SHELL BEACH, CALIFORNIA – Sandra Gore Nielsen has reinvented herself several times over this lifetime. She started out as Dorothy in Kansas who went over the rainbow but never wanted to come back.

She was born a gypsy and had the joy of living without home or roots for years, traveling the globe and immersing herself in local cultures, learning the languages, cooking the food, sometimes dressing the part.

In the end, her DNA ruled and she married and had children like everyone else. Because she always does things 110%, when Sandra put down roots, she put them deep. A business, a husband, two children and public service kept her busy for many years.

When the kids flew the nest, she and her husband moved to Las Vegas. Now there's a city you can explore and find as much variety and challenge as a trip around the world – well almost. Most people do speak English there. The move from a tiny beach town of 800 in Central California to the bright neon lights of Sin City was the catalyst to her next metamorphosis into a writer.

Her blog www.sandraoffthestrip.com was an insider's look at the underbelly of Las Vegas – life Off the Strip. She invited her readers to take a trip down the rabbit hole with her and they did, thousands of readers from all over the world. Now Sandra is indeed Off the Strip, but that gives her the whole universe to explore.

She wrote, photographed, designed, and published her first book "Sex and the Zen of Shopping: Living Rich by Shopping Smart." It's a self-help, "how to" manual to being happy and having fun even when you feel broke. She wrote a short memoir piece for Turning Point Publications "Life Choices: Navigating Difficult Paths" which was released the same week as her Sex and Zen shopping book. In "A True Love Story" she recounts part of her fairy tale romance with her husband of 35 years. It's about hitchhiking on land and sea, finding her soul mate, losing him again, and what she did to get him back.

Sandra is working on her first novel which is hovering somewhere between romance and erotica. A very modern woman explores her past lives; each book of The Red Mirror series will be a different incarnation. The first is about Isis and set in Ancient Egypt. The Red Mirror is so edgy that she's publishing under a nom de plume, Sabrina Gee.