She Hasn't Repressed This One, Careless Memory #5

A Glimpse into a Writer's Life

When my fantasy author, Sandy Lender, was in high school, she watched the James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Yes, it was a little late in life to be introduced to the James Bond series, she tells me, but she doesn't want to air all that in a public forum. More repression.

Believe it or not, I am familiar with the James Bond series because Sandy's a wee bit obsessed with it and she says I get to take on a few of the spy's characteristics in Book III of the Choices Meant for Gods trilogy. I can only imagine... She's very fond of Roger Moore, while I'm keen on Pierce Brosnan's portrayal of the character. Turns out she was very pleased with Pierce as well, but found herself unable to look at him the same way after he came up out of his bondage in Die Another Day looking like the popular depictions of Jesus Christ (yes, your God). She says she just can't lust after him any longer. And I just can't continue that thread of thought any longer.

This memory is of her watching On Her Majesty's Secret Service (which is her favorite of the Bond films, even if it doesn't have Roger or a Duran Duran theme song affiliated with it). It was not a school night or she wouldn't have been allowed to watch the movie all the way to the end. She had an insanely early bedtime on school nights (which is probably why you're predisposed to staying up until 3 and 4 a.m. now). I'm sure everyone reading this is familiar with the ending of that movie. The first time Sandy saw it, she was stunned. No happy ending? The countess dies? She was "floored," as she puts it. It was a sort of turning point for her. She realized then (and I find this disconcerting) that stories don't have to have a happy ending. She was intrigued by the idea that a disturbing ending where the bad guy "wins" or at least comes away with a "draw" can be THAT compelling.

I don't like the way she thinks.

Tags: fantasy author, Sandy Lender, Choices Meant for Gods, James Bond, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, I Can Only Imagine

She Wishes You a Happy Duran Duran Appreciation Day

My fantasy author, Sandy Lender, is one of the biggest Duran Duran fans you'll ever meet. She's been obsessed for 23 years. Imagine that.

Today is (officially; this is real) Duran Duran Appreciation Day so she would like to celebrate with all of you. If you go to http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20038840_20038841_20047913,00.html you can hear the new song that the band has prepared in collaboration with an artist known as Timbaland (and I can't believe I just typed that) and another artist Sandy's obsessed with known as Justin Timberlake. The song is called Nite Runner and she wants me to say...no... (I'm not typing that. I don't care. That is in no way related to marketing.)

While listening to all the new Duran tunes you find around the web, you could also be reading Sandy Lender's epic fantasy novel, Choices Meant for Gods. (See, that's related to marketing, Sweetheart.) You can pick up the novel at http://www.amazon.com/Choices-Meant-Gods-Sandy-Lender/dp/1595071652/ref=dp_return_2/002-3163519-8684042?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books.

Tags: Choices Meant for Gods, Sandy Lender, fantasy author, fantasy novel, Duran Duran, Timbaland, Justin Timberland, Nite Runner

She Chased this Lizard Around

You readers out there really have to help me get the word out about Sandy's book so more people buy it so she can start earning big royalty checks or something. Somehow, we've got to get her moved out of the swamp. Today, she opens the front door, steps back to wait for whatever might be lurking to show itself (and, yes, things do actually "show themselves" sometimes when she opens the front door - remember the wolf spiders out here?), and fixes her attention on this small black streak at the floor. Sure enough - lizard. This tiny black lizard darted in.

So she set all her stuff down and chased the lizard around the living room until she caught him and tossed him out into the swamp. What I found most amusing about the scene was the sigh of resignation as she set all her stuff on the couch. It was a very small lizard so she feared bruising his body when she picked him up. My suggestion that she just grab his tail got me a lecture on how stressed-out lizards drop their tails and thus lose their fat stores and have to expend energy regrowing the tail, so she didn't want to risk picking him up by his tail, either.

Ridiculous, if you ask me. The poor thing is probably still sitting under a rock in shock anyway...

If you'd like to support the "Get Sandy Lender Out of the Swamp Fund", you can purchase her epic fantasy novel Choices Meant for Gods at http://www.amazon.com/Choices-Meant-Gods-Sandy-Lender/dp/1595071652/ref=dp_return_2/002-3163519-8684042?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books, where you can also read some excellent reviews of it.

