I just want to jump right in and ask, have you always wanted to be an author?

Yes.

Well, I've always wanted to be a writer.

I remember sick days when I was staying home when I was little.

My fascination was a typewriter that my mom had.

And I always, I mean...

Lil, but Mrs. Fitzpatrick, sixth grade, creative writing assignments were amazing.

gonna

So that was the problem.

Understand I had to, it was Memorial day weekend of 2008 and I had two weddings.

Aaron and Mark were getting married on Saturday night and this other couple was getting married on Sunday night and they were both massive, massive weddings.

And it was the first double wedding weekend I'd pulled off that way.

It was, it was intense and it was my birthday, but that was irrelevant that weekend.

Um, Anyway, so they arrive on the island and everything's going great.

They're all having fun.

There is

So

my book series, we talked a little bit about it last time.

The Gem of the Golden Isles series starts with Escape to Jekyll Island.

And it was my first fiction series I've ever written before I was all nonfiction.

I love the covers.

Okay.

The first cover was taken by a friend of mine, Jolene.

Oh, it must be like a true crime murder book.

Now we

hadn't seen them and we'd researched it carefully.

Um, my husband really checked the neighborhood out right before.

It's just a cop gut thing.

You would never move anywhere until you, but we didn't have, he didn't see any problems and he checked it out for a good month or so.

Well, it turned out we had fair weather drug dealers in our neighborhood.

See on Capitol Hill, the Marshall brothers who dealt up on the corner, they would just put on puffy snowsuits in the winter.

Have you ever thought about writing a book?

Let's get to know who Sandy was as a little girl and who Sandy is now.

Well, I always wanted to write.

And I was the kind of kid where I was probably I was ADHD, but they didn't have that back then.

I'm dating myself.

And so my mom's solution was I was busy every single day.

I had activities.

I never sat down.

What was the hardest part about starting over after Hurricane Maria?

Like-

You cannot make up what brides and grooms do at destination weddings and what their guests do.

I mean, my God, there's drama every time.

And so, uh, my friend's husband emailed me and said, "What do you think of me coming down to shoot a demo? You know, we could make a really cool show.

I'm doing it on spec.

I probably won't be able to come down for several months, and then it's gonna take me months to edit it before we try to sell it because no one's paying me to do it.

I gotta do my job.

Mm-hmm