree to travel the world chasing history, and idled me during a long road to recovery, with all my friends off pursuing their university dreams. To pass the isolated months and to veil a growing sense of depression, I took up the solitary challenge of penning a novel. A student of history, I settled on writing a historical romance set in the Balkans during WWII. It proved good practice for what was to come.
It wasn’t until several years ago that a plotline worth championing took hold. I’ve made it a sound practice to travel a couple times a year to somewhere interesting. One such escape landed me in Quito, Ecuador. Renting a car, I descended through the clouds drifting the eastern slopes of the Andes, and settled at a lodge in the Ecuadorian Amazon along the Napo River. While lounging in its pool with my three-year-old daughter, Alexandra, I quipped to my spouse, “At least Alee will be able to honestly say she learned to swim in the Amazon jungle.” I thought it would be a good opening line for an adventure novel, and while it didn’t immediately spark anything, it had unknowingly relit this author’s dormant pilot-light.
Six months later, frolicking the ocean in Samara, Costa Rica—howler monkeys swinging the nearby trees—it struck: my protagonist is a photographer, in the 1920s, the book will start in Papua (I still have no clue where the Papua angle came from). I had always thought a female Indiana Jones-like book would be interesting to pen, but had never put it all together. Initially intended to lean toward young adult readers, I realized I have a far too mischievous sense of humor, so that plan was scrubbed. Upon return to America, I immediately got to work, crafting a highly unique historical fiction titled Missteps Perfecting the Shutterbug Strut, featuring my heroine, Alexandra Bathenbrook. I had abandoned a supernatural crime project years earlier. Set in Bozeman, Montana, during the Roaring Twenties, it proved too constrictive a setting for my wanderlust nature, but provided a foundation to build my new story upon. Alexandra—winsome, witty, deeply troubled, and cowgirl able—would now travel the world as a freelance photographer, growing more cosmopolitan and headline-worthy along the way. Seminal events of the late 1920s were chosen to anchor the plotline: the Winter Olympics in ritzy St. Moritz, Switzerland, George Dyott’s Fawcett Relief Expedition into uncharted Amazonia, and the inauguration of King Zog of Albania in September 1928 among them. As history is marked by not only events, but the people who lived them, I incorporated happenstance encounters with the famous and soon to be famous. It blossomed into a big, cross-genre story: highly researched to bring the era alive, and I needed to push off many chapters for a hopeful sequel. Weathering the fray of the tedious query wars, a pandemic, and an overwhelming personal agenda, it was resigned to being self-published, with little marketing thereafter.
Over the last few years, I sought time to polish up the follow-up, Missteps Mending Devilish Ways, which I wrote as a stand-alone, allowing for Alexandra’s madcap and mystifying jaunt through life to be fully fleshed-out—a tale filled with wonderful nonsense, supernatural mystery, moments of terror, and a snapshot of historically relevant people, places, and events, both unsung and renowned. I refer to both editions as “Not your everyday historical fiction,” but the overall goal was to simply pen a thoroughly entertaining, transportive story for all adults… something unlike anything else out there.
I have learned over this multi-year writing journey that while sparked in Ecuador, these two novels were truly birthed years earlier at Sloane-Kettering Hospital in Manhattan while watching IV Methotrexate and Cytoxan drip into my veins—poisoning my life and shattering my career dreams. Anger can be a great motivator. For me, writing has proven cathartic. Through Alexandra Bathenbrook’s adventurous missteps and travels, I have vicariously chased history across the globe in an era to which I’ve always felt a kinship. It has been my way of reclaiming my broken destiny. I would have never had the patience to become a serious writer otherwise.
Oddly, I have no prohibitions about telling you, a stranger, of my writer’s journey, though most of my friends and acquaintances have no idea that I moonlight as a fiction novelist or my difficult path in finding a sense of redemption. I hold no grand goals of author fame or fortune, but I treasure a hope that my novels will rest upon library and personal bookshelves as part of my legacy. I’ve often entertained a daydream of my lovely daughter, all grown up, showing my book to her husband, children, or just a friend long after I’ve been called Home, and saying, “This book’s heroine was named after me.” It always brings a smile
.
I am satisfied, even proud of these two books. Such self-affirmation does not come easily for me. I hope you’ll consider reading them.
My best to you—J.L. Michael
Publication Date: 27th October 2026
Publisher: Swanky Owl Press
Print Length: 305 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction / Fantasy
Faithful missteps and ungodly falls—life can be like that.
In the fading roar of the 1920s, photographer Alexandra Bathenbrook's life is a whirlwind of adventure, glamour, and chaos. Tabloid journalists trumpet her mishaps, occultists believe she is a diabolic adaptation of Eve, and an otherworldly stalker is keen on dissuading her love interests.
Such hiccups might sway her insouciant nature if not for the pettier dramas sullying her trailblazing career. Operating out of her London office, her bold camera play will capture the violent birth of Saudi Arabia, the rise of European fascism, and the inaugural World Cup soccer tournament set in Uruguay.
Yet, as a wayward daughter of prominent Satanists, her disquieting upbringing proves tricky to escape. Courting the aid of the era’s most interesting somebodies, Alexandra will confront ancient conspiracies, her own dark heritage, and endeavor to evade an inevitable choice: embrace her hellish destiny or risk an end to life’s wonderful nonsense—for everyone else.
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J.L. Michael
J.L. Michael is a Maine author partial to old-school jazz, vintage travel posters, and historical literature that champions daring quests into realms unknown. The majority of the author’s time is spent pursuing the honor code of an impossible dreamer, which includes acting as an able Healthcare Director, committed spouse, and steadfast (though imperfect) role-model to a twelve-year-old best-thing-ever. When not thrashing away on a keyboard, J.L. can be found lounging beachside atop the hood of a Jeep Wrangler, contemplating a next escape to distant exotic lands and the many mysteries of the universe.
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Take Care,
Mary Anne xxx