Tags: Choices Meant for Gods, Sandy Lender, lizard

She Started a Blog for Readers

If you enjoy test-driving (and I've no idea what that means) your material before spending your hard-earned cash on new books, check out http://fromthestart.wordpress.com.

This new site features new works from authors who write in a variety of genres, from poetry to non-fiction to memoirs to sci-fi/fantasy to young adult to slasher/horror, anything you want to try out will find its home at From the Start over the next few months. Site administrator Sandy Lender is taking submissions from authors now to post new "first chapters" so readers can review material before making buying decisions.

Stop by http://fromthestart.wordpress.com and sign up for automatic feeds so you'll always know when new material has been posted for your reviewing enjoyment.

All my best,
Nigel

Tags: Sandy Lender, From the Start, new reading material

She Gets Messages About Turtles

I find it amusing that my fantasy author, Sandy Lender, receives updates about turtles she doesn't know. There is a charming young woman named Laura Crawford who lives in the northern regions of your country who sent a note to Sandy about a sizable snapping turtle that safely crossed the road. The note mentioned some smaller turtles that made it across a road as well, and Sandy told me this is great news.

Turns out Sandy has pictures in her photo albums of stray, random, wild turtles that her friends have picked up off the road and photographed specifically to send evidence to her that the little reptiles made it safely from one side to the other. Isn't that bizarre? But she seems thrilled to pieces over it, so, what can you do? I think it's one more bit of evidence that she's not quite right in the head, if you know what I mean.

That's a writer for you. Eccentric.

The other messages she gets usually come from sea turtle conservationists. She has a collection of sea turtle images because the Turtle Time volunteers are constantly photographing nests and nesting females and turtle tracks and babies rushing over sand dunes to get to the Gulf. They are remarkable little creatures...

So maybe she's not completely out of her mind to collect these images and to care that these creatures stay safe. But I still find it a little odd.

Tags: sea turtles, Turtle Time, fantasy author, Sandy Lender

She's Got Two Problems

One is more serious than the other.

My fantasy author, Sandy Lender, hasn't seen the "cute" (her description, not mine) corn snake out by the front porch for several days now. But what she saw when she got home this afternoon about stopped her heart. She said it was ironic to find a cottonmouth snake on her property mere hours after watching a couple of snake handlers display one at the zoo. I asked her if she killed it and her response (and, yes, I suggested she seek psychiatric treatment) was "you can't just kill some poor critter that's minding its own business out in its natural habitat; he's not getting in here."

Now the other problem is of the non-venomous variety. She's got frog eggs in the guest bathroom commode that she refuses to flush away. She doesn't venture into that room since the individual that she wouldn't let me stab left, so there's no telling how long they've been in there. And there's no telling whether they've been fertilized because she only found one frog - and let's face it - as I've heard in your television programming, it takes two to tango. The little boy frogs have to actually touch the eggs or however it works here. Anyway, she's worried about prospective buyers coming to the house and seeing messy frog stuff there. I suggested a sign on the back of the commode: "Creating Life in Progress." She didn't seem to appreciate that...

Tags: fantasy author, Sandy Lender, frog, snake

She Hasn't Repressed This One, Careless Memory #4

A Glimpse into a Writer's Life

Sometime within the past couple of years, some sort of family gathering occasioned Sandy Lender, my fantasy author, to be among a number of extended relatives. For some reason, one of them asked the question (and I'm paraphrasing because I wasn't there and Sandy doesn't remember it word-for-word) "what was your best birthday party from your childhood?" Well, Sandy thought on that for about two seconds and announced "the one where a bunch of my friends were invited to Sloppy Joe's!"

Everyone stared at her as if she were crazy.

Now, as Sandy told the story to me, I thought, of course your relatives thought you were crazy; who in all of Onweald would consider a place named "Sloppy Joe's" to be a favorite anything? But, as it turns out, they stared at her in wonder because she was never taken to Sloppy Joe's for her birthday.

In other words, she's insane.

