Author Sandy White writes … at last

One novel searching for an agent. Another in progress.

Better late than never

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
— George Eliot

Finished novel

A self-published, self-sabotaging author tries to keep a lid on lies she’s told while struggling to write a sequel for her main character, who may have died.

I’m looking for a literary agent to represent this manuscript.

Work in progress

Set in the not-too-distant future in Western Michigan and Arizona.

With their wealth and health, their 90s are the new 60s . . .

and that’s a problem.

Step into my office

Boat

Working on a chapter while watching the sunset aboard Old No. 7 in Cheboygan, Michigan.

Sandy White writes aboard Old No. 7 in Northern Michigan

Coach

Why is my office in the motor coach so spartan? Because each night the wall behind where I sit pulls down to reveal a Murphy bed.

Snow-birding report for 2023-24: 12,000 miles, seven months. From Gettysburg, DC, and Hilton Head on the East Coast, to the Florida Panhandle and Orange Beach, AL; across to Arizona for a month; then west and north to Vancouver, BC; to Alaska on a cruise ship, and a northern U.S. route back to Michigan.

Snow-birding 2024-25: five months, fewer miles. Nashville, Montgomery, Orange Beach, Florida Panhandle, Central Florida, Jekyll Island, Hilton Head. And a 27-day cruise to and into the Amazon.

Home

When the temperature is mild and birds are singing, I also love to write in our cozy backyard near Port Huron, Michigan.

Sandy White writes in her backyard near Port Huron, Michigan.

Recognition

Semi-finalist

A 5,000-word excerpt of Book 1 in the 2024 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards. Plus participation in Masters Workshop with 50 writers and five instructors.

Best Comedy Winner

2024 Killer Nashville Claymore Award for the best first 50 pages of an unpublished manuscript in the Comedy category. Met several talented authors at Killer Nashville.

Get in touch

Sandy White on Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park

About Sandy White

A product of suburban Columbus, Ohio, I’m a Buckeye all the way (B.A. and M.A. in Journalism, OSU), even though I have lived in and loved Michigan for decades, during and after a 20-year newspaper career. (Charlotte Observer, Palm Beach Post, Detroit Free Press.)

Married 42 years with no offspring, Nicholas DeGrazia and I call Port Huron home but since 2022 have been snow-birding for months at a time in a small motor coach so we can explore those parts of the U.S. and Canada we can’t see by boat.

Over the years, I’ve hiked to the top of a fourteener in Colorado, operated a B&B on a Great Lakes beach, hired two Pulitzer-prize-winning newspaper photographers and edited the winning entry of another, produced all manner of other written, visual, and digital content, spent a glamorous night on the Orient Express, and lived to tell about a 300-mile Lake Huron adventure in a 14-foot aluminum fishing boat.

These days, while on the move, I wrote one novel and have started another. Check out my Instagram. I’m having some fun over there.

My writing process, you ask?

Messy, I wish I could say…

That my fingers fly on the keys…

That I allow limp verbs, typos, inconsistencies, and rambling phrases to live where they drop — until it’s time to edit…

That only in the editing phase do all the words get polished, others cut and repurposed, still others brutally slashed.

This is solid-gold pro author advice I picked up along my journey.

Alas, I am incapable of following it. I primp my prose as if it’s about to walk onstage at a beauty pageant. I floss between every paragraph.

Sandy White Writes