Who is Sandy Lender?
Or…The Dragon welcomes new folks to the insanity of a fantasy author’s blog

From June 1 to July 3 I’m “doing” an online book tour. Regular visitors know I’ve done two of these in the past. Remember that two-month stretch in the summer of 2007? Eegads. When What Choices We Made was released back in November, I did a much more sensible two-week online tour, but spent the second week of the tour in a hospital room that had no Internet access. (To be honest, I was so out of it that my posts would have been pretty pathetic that week anyway.)

This month things are different! I’m totally healthy and champing at the bit to do some extra promotion for Choices Meant for Gods, my fabulous fantasy novel available from ArcheBooks Publishing, at Amazon.com, at Barnes & Noble, or anywhere fine and fabulous fantasy is sold.

Considering I’m promoting the whole month as “Sandy’s guest starring at everyone else’s blogs,” I decided to post my tour stops here at Today the Dragon Wins (above) and leave this blog mostly dormant for the duration. But that leaves visitors a little “wanting,” right? Hence this explanatory post and “unofficial” bio.

I’m Sandy Lender, fantasy author and magazine editor. The magazine editing is the day job that pays the bills. As surprising as this is going to sound, writing isn’t my whole life. I spend Saturday mornings protecting sea turtles. I live in Southwest Florida where I serve in the Turtle Time non-profit group helping track and protect these lovely creatures. Pictures from the section of beach I patrol speckle this blog and Nigel’s.

I’m also obsessed with Duran Duran. You’ll find me at their July 11 show in California with my friends Christine and Jennine. Pictures of me with the hhhhhot John Taylor on different occasions appear on my MySpace page.

Taking care of pets also takes some of my time. I have a beautiful sun conure named Petri (after the baby pterodactyl in The Land Before Time) and a gorgeous new Timneh African Grey named Mouse (because she squeaks). I also have a 21-year-old turtle and a pancake tortoise whose age escapes me right now.

My reading interests include fantasy, of course, but start with Charlotte Bronte. I consider her a genius when it comes to dialogue and suspense. I can’t open one of her books to “check something” without getting pulled in. She captures me because she’s a master of literature. Her sisters are equally talented, but there’s something about Charlotte that appeals to me in a way I can’t explain in a simple “section” of a blog post.

I like to have green plants around me and I’m happiest when I sit among the birds and the plants with some chocolate cookies for me, crackers for the birds, and my laptop for a writing session. Of course, birds like to have attention on themselves, not the laptop…

If you’d like more information about me (although I’m not sure what else is interesting), I’ve got web pages all over the Internet. Brief list below. I encourage you to follow me on Twitter for infrequent but usually insane updates on bizarre stuff that happens to me. All of these links take you away from this page, so you’ll have to hit the “back” button to come back to the list. (Because it’s that fabulous of a list!) Personally, I recommend the Twitter and DragonDiscussions links for joining non-spam stuff. Then, OF COURSE, I recommend the first three links so you can order my books. Bwuahahahahaha.

http://tinyurl.com/CMFGamazon
http://tinyurl.com/WCWMamazon
ArcheBooks Publishing (discount at the publisher’s site)
http://twitter.com/sandylender
FiledBy (where you can see my trailers)
Ning
Dragon Discussions (where you can join the group)
Author Island
Good Reads
Red Room
Shelfari
AuthorsDen
Suspense Magazine
LinkedIn
BookTour
MySpace
http://tinyurl.com/WCWMvideo (please leave a nice comment for the producer!)
http://tinyurl.com/CMFKvideo (please leave a nice comment for the producer!)
http://tinyurl.com/Dragonvideo (please leave a nice comment for the producer!)

I know that’s a lot of crap to fling at you all at once, but, in a nutshell, that’s Fantasy Author Sandy Lender. Thank you for stopping in at Today the Dragon Wins, and thank you for reading all this. There’s more, as you can see by the extensive archive list at left. Enjoy your visit!

“Some days, I just want the dragon to win.”
Tags: fantasy author, Sandy Lender, online book tour, Duran Duran, sea turtle, Charlotte Bronte