Serving Myself Up
a Sandolore starter pack
I’d like to give my dad and stepmom’s approach to their successful Substacks a try.
They are both making a living at this, and I want to as well.
One thing I’m realizing is that the readers want us. So… I’d like to serve myself up too.
The problem? How do I not lose the people who are just here for the fiction?
Please give me suggestions — and please answer this poll telling me if you’d still subscribe if I was writing every day.
Lately, I’ve been digging the wave of self-introduction posts going around Substack— perhaps spearheaded by
(the best guy on the stack, a voracious writer and reader, a real gem). I’ll link my tip-top favorites at the end.Nice to meet you. (Imagine me stretching out my hand to shake yours.)
I was born to my teenage mother in a rush so fast that the doctor hadn’t arrived yet— so my mother was told to cross her legs to slow things down.
Since then I’ve been “go-go-go.”
Not true. I like sitting. A lot. My favorite thing to do. Sitting watching water on lakes, sitting writing, sitting reading, sitting talking—the gamut.
As long as there is coffee, I can sit.
Sandy fun facts:
I’ve circled the globe once and spent years of my life traveling alone across the planet.
I studied with shamans in Guatemala for a year, so technically, I am a Mayan priestess.
I survived in Guatemala by reading fortunes in the street with a system I devised myself. That has since become a 15-year-long project of creating a full deck of etched cards and drawings—and the performances that go with them.
I was once an extra in a French teen ocean soap opera. They didn’t have the budget to hire enough extras, so in one café scene, a very John-Malkovich-esque Sandolore appears from every different angle in different outfits.
I love wearing and drawing mustaches on myself.
I used to have a donkey named Barnaby.
Other random historical facts:
My mother and I historically drop everything to dance to Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go if it ever comes on.
Since I was a kid, I’ve had constant running narration in my head. Dumb dramas, odd telenovellas—it never stops.
I once had pets of palm-sized stick bugs, shaped like dead leaves curled back like scorpions, that would walk all over me.
I once went out with my dad to follow trash collectors for an undercover article about them not doing their job. (Or… did I imagine this?)
Some less flattering features in the Sandolore universe:
I hate grocery shopping with a passion. The lights, the carts that never roll straight, the choices, the categories—hate it all. But the worst is the waiting at the register and my impeccable ability to find the slowest line without fail.
I can’t remember numbers—I still don’t know my own phone number by heart (and I’ve had the same one for over a decade).
I hate the sound of chewing noises to the point of neurosis.
I have a mutant double toenail.
I talk over people and cut them off—I’m working on it—but I can listen at the same time.
I used to have a huge cartilage lump on the finger where my pen rests because I never learned to hold a pen correctly. But I can type without looking at the keys—which my children find endlessly amusing.
My deepest fear?
Maybe being locked inside a supermarket (because, again, I hate shopping). But actually, I think it might be locked-in syndrome. Since John T asked us to write about our biggest fears, my next piece might be about that.
Here are some of my favorite responses to this meet-and-greet Substack event, some of the most interesting people you’ll ever meet:
I now tag the following Stackers, to participate in the hobnob.
, , and .A few photos, for the fun of it:
You definitely should write about that Maya-priestess-thing!!
That constant running narration in your head? My husband had that; I say "had" because he doesn't talk about it anymore. He didn't like that he couldn't turn it off.