About the Book

“Have you ever taken your deep, vague spiritual yearnings to the bookstore aisle and found one volume of wisdom that spoke to you like your oldest friend? Have you surfed the channels and found a program about astounding human potentials that made your eyes pop? Have you had quirky experiences that puzzled you until you found something on the internet that showed you the significance of it? Then you owe a lot to Sandra Martin, and you almost certainly don’t know it.

Sandra Martin has been a game-changer in a genre she practically invented and then pushed into the world of publishing and film – the genre of spiritual seeking and self-help. In Snapshots she relates a series of stories of her remarkable career and rich life, and accompanies each story with a favorite recipe or two resonant with the story’s theme. This quiet, funny, charming southern lady zooms us around from southern Virginia to Cairo and Paris and Taos and London and LA and New York (lots of LA and even more of New York), introducing us to many remarkable, often famous people along the way, always with a deep quest for the meaning of it all, and the highest regard for the inner explorers who offer real wisdom. She knows the world needs to hear them, and with extraordinary energy and determination, through her literary agency and media projects she has let them speak. We see her wear down publishing houses and win over movie stars, crash in the grand canyon, and follow a remarkable love story guided by nothing more sensible than intuition.

“I imagine hearing these stories on a big, southern porch. This porch is an inch from the garden, and an inch from the kitchen. This woman of dreams lives right on the ground. After enough talk, she feeds us wonderful dishes mostly from the garden. The potatoes just had the dirt knocked off, the rosemary and tomatoes are still hot from the sun.” – Jim Carpenter, Ph.D.

About the Author

Sandra Martin’s career as a literary agent and executive producer for television has been devoted to bringing inspiring, boundary breaking books and television documentaries in the fields of spirituality, self-help and consciousness to the mainstream public.

In 1986 Ms. Martin created Paraview, Inc. Paraview holds a unique position in the media industry for being among the first to successfully develop literary properties for the worldwide audience of “Cultural Creatives”-a 50 million+ audience interested in consciousness, deep spirituality, healing and the paranormal.

As a literary agent Ms. Martin had many books on the New York Times bestsellers list. During the 90s Ms. Martin was one of the first agents to develop and launch her own imprint, Paraview Books. In 2000 Ms. Martin negotiated a deal with Simon and Schuster to create a new imprint, Paraview Pocket Books, a division of Simon and Schuster Publishing.

Ms. Martin also created and executive produced a three hour documentary series for the Discovery Channel titled The Power of Dreams, and for PBS a three hour documentary series, Intuition for the PBS Pledge Fund Drive. As executive producer for Is it really me? she was awarded a CINE Golden Eagle Award.

In 2002, she accepted the position of Senior Vice President of Content for Wisdom Television. At Wisdom she was responsible for developing and producing programming for the new linear cable channel. Programming at Wisdom included; Wisdom at Work, A Wisdom Holiday: The Gift of Song, Is It Really Me? Loretta La Roche-Life is Not a Stress Rehearsal. At Sirius Radio in New York City, a critical and profound discussion on the spiritual aspects of life after the World Trade Center attack was filmed. It was titled, 9.11.02: From the Ground Up, Hosted by Caroline Myss and Jim Garrison.

She has served on the boards of astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s Friends for the Institute of Noetic Sciences in New York City, The Rhine Research Center in Durham, NC, Harvard University’s Center for Psychology and Social Change and NurturArt of New York City.

As a consultant Ms Martin worked with Time Life Books on their best selling series, Mysteries of the Unknown; Berkley Bedell’s National Foundation for Alternative Medicine, now called Foundation for Alternative and Integrative Medicine and the International Association for Near Death Studies.