Why Sanford?
I live in central Florida, and my sailboat is docked at the Sanford marina. So I’ve spent a lot of time wandering the downtown, eating at its restaurants, people-watching on the riverwalk, and soaking up the kind of old Florida charm that’s getting harder to find. When I started building Millhaven for Spirit Marked, I didn’t have to look far for inspiration. I just had to look around.
Sanford sits on the southern shore of Lake Monroe, about thirty minutes north of Orlando. It was founded in the 1800s and has this incredible historic downtown with brick-lined streets, towering oaks, wrought-iron balconies, and elegant nineteenth-century storefronts. It’s the kind of place where you genuinely feel like you’ve stepped back in time, which is exactly the vibe I wanted for Millhaven.
Like Millhaven, Sanford went through hard times. The downtown had fallen into disrepair for years before a massive revitalization push breathed new life into the old buildings. Now those once-empty storefronts are restaurants, breweries, art galleries, boutiques, and cocktail bars. The comeback story is real, and it’s one of the things I love most about the town. It gave me the bones of Millhaven’s own revival, and the bones of a mystery about who controls a town’s future.
Eat Your Way Through Millhaven (Or, You Know, Sanford)
One of my favorite scenes in Spirit Marked has Gideon and Dacey grabbing food at the Millhaven Food Depot – a food hall inside a converted historic train depot with Edison bulbs strung overhead, natural light pouring through high windows, and vendors selling everything from pizza to ramen to bao buns and Korean corndogs.
That scene was directly inspired by Henry’s Depot, Sanford’s real food hall. The building sits at the site of one of Florida’s first railroads from the 1800s, rebuilt in the 1940s and beautifully renovated into an 8,000-square-foot culinary collective. It’s named after railroad tycoon Henry B. Plant, whose company was headquartered in Sanford back in 1882. Inside, you’ll find a rotating cast of food vendors and a craft cocktail bar called The Basin tucked into the back of the hall. It’s exactly as charming as I described it in the book; maybe more so, because in the book you can’t actually eat the food.
Edelweiss Hall, where the Heritage Foundation holds its meetings in the novel, is based on Hollerbach’s, my absolute favorite German restaurant in central Florida. Hollerbach’s has been a downtown Sanford institution since 2001, and walking in feels like stepping into a Bavarian beer hall. The food is authentic (the family started planning the restaurant back in 1981 while working at a German restaurant in Orlando), they do live music, and their Oktoberfest celebrations spill out into the square and basically take over downtown. If you visit Sanford, this is a non-negotiable stop.
The Metro Diner in the novel, Gideon and Dacey’s go-to comfort food spot, is a nod to Sanford’s own Colonial Room, where the food and small-town atmosphere have fueled both my body and my imagination more times than I can count.
Where the Music (and Mayhem) Happens
First Street Social, the converted-garage bar in Spirit Marked with its neon beer signs and packed crowds, is inspired by Tuffy’s Music Box & Lounge. Tuffy’s is this wonderfully eclectic venue that’s part bottle shop, part live music hall, part outdoor hangout; complete with a gutted camper, a campfire area, and a hidden tiki bar called The Suffering Bastard tucked inside. Yes, really. A hidden tiki bar inside a music venue inside a converted warehouse in downtown Sanford. I couldn’t make that up if I tried, and honestly, I didn’t have to. I just filed off a few serial numbers and dropped it into Millhaven.
The Hotel at the Heart of the Mystery
The Royal Palmetto Hotel, the historic building at the center of Millhaven’s restoration efforts and tangled up in the novel’s central mystery, is based on the Mayfair Hotel (originally the Hotel Forrest Lake). This is one of Sanford’s most iconic landmarks, and its real history is almost as dramatic as the fictional one I gave it.
Built in 1925 as a Mediterranean Revival-style luxury hotel, it was part of a grand waterfront beautification plan. It closed just a few years later when the mayor who commissioned it got caught up in a banking scandal. (I swear I didn’t steal that plot point, real life just handed it to me.) After that, it changed hands multiple times, was renamed the Mayfair Hotel and then the Mayfair Inn when the New York Giants baseball team bought it for spring training. It’s been a hotel, a Naval academy, and a missionary headquarters. The building has been sitting largely unused for years, though plans are currently in the works for a new renovation. It’s the kind of place that practically begs to have supernatural secrets hidden in its walls.
Sailboats and Supernatural Creatures
I mentioned my sailboat is docked at the Sanford marina, and yes, that marina absolutely made it into the book. In Spirit Marked, Gideon catches glimpses of the marina through gaps between downtown buildings; everything from small fishing boats to yachts bobbing gently in their slips.
The real marina is just as lovely, and it’s also home to the sailing school where I took lessons. The school, its determined owner, and her rescue macaw all inspired details in the novel. There’s something about learning to sail on Lake Monroe – the wide-open water, the herons, the occasional manatee – that makes you believe a supernatural underground could be hiding just out of sight. Or maybe that’s just me.
Walking the Riverwalk (Without Detecting Any Magical Signatures)
The riverwalk that Gideon notices running along the waterfront is based on Sanford’s RiverWalk, a multi-use trail that stretches nearly five miles along the shore of Lake Monroe. It’s got gazebos, swinging benches, and stunning views of the lake. I’ve walked it more times than I can count, and every time I do, I find myself scanning the people I pass; not for magical signatures, but for character inspiration.
In Spirit Marked, Gideon instinctively reaches out with his magical senses as they drive through Millhaven, picking up flickering signatures from pedestrians who aren’t quite human. Next time you walk the Sanford Riverwalk, maybe look a little closer at your fellow walkers. You never know.
A Love Letter to a Real Place
I want to be clear about something: the people and events in Spirit Marked are entirely fictional. Sanford’s real mayor is (almost certainly) not a mountain witch orchestrating murders through dark magic. I took enormous creative liberties with the setting, which is exactly why I gave the town a different name.
But the spirit of the place – the historic charm, the sense of community, the food, the water, the way old buildings can hold stories – all of that is real. Sanford gave me Millhaven, and I’m grateful to this special town for inspiring such a rich backdrop for Gideon and Dacey’s story.
If you ever find yourself in central Florida with a few hours to spare, skip the theme parks for an afternoon and drive up to Sanford. Walk the riverwalk. Eat at Hollerbach’s. Grab a cocktail at Henry’s Depot. Find the hidden tiki bar at Tuffy’s. And if you happen to feel a prickling sensation on the back of your neck as you pass a stranger on First Street… well, you might just be picking up on something magical.
Or it could be the Florida heat. Hard to tell, really.