#WriterWednesday with Author Sandy Malone

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I’d like to welcome Sandy Malone to the blog for #WriterWednesday!

Hardest thing about being a writer: Getting the uninterrupted time to write

Easiest thing about being a writer: Writing

Words that describe you: Enthusiastic, optimistic, and friendly

Words that describe you, but you wish they didn’t: Chatterbox and overcommitted

Something you’re really good at: Planning parties and attracting fun groups of people

Something you’re really bad at: Saying no

Last best thing you ate: warm Krispy Kreme donuts

Last thing you regret eating: too many Krispy Kremes

Favorite music or song: Yungblud “Zombie”

Music that drives you crazy: The Jimmy Buffett channel on XM – my husband listens to it constantly on road trips

The last thing you ordered online: one of those mattress toppers that’s supposed to make your bed feel like a fancy hotel (it worked, btw)

The last thing you regret buying: Cosmetics (any of them) off TikTok. I gotta stop scrolling late at night.

Things you’d walk a mile for: A friend who needs me

Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: Drunken members of the wedding party

Things you always put in your books: Cops and weddings

Things you never put in your books: Spicy sex scenes – I have six teenage grandchildren and five of them are boys. I don’t want them to avoid looking me in the eye on holidays.

Things to say to an author: I cannot wait for your next book.

Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: Do you use AI to make your covers or write your books?

Favorite things to do: Read a book on the beach and travel with my husband

Things you’d run through a fire or eat bugs to get out of doing: Probably planning weddings professionally again

Most daring thing you’ve ever done: Getting my pilot’s license

Something you chickened out from doing: Nobody can get me to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

The nicest thing a reader said to you: I’ve been called “the Elin Hilderbrand of Jekyll Island” – I’m a huge fan of Elin Hilderbrand, and I’ve read all of her books

The craziest thing a reader said to you: Messages warning me not to kill off certain characters who are important to them

Besides writing, what’s the most creative thing you’ve done: Probably opening my own flower shop on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, after the local florist refused to do what my brides requested.

A project that didn’t quite turn out the way you planned it: RealityTV. I had no idea that I wouldn’t be able to do real work for clients while I was filming Wedding Island.

Some real-life story that made it to one of your books: All the crazy weddings we planned

Something in your story that readers think is about you, but it’s not: I’m not my main character, Tally Davis. She’s a compilation of me and all the wedding planners I ever worked with.

The first 8-track, record, cassette, or CD you ever bought: Berlin – Love Life, it was a record and then I bought the tape for at the beach because we didn’t have a record player down there.

A type of music that’s not your cup of tea: Reggaeton.

My favorite book as a child: I read the entire Bobbsey Twins series in second grade. VC Andrews as I got older – I was obsessed with the Flowers in the Attic series.

A book I’ve read more than once: The Charm School by Nelson DeMille

Your favorite movie as a child: Wizard of Oz and E.T.

A TV show or movie that kept you awake at night as a kid (or as an adult): Dumbo and Bambi – I never liked shows where they killed off the mommy.

About Sandy:

Author Sandy Malone is best known for starring in TLC's reality TV show "Wedding Island" and writing hundreds of wedding advice columns that were published in BRIDES, WeddingWire, and HuffPost. She wrote a DIY wedding planning book in 2016 that was traditionally published, and she released her new fiction series - Gem of the Golden Isles - in April 2024. She has also ghostwritten books for well-known reality TV stars (including a Real Housewife). Most recently, she was editor of The Police Tribune.

Sandy got her journalism degree at The Ohio State University and was a reporter and editor for major news publications, including the Wall Street Journal, before she returned to her hometown of Washington, DC, for a career in public relations and government affairs. She began planning destination weddings professionally after her own was nearly a disaster, and ended up planning more than 500 weddings in the Caribbean in 11 years with her retired SWAT-commander husband. After Hurricane Maria wiped out her wedding business, Sandy went back to writing full time.

Sandy and her husband, Bill, live on Jekyll Island, Georgia, with their coonhound Sherlock. Christmas on Jekyll is her fifth fiction novel. She’s working on a new series titled Under the Oaks for release in 2026.

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