It was February, and the University of Miami's campus was bathed in 80-degree sunshine. For Bryan Richards, who was weighing his options for an M.B.A. program, that was all the convincing he needed.
“I toured American University’s campus at the beginning of April, and it was snowing. Right then and there, I decided that I’m going to Miami,” he laughs. “I remember calling my dad and he asked why, and I said, ‘Well, it’s snowing here and it’s not in Miami.’”
What started as a weather-driven decision turned into one of the defining chapters of Richards’ life. The Herbert Business School M.B.A. graduate, now a Charlotte, N.C.-based crime thriller author, credits his time at the University with shaping not only his career, but the person he became.
“I truly say in many aspects that attending the University of Miami changed my life, both professionally and personally,” Richards said. “I was around a lot of other students that were older than me, had more experience than me, and they really helped teach and mentor me about the business world.”
It was also on campus that Richards met his wife, a detail he considers crucial to his path to becoming an author.
“If it wasn’t for my wife pushing me to pursue that dream, I wouldn’t be here today,” he said. “When I say I truly owe my life today to the University of Miami, I really do.”
Richards spent years as a freelance journalist and later as a sales director in the craft beer industry before a professional transition prompted a moment of reckoning. With a handful of completed novels sitting on his hard drive, he decided to treat writing as the business he’d been trained to run.
“I went to school to learn how to run my own business. I have successfully run businesses for others. Now it’s time to run my own,” he said. “I looked at various franchise models, but when it all came down to it, my passion has always been writing. Why do I need to buy into a franchise when I have four products I’ve already developed?”
Rather than pursuing traditional publishing, Richards chose to self-publish under the pseudonym Bryan Michael, a decision he frames in entrepreneurial terms. He founded his own independent publishing company, Skillet Press LLC, and applied the marketing and strategic planning principles from his Miami Herbert M.B.A. to every aspect of bringing a book to market: from cover design and editorial positioning to Amazon category research and distribution.
The seed for his debut novel “Blood Debt” came from a real-life experience that hit close to home. Before his son was born, an intruder kicked in the back door of the townhouse in the middle of the night. The alarm scared the intruder off, but the experience left Richards shaken and asking questions.
"I was reaching for my phone and literally threw the lamp across the room and shattered it. I was in complete panic," he recalled. As he lay awake that night, his mind kept drifting back to his family, and to what it truly means to protect the people you love. It was a question rich enough to build a novel around.
That experience became the fuel for the first book in the Miller Family Thriller series. In it, husband Brady Miller responds to an intruder, but the break-in turns out to be anything but random. Brady has been living a secret double life, and the intrusion is payback. His wife Claire, meanwhile, has a complicated past of her own. As the layers peel back on both characters, the novel becomes as much a story about marriage, secrets, and loyalty as it is a thriller.
“I want to show humanity in everybody. I truly believe everyone has a good and bad side,” Richards said.
Since publishing his novel in 2025, Richards was surprised by the support he received from fellow Canes. After posting about a book signing on the Charlotte Canes Facebook group, a number of alumni showed up to see him in person. The texts and emails of congratulations have kept coming since.
“I went back and looked at analytics. How do they compare to support from my undergrad? From my hometown? From my current town? The support from the University of Miami has been far greater than all of those,” he said. “It makes you really proud to be a Miami Hurricane.”
Richards is currently working on the next two installments to the series, with the second novel coming in the near future. For aspiring writers or entrepreneurs in the University community considering a similar leap, Richards offers straightforward advice: stop overthinking the path to market and start creating.
“Don’t worry about what it takes to get your book on Amazon. Just write. Show up every day, whether that’s for 15 minutes or an hour.”
