Author Q&A With Matt Brand

Matt Brand is a husband and a father of two teenage daughters. He is a self-proclaimed (and others-proclaimed) nerd, a professional software engineer, an elected member of his local school board, and a life-long summer camp person. While he believes he’s funny, his daughters think he’s “mostly cringe.” Matt and his daughters agree to disagree. Matt has been writing about his parenting experience for 15 years, and Nature & Nurture: A Journey Through the Fog of Parenting is his first book. His second book, The Paradox of Fine: A Midlife Health Transformation, was released in January of 2025. His newest book, Welcome to Camp: A Family’s Guide to the Summer Camp Journey, was released in October of 2025. So far, he has written 3 books about 3 totally different topics, but all things he’s passionate about. He and his family live in the Boston area. Meet Brand:

You are an author, but is it your day job? I am a software engineer by trade, or at least I like to call myself that. More specifically, I’m the Senior Vice President of Engineering at a company that specializes in mental health support for students.

Did you always want to be an author? I don’t think I grew up thinking I wanted to be an author, although I’ve always enjoyed writing. I started writing regularly when my wife was pregnant with our first daughter. I started a blog that was supposed to be for dads because there didn’t seem to be much content about parenting experiences told from a perspective other than the mother’s. I wrote that blog for 15 years, and I found that most of my audience was women. Early on in that process, I developed the desire to write a book, but couldn’t figure out how. 

As my daughters entered their teenage years, it became harder to find things to write about that didn’t invade their privacy. I decided I had to end the blog. That is when the idea for my first book clicked. A book that recapped the first 15 years of my daughters’ lives through the lens of my parenting experience was an angle I was comfortable with. That became Nature & Nurture: A Journey Through the Fog of Parenting. About 75% of the way through that book, something happened that I hadn’t been prepared for: I got the urge to write more books. I immediately had 2 more ideas. The moment I published the first book, I started working on outlines for the next 2 figuring that process would help me decide which to write first. At that point, I think I was comfortable calling myself an author.

How do you hope your book will uplift readers? Summer camp is one of the greatest gifts a parent can give their child. It teaches resilience, independence, and a strong sense of self. The process can be quite scary and overwhelming as a parent, and I hope this book is a way to pull back the curtain and help parents feel better about going on that journey.

How did writing a book help your career take off? It hasn’t. Writing a book made me a better writer, though, and that is incredibly valuable in both my professional job and my volunteer role as a member of my town’s School Board. Also, my daughter and several of her friends asked me to review their college essays, so that was fun.

How do you handle setbacks and criticism? One of the big advantages of being a software engineer: I often lack social grace and awareness. It’s something I often get made fun of for by my daughters. I have a lot of confidence in certain areas of my life, but I try to keep my ego very low when it comes to subjective things. Not everyone will love what my books are about or maybe even how they’re written, and that’s ok. There are plenty of other books on the shelves. Feedback is a great way to learn and grow.

Being an author today is like running a business. How do you manage your publicity and social media and maintain engagement with readers? Not nearly as well as I’d like to be. As an independent and self-published author, I have tried to find the balance between spending money to publicize my books and hoping to get more eyeballs vs. pursuing “traditional” social media strategies. Speaking of which, I’m currently running a 4-week Instagram campaign for my second book, The Paradox of Fine: A Midlife Health Transformation, which I used AI to help organize. It has been a great learning experience, and if it yields sales, that’s great. If it doesn’t, I’ll have learned a lot.

How do you hold yourself accountable and achieve the goals that you set forth? This is another great side effect of being a software engineer: lots of obsessive-compulsive tendencies. When I set my mind to doing something, it gets done. It doesn’t require much extra work. I am also good at multitasking and love keeping busy. I’m often reading multiple books, writing my next book, serving on the local school board, doing my professional job, and most importantly, being the best husband and father I can be.

How do you structure your day and make time for writing? Because writing isn’t my full-time job, it must take a back seat to my other responsibilities from time to time. I use the Notes app on my phone to write things down when they come to mind. I’m often thinking about the book I’m working on and “writing” it in my head. When I have a good idea, I take a note, and when I have time to sit down and turn it into actual words, I do. I write in surges. For “The Paradox of Fine,” it took me far longer to finish the outline than to write the actual book.

What do you find most fulfilling in the career that you’ve chosen? Building software that helps make the lives of others better. I have been fortunate to have had opportunities to work for lots of different software companies. Some of those companies you’d be familiar with, and while I have no issue with them, I want to be part of teams that build software that makes a real difference for people.

What book uplifts you? Blink by Malcolm Gladwell is my favorite nonfiction book. I love how it makes me think about how people think and how they interact. It has changed the way I interact with others. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton is my favorite fiction book. I remember reading it as a teenager, and my imagination running wild because of how great Michael Crichton was at telling a story that seemed so plausible, even though your brain knows it’s just fiction. 

Anything else you’d like to share with your readers? If you’ve ever had an interest in writing, write. You never have to publish it, but for me, the best way is to start typing. See what happens. The tools are easy to use, and self-publishing is easy, but don’t worry about that part. Just write. I am working on my 4^th book, which will be my first novel. It’s incredibly scary to try writing fiction for the first time, so it’s been a fun and challenging experience so far.

My second book, The Paradox of Fine, was hard for me to write. It is about my own health journey that started in my mid-40s when I found out my (bad) cholesterol was dangerously high and I was at risk for serious heart problems. I was always thin and reasonably and relatively fine looking, dadbod and all, so I never really thought about how my health might change if I just continued my bad eating habits as I got older. Through the process of getting healthy physically, I discovered some deep-seated body image challenges I had been living with since I was a kid, and wrote about those too. Male body image is not a topic a lot of people talk about, certainly not men, in our society. Writing about all of that and how getting older is inevitable, but getting complacent is a choice, while confronting my own bad habits and my own insecurities was uncomfortable for me. Going through that process has been incredibly therapeutic for me, making me a better writer and giving me the courage to take on more challenges. 

Get to know Matt and more about his books via his website.