As luck would have it, the memory of a bunch of her friends sitting at Sloppy Joe's (turns out this is a restaurant of some nature where the "chef" serves this bizarre type of hamburger that falls apart very easily—hence the name "sloppy," which is probably what appealed to the child in her) eating bizarre food and playing bizarre games was accurate, but it was someone else's birthday. Her father was annoyed that her favorite birthday memory was from someone else's party. I think that just goes to prove that she's repressed too much…

What about the rest of you? Any favorite birthday memories you want to share? There's a comment field here you can use.

Tags: fantasy author, Sandy Lender

She had a Surreal Moment on Sea Turtle Patrol

If any of you read Sandy Lender's blog over at www.todaythedragonwins.blogspot.com, you know that she has a section of beach that she walks on Saturday mornings checking on sea turtle activity with the group Turtle Time. She's very much a fan of Archie Carr, and while I have no idea who that is, I'm certain I'll be getting a full education as soon as I'm done with this post. (You know how she is...)

So today, at the end of her walk, a fellow and his fishing buddy approached her to ask a question about one of the nests, if there were any new nests, etc. Toward the end of the conversation, the fellow said that he had met her a year or so ago when she and her husband (and why do even I shudder at that reference now?) were assisting with one of the nest excavations. The guy proceeded to relate that she had just moved to the area (slight time-line confusion, but who's counting?) and was helping with the Turtle Time group, etc. Now, Sandy found this extremely odd. See, she didn't recognize this guy. She had no clue who he was when she started talking to him. She wants to know how a person randomly recognizes another after more than a year of absence after only one meeting over a turtle nest. She needs to learn this secret because she's terrible with such things (as evidenced by her inability to recognize this person this morning).

Oh, I've been reminded to give the sea turtle report. There were no new nests today and neither of the two that are close to "ready" in her zones hatched last night. She did, however, spend some time filling in the ghost crab holes near the nests that are ready to hatch in hopes that the crabs will be frustrated by the harrassment and will move away before the babies make their run for the Gulf. (Apparently, ghost crabs like to grab and eat baby sea turtles so Sandy likes to encourage the crabs to leave the area.)

That's all for the fantasy writer's life today. You can still get her fabulous fantasy novel at http://www.amazon.com/Choices-Meant-Gods-Sandy-Lender/dp/1595071652/ref=cm_cd_t_h_dp_i/104-9089752-5140754.

Tags: Choices Meant for Gods, Sandy Lender, fantasy novel, sea turtles, fantasy writer, Archie Carr, Today the Dragon Wins

She's Bipolar Now

I think it's official. The woman...

She wanted me to post an article about the surprise Top 10 List that the lovely EM Sky posted on her blog yesterday. I'll get to that in just a moment. First, I must tell you that I went to Amazon.com to check the link to include at the end of this article so you'd know how to pick up your own copy of Sandy Lender's fantasy novel. I just wanted to make it easier for everyone. Looking at the myriad numbers and images on the page, I noticed that her ranking had changed (it changes every hour when the computers at Amazon update the overall sales reports of the site). Silly me. What was I thinking announcing that? I said the number 138,562 and she nearly accosted me. (Yes, accosted is the right word. You practically strangled me.)

Anyway, the fantasy author Sandy Lender knows good and well that number means nothing. She's researched it. But when you're a new author just getting to know the system, seeing your ranking jump from 830,+++ to 138,+++ in a day is pretty doggone exciting. She'd like to thank EM Sky. Not only did Ms. Sky run a positive and glowing review of Choices Meant for Gods Tuesday night of this week with her Wet Ink publication (which you all can subscribe to through this http://www.mindunbound.com/newsletters/2007_august.html link), but yesterday she posted a Top 10 List of valuable life lessons she learned from reading the novel. You can read this entertaining list at http://blog.mindunbound.com/.

Once you've been fully amused, click over to Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Choices-Meant-Gods-Sandy-Lender/dp/1595071652/ref=dp_return_2/002-3163519-8684042?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books to get your copy this evening.

Tags: Choices Meant for Gods, Sandy Lender, fantasy novel, EM Sky, mind unbound, Top 10