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Lady of the Mist  coming soon from Double Dragon Publishing

Who Is Sandra Leigh?

 

Hmmm, Who Am I? The one question I hate more than anything. Might as well ask me to boil down one of my books into five sentences. I think you'd have better luck. Less dry reading, anyway. But I shall try, because the publishers insist.

I am a native of North Florida (mid-thirties). My mother is from Spain, up Castille way, my father has Cherokee blood. So I guess you can blame my story-telling nature on my heritage. (There's even a bit of the Irish on both sides.) Telling stories is what I do. Partly cause I'd rather be in them. I share them because I can't keep them inside for long. Trust me, I've tried. I had a pirate story bouncing around in my head for two months, I couldn't eat, sleep, or function without pirates on the brain. And all because I asked myself the question: what would a pirate do if he caught a mermaid? I have to stop asking myself 'what if'. I ask one silly question and I spend the next six to eight months of my life in front of a computer typing away. But when my rabid fans begin scratching the door down for the next installment, can I really argue with the result?

I write, I draw, I do art with electrical mediums (3D and photoshop painting), but each only when the muse cooperates. I can try to resist, to draw when she wants to write but... the being will have her way. Usually by making anything I try to do that is not what she wants turn out like garbage. What can you do? You keep the muse happy.

I live in the house I practically grew up in, though it is all mine now apart from the family ghosts. I am divorced, have a precocious 14-year old daughter who shows every sign of following mommy's footsteps (though with stories and music instead of stories and art). I have two cats, and two dogs, one of whom is wolf blooded.

When told I am an author, people most often immediately ask: "What do you write? What genre?" In short, I defy genre. Most of my stories fit into six or seven genres. I have written a western (unpublished, needs work), a couple of sci-fi peices (unfinished), numerous fantasy (some finished, some not, some may never be), a supernatural thriller (unfinished), vampire fiction (1 published, 3 in the works), I could go on. You will never get me to say I write Romance. I refuse to be pigeon-holed. Almost all of my stories have some romantic element, but I would dare to say that they fall elsewhere first, before the Romance category. While I have nothing against the genre, I find the category sexually limiting and short-lived. My novel, Mercy's Ransom, while you could call it a romance, it is an adventure first. Call it Romance and no man would pick it up. And I have been told that men will enjoy it. It is, after all, an Errol Flynn worthy pirate adventure, full of battles, chases, swords and cannons, tall ships and getting the girl. Love in Ruins, the title says many things, but while the story is about Love in all its forms and the consequences of that love, it is not a Romance novel. It is the story of supernatural people, their maneuverings, their petty politicking, their loves and their hates. It is a vampire novel first and foremost.

But I have digressed. See? I told you it was impossible. Five sentences or less, snicker. As if.

I prefer outright fantasy or historical settings to modern ones and am a stickler for historical accuracy; often doing exhaustive research during the course of novel writing in order to present a believable, enduring world where things make real world sense along side the magical and the invented. I am, in short, "a professional liar" not "an author". I am, after all, in "the business of weaving a fantastic, unbelievable lie and presenting it in such a way that, at least within the confines of the pages, you want to believe it is the truth." As a famous ancient author once said: The secret to telling a good lie is to include just enough truth to make it believable. It is up to you to judge.