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TCU 360

TCU 360

All TCU. All the time.

TCU 360

Students discuss religious topics in a small group. (Photo courtesy of tcuwesley.org)
Wednesday nights at TCU’s Methodist campus ministry provide religious exploration and fellowship
By Boots Giblin, Staff Writer
Published Mar 27, 2024
Students at the Wesley said they found community on Wednesday nights.

Sandra Brown announces new novel

One of swimming coach Richard Sybesma’s greatest professional achievements is the kind of understated award you would expect for winning a single tournament. It is a five-inch tall rectangular crystal with his name and Conference USA Student-Athlete Advisory Committee Committee’s Coach Choice Award written in to it.

He was selected by a group of Conference USA student-athletes as the best coach of any sport in the conference. It sits next to his Conference USA 2004 Coach of the Year trophy. He prefers the one from the students.

In 1981, Sandra Brown’s husband challenged her to stop dreaming and begin the writing career she had always wanted.
Today, Brown is the author of more than 60 New York Times best-sellers and has published more than 70 novels.
Brown said she recently finished writing “Friction.” The novel tells the story of a Texas Ranger fighting to get his kids back after temporarily releasing custody. “Friction” will hit the shelves in August.
Brown, who has an honorary doctorate of humane letters from TCU, attended TCU from 1966 to 1968 and majored in English.
At the time, Brown had received the Amon G. Carter Star-Telegram Employees Fund from the Amon G. Carter Foundation, which required that she remain single. After her second year at TCU, she married Michael Brown and left the university.
John Robinson, executive vice president of grant administration for the Amon G. Carter Foundation, said that remaining single was never an official stipulation of the scholarship, but rather a stipulation that one of the board members felt strongly about.
In her time at TCU, Brown said she never joined a sorority, but had lots of good friends and was a member of the Baptist Student Union. Brown lived in Waits Hall during her two years on campus.
Brown started her career working in Dallas at WFAA Channel 8. After a few years, she said she felt the need for a change and left her job. Brown said her husband encouraged her to begin writing.
“You’ve always wanted to write,” Brown’s husband said. “Now you have the time and opportunity to pursue it.”
After Brown sat down to write her first novel, “Love’s Encore,” she said everything began to come together.
“It was like all the lights came on,” Brown said. “I knew that this was what I should be doing with my life.”
Brown said her favorite novel that she has written is her most recent release, “Mean Streak.” “Mean Streak” is “a heart-pounding story of survival that takes the age-old question, ‘Does the end justify the means?’ and turns it on its head,” according to Brown’s website.
Brown, who classifies her work as romantic suspense, has also published works under the pen names: Rachel Ryan, Laura Jordan and Erin St. Claire.
“At first the pen names were a bribe for my children to leave me alone while I was writing,” Brown said.
Brown’s first pen name, Rachel Ryan, is a combination of her son and daughter’s names. She then used several different pen names before deciding to stick with her real name.
Every year, Brown and her husband award the Excellence in Literary Fiction (ELF) Scholarship to a TCU student who is pursuing a career in fiction writing.

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