Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (8)

Official Kilt Inspector
July 25, 2007

Sandy Blair is a vivacious red headed dynamo.  You can't help but be caught up in her energy when she's speaking.  Sandy has an infectious laugh and is always smiling and for good reason, her Highlander books are doing extremely well.  I caught up with Sandy at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in April.

BV:  When did you start writing?

SB:  21 years ago I started my first book, but I waited until 1999 when my kids were grown and gone before I got serious.  My first book is still under my bed.  

BV:  A lot of authors have another career while waiting to be published.  What was yours?

SB:  I was a pediatric nurse, but I quit to start writing full time.

BV:  Did you have to wait long for your first sale?

SB:  No. In 2003 my second story won the Romance Writers of America’s 2003 Golden Heart Award for Best Paranormal manuscript. It subsequently sold.

BV:  Why do you write?

SB:  As I left elementary school, my parents were told that I’d be placed in remedial classes in junior high, because I couldn't read...which was true.  I had no comprehension.  Determined to avoid that fate I taught myself to read during the summer...using Zane Gray’s Wild Fire and a dictionary. Entering high school, they wouldn’t allow me to take college prep classes, saying I wouldn’t be able to get through theirs, much less a college curriculum. I was place in the general program, the one heavy on home economics. My boyfriend had already been accepted into college and being determined to follow; I studied independently, took my SATs at the last possible moment and was accepted on those scores alone. I started writing because I needed to see my name on the spine of a book they said I couldn’t read, much less write.

BV:  Do your kids read your books?

SB:  I have twin girls and Rebecca, the English Major loves them, while Rachael said, "I'll never look at you the same way again."  (laughs)  Alex also reads them.

BV:  What's up next for you?

SB:  My next release, set for October 2007, is A HIGHLANDER FOR CHRISTMAS, a lighthearted time-travel in which a Boston antique dealer fiddling with an old Celtic puzzle box brings forth a lusty Highlander into our world of computers, jets and Victoria’s Secret. It’s a delightful holiday romp. 

BV:  I understand you have quite the male following for your books.

SB:  15% of my readership is men.  One wrote to say he read A Man in a Kilt while in a deer blind, adding "Your husband is a lucky man." (laugh) Several years ago I received an e-mail from screenwriter Mark Westin who was kind enough to write, “You own a pen.” High praise. We met in New York a year later and he was kind enough to show me around the Screen Actors Guild and places on Broadway.

BV:  Any final thoughts?

SB:  A man in kilt, is a man and a half. (Sir Collin) (laughs)

Bottom Line:  A man in a kilt is truly a man to behold...especially in a high wind.

Posted by Barbara Vey on July 25, 2007 | Comments (8)