Sandra McCulloch

A writer of psychological thrillers and character-driven novels.

Sandra McCulloch is a Vancouver Island–based writer and former journalist whose work in character-driven novels and historic fiction explores memory, inheritance, and the quiet forces that shape family narratives.

Her fiction lane is in psychological thrillers, character-driven, crime-adjacent stories. She is drawn to what is kept and what is erased—how truth lives not only in what is remembered, but in what is felt.

Cold Milk is a story about the people we overlook. When former reporter Maggie Sutton befriends Kam, a homeless man struggling to survive on Victoria’s streets, she becomes entangled in a dangerous struggle involving police, criminals, and a system that often fails the most vulnerable. At its heart, Cold Milk is a novel about loyalty, compassion, and the quiet ways people show up for one another when it matters most.

Cold Milk has been reviewed by a freelance editor, who notes that the protagonist, Maggie, is easy for readers to sympathize with. He notes that her backstory is great–quirky but compelling. He points to a terrific cast of supporting players, each of whom is distinctly drawn. “There are ongoing, interesting, psychological and social issues at play and the give the novel some lovely depth. It was a pleasure reading Cold Milk.“

Sandra has three related historical novels all drawn from her interest in her ancestry. In The McClary Code, she explores the life of Major Andrew McClary, her fifth great grandfather and the last American officer to die at the Battle of Bunker Hill. The novel revolves around Andrew’s vow to protect his nephew Michael during the run-up to the battle. Both McClary men are bonded by family love that is communicated in ways only they can feel.

While Andrew dies in the Battle of Bunker Hill, Michael continues to fight in George Washington’s army. In The McClary Burden, Michael McClary returns home to honor his uncle by watching over Andrew’s youngest child, Nancy. Michael lives with the burden that he was never enough to be a McClary. But Michael presses on through life’s challenges, feeling his uncle’s enduring love in whispers and touches.

The third in the series is The McClary Legacy, the story of Andrew’s daughter, Nancy, as she navigates her role as an expressive woman in a time that did not honor such. Nancy has her father’s notebook at her side as she journals her thoughts, all the while feeling a protective spirit hovering near and brushes with love she cannot explain.

In Sandra’s memoir, The Generational Hush, she traces the arc from childhood silence through a life of witnessing, avoidance, and self-protection — to a reckoning with her past through writing. Along the way she explores stifled love and inherited patterns, the cost of staying small, and the moment when the quiet witness inside her finally said, “I feel safe.”

The Fir and the Forgotten Man is a work of historical fiction that follows David Douglas, the Scottish botanist behind the Douglas Fir, and his Scottish terrier, Billy.

By Judge Alone is a deeply human novel about trauma, resilience, and the slow, difficult work of choosing compassion over certainty. It overlaps Cold Milk, with some of the same settings and characters.

Under the Veil is about Charley Wright, who returns home to care for her mother after a stroke. As dementia loosens Edna’s grip on the present, fragments of the past begin to surface—some familiar, others long buried. What first appears to be confusion takes on a pattern, drawing Charley into a quiet search for meaning. Charley must decide what to do with a truth her family has carried in silence. The novel was borne from an idea of Sandra’s to have a protagonist with Type 1 diabetes — which she has — and a sidekick who’s a feisty friend and incomplete quadriplegic, like her real-life friend Peggy.

Sandra will be attending Bouchercon 2026 in Calgary, Alberta, to network with other writers and interest agents in her work.

Beyond fiction, Sandra writes a personal blog, emotionaldiabetes.ca, exploring resilience and chronic illness. Her 27 years as a journalist has resulted in thousands of stories archived at newspapers.com.

She lives with her dog, Pete, on Vancouver Island, Canada, where she continues to write, research family history, and meet people through her part-time cashier job at a local grocery store.

Why I write: The hug that lit the fuse

I’ve written eight manuscripts in less than eighteen months.

This, after years of thinking I should get back to writing one day. Maybe. If I found the time.

Years of wanting to be a writer, yet not quite believing in myself enough to sit down and commit. Lifelong insecurities told me I didn’t deserve success. Other people did, but not me. Stay out of the limelight. Remain in the shadows.

Then a single existential event lit the fuse.

A hug from an old acquaintance, and the nearly forgotten feeling that a man saw me anew and wanted—maybe—to fall in love with me.

A hug lit that fuse. An hour or two of chatting nearly extinguished it.

No, it wasn’t to be. It turned out he’d been raised the way I was, in a world where intimate, spoken, easily expressed love was a foreign concept. He didn’t speak that language any better than I did.

In the moment that followed, I hit a crisis. A true, desperate point in my life when I realized I might never have a man of my own. I would remain as I’d always been—alone.

It wouldn’t have hurt so much if I hadn’t already created my new life in my imagination. I saw what it could be, and it was wonderful. But imagination isn’t real life, and reality sucked big time.

That desperation had me questioning life itself. What was the point if I didn’t have a person of my own? What was the fucking point?

And then came a period of quiet. Stillness.

I sat and remembered that I already knew the feeling of connection. I’d experienced it while imagining what life with this man might be like.

It wasn’t the man. It was the feeling I was after.

And I already knew how to find it.

I could create people from my imagination and float around like a ghost, witnessing their intimacy, their quiet moments of communication, the way they gazed into each other’s eyes.

I’m fucking there.

The characters may be typed on a page—or a screen—but their feelings inhabit the void I was trying to fill.

So I contacted an old writing coach who was excited to have me back.

And there was a fifth great-grandfather who’d been quietly waiting for me to notice him.

Andrew McClary spoke the love language I understood—restrained but intense. A glance. A touch. A few words. Seems so little, but the power of his love was almost overwhelming.

Andrew found the sadness in my heart and filled it.

Whenever I sat down to write, he was there. Sometimes, even when I was doing other things, Andrew showed up. That quiet presence exuded love.

I wrote three books about Andrew and his family.

The first was about his life leading up to his death at age 45 at the Battle of Bunker Hill. The next was about Andrew’s nephew Michael, who carried his uncle’s imprint into a life that saw too much war. Love, again, was a theme.

Finally, I wondered what life had been like for Andrew’s youngest child, Nancy. She never knew her father, but I invented a notebook for her to hold, a way to connect with him. He turns up in other ways, too. A love as strong as Andrew’s can seep through boundaries separating life and death.

Halfway through one manuscript, my imagination was usually searching for the next.

One story after another. Different people, different times, different circumstances.

But something connects them.

My characters can’t always find love through ordinary channels because they don’t believe themselves worthy of it.

Love finds them anyway.

And I get to feel it, too.

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