THE SHORT VERSION

Sandra V. McGee is a Valley girl from Southern California. Despite her mature status, she can’t seem to shake “like” and “totally” out of her vocabulary. She never thought about being a writer. She didn’t care much for English in school. She wasn’t a voracious reader. And she was certainly no swell grammarian. As she says, “I never set out to be a writer. It just happened and I went along with it.”

 

 

THE LONG VERSION

Roped In – Or I’m Not a Secretary, 1981

In 1981, Sandra met Bill McGee, a Montana cowboy-turned broadcaster-turned writer. On their first date, she wore a little black dress, pearls, heels, and lynx jacket. He wore a Western shirt, frontier pants, leather jacket, and Western boots. They looked at each other, then went to dinner anyway. They say opposites attract and Bill and Sandra were a cowboy-and-lady couple from the get-go.

Bill was winding down his 32-year career in broadcast marketing and sales, and updating one of his how-to sales guidebooks to fulfill a contractual obligation. Sandra was a fast and accurate typist—and Bill needed someone to type. She bristled when he asked her to type, but she did it anyway. Bill was ahead of the times with computers and self-publishing. He hired an instructor from Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, Nevada (where they were living) to teach Sandra word processing and how to insert digital codes into a manuscript for digital printing. “I just sat there and typed with a glum expression on my face,” she recalled. “Until I became interested.”

The Psychic’s Prediction, 1983

Sandra’s father passed away unexpectedly in 1983.Her mother wanted to consult with a psychic about the future and wanted Sandra to accompany her. The psychic lived in a 1920s Spanish-style mansion in the Hollywood Hills that had seen better days and was sub-divided into small apartments. She wore a turban and had a crystal ball. She forecasted Sandra’s mother would be a dancer. She forecasted Sandra would be a writer. Sandra thought that was farfetched and forgot about it.

Publicist, 1994

Sandra and Bill moved to Santa Barbara in 1994, so Sandra could care for her mother who became terminally ill. Little did Sandra know that was where her writing career would begin.

Sandra’s first love was always the ballet. Her training started at age four. But when it became apparent a career on the stage was not in the cards, she continued taking ballet classes anyway. A former dancer with American Ballet Theatre in New York City was forming a professional ballet company in Santa Barbara and asked Sandra to be on the board. There was no money to hire out for certain jobs, so Sandra volunteered to do publicity. She knew nothing about it, but being a publicist sounded glamorous. She imagined wearing St. John suits and going to luncheons at the Biltmore.

Bill suggested she purchase a book on how to do publicity for the performing arts. Sandra religiously copied the sample press releases, calendar listings, public service announcements, and local and feature stories ideas. She followed the pyramid rule of press release writing to the letter: who, what, when, where, and how to buy tickets — all in the first paragraph. The writing may not have been creative, but it was accurate. The Entertainment editor at the Santa Barbara News-Press said it was a pleasure to receive Sandra’s press releases because they could run as is.

For seven years, Sandra was the publicist for State Street Ballet of Santa Barbara, a professional company still going strong thirty years later at the time of this writing. “Though my destiny was not to be on the stage, I contributed to the ballet world on the other side of the curtain. And that was okay with me,” says Sandra with a smile.

During these years, Sandra continued helping Bill in his work and transitioned into editing, rewrites, and book marketing.

Collaboration, 2000

Sandra and Bill began their first writing collaboration in 2000. She stumbled across Bill’s Flying M E scrapbook with a couple dozen snapshots taken from 1947 to 1949 when he worked on the exclusive Flying M E divorce ranch south of Reno. At the time, her only knowledge of Nevada’s six-week divorce era was from the 1939 movie, The Women

“Bill’s stories were like an old Hollywood movie coming to life,” she recalled. “You have to write about those years, and I want to help.”

The Divorce Seekers began as a 6” x 9” paperback with Bill’s photos. But as the research trail and vintage photo collection grew, the book morphed into an 8.5″ x 11″ hardcover coffee table book with 500 images, many from former Flying M E guests or their offspring. Charles Champlin, then arts editor of The Los Angeles Times, said “Though too young to have lived through the era, Sandra McGee immerses herself in the subject and captures in her writing the essence of the time.”

Bill and Sandra liked working together and went on to collaborate on eight more nonfiction books right up until Bill’s passing in 2019.

Sandra favorite saying: “As a husband-and-wife writing duo, I think we were a good team—except for the urge to edit each other’s copy.”

The Psychic Was Right, 2020

After Bill’s passing in 2019, Sandra devoted herself to carrying on with the legacy of McGeeBooks. However, despite the various grammar-for-dummies type books on her bookshelf, she maintains she’s still no grammarian and will rewrite a sentence to avoid using who or whom.

She gives Bill McGee all the credit for her accidental career. “Not a day goes by that I don’t thank Bill for ‘roping me in’ to his creative writer’s world,” she says.”I love the work.”

As for the psychic, she was right about Sandra. And Sandra’s mother? She fulfilled a lifelong dream and took up ballroom dancing.

__________________

Sandra V. McGee is on the Board of the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association (BAIPA). She is also a member of Western Writers of America, Women Writing the West, and the California Writers Club. She has a B.A. in Music from the University of California, Berkeley. When not writing, Sandra’s passions are ballet, film noir, B movies, and Reno when it was “Divorce Capital of the World.”

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