The Four Florida Writers You Can't Ignore: Buffett, Hiassen, White & MacDonald

The Four Florida Writers You Can't Ignore: Buffett, Hiassen, White & MacDonald.

That's just our pick for the top four, of course any list is subjective so you may want to start with this list from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers_from_Florida

Transcript

In this episode of the Sunshine Republic podcast, let's take a look at some of Florida's most beloved authors. The first you may well know and his name is Jimmy Buffett. He has written a variety of Florida books. While he's best known as a singer, certainly, there are a number of books that are well worth taking a look at including Tales from Margaritaville, A Pirate looks at 50,  Where is Joe Merchant ? He has written a number of children's books as well, that you really should take a look at but because of his fame, I really had to include them on this list and frankly, they're very entertaining books. My particular favorite as far as a pirate looks at 50. 

Then of course, Randy Wayne white from the west coast of Florida has had a very productive career. He initially he started writing fiction undet another name - Carl RAM, Ra M M. And also as Randy Stryker, if that's not a great pseudonym, I don't know what it is. 

But he really hit his stride, writing the Doc Ford novels starting in 1990, with Sanibel Flats, the Heat Islands and The Man Who Invented Florida. Oh, I believe there's 25 now in that in that series, and they are just fascinating books. They include the main character of Doc Ford, who is a marine biologist was retired lives out works out on a pier in and around Sanibel Island, and he often gets involved in a number of interesting scenarios. As Randy Wayne always tells the story in 1988 after a decade as a full time fishing guide at the tarpon Bay Marina, also in Sanibel Island., the federal government closed the bay to power boat traffic permanently. And as a charter fisherman there, he was out of a job. He didn't know what to do. He did charter from a trailer from local hotels and would take folks out to the ocean. By night, he says he sat at an old Underwood typewriter and “bushwhacked his way towards a new path that of a novelist”. “Don't quit your day job” A prospective agent reportedly told him unaware that he no longer had a day job. It wasn't the first time he says that he made a bumbling decision. And he pushed ahead without a safety net. He states that he had been working at the craft of writing throughout his fishing career and had some luck. He sold a few articles to magazines and written a bunch of what he calls potboiler thrillers under pen names, but he and his family’s welfare was now at stake and failure was not an option. 

Six months after that he finished Sanibel Flats the first novel, which he felt was good enough to attach his real name of Randy Wayne White. He packed the manuscript in a box and mailed it off to New York. That fictional world that he had created would fulminate grow and expand over 30 years and transform his life in a way that seemed to be the stuff of dreams or incredibly good luck. He says that today, he realizes that it's a rare day that he doesn't wake up psyched to get to work. Now that he's got 26 novels under his belt, and he continues to be marveled at how the small fishing community that he came to love during his years as a guide, has evolved in a semi fictional form of Dinkins Bay Marina blossom into a living breathing universe for 1000s of Doc Ford and Tomlinson fans worldwide. His books are great, I urge you pick up pick it up start with Sanibel Flats.

Let's move on to our next author. Carl Hiassen’s books are vivid, vibrant and often surreal. However, each of these incredible stories are in fact, founded upon a nugget of truth in this state in and from the state of Florida

Carl became a reporter with The Miami Herald and began writing novels in his spare time. The first three are not terribly well known they were co authored with his friend and a fellow journalist William Montalbano. These were Powderburn, 1981 and Trap Line the following year and then A Death in China.  His first solo novel and one of the more memorable is Tourist Season, written in 1986. And it featured a group of eco warriors who kidnapped the Orange Bowl queen in Miami. The book's main character later was whimsically spoken about by Jimmy Buffett in the song The Ballad of Skip Wiley, which appeared on Jimmy Buffett's Barometer Soup album. In all, there's 20 Hiaasen novels and nonfiction books that have been on the New York Times bestseller list. And some earlier ones Striptease was turned and adapted into a 1996 feature film with you might remember Demi Moore and Bert Reynolds. Bad Monkey was also made into a film. I believe it will be out on Apple TV with Vince Vaughn at some point in the future. Certainly Hiassen’s first film, first venture into writing for children began with Hoot in 2002. It was adapted into a 2006 film that was filmed in and around South Florida including on the pier in Lauderdale by the Sea. It was directed by Wil Shriner, and Jimmy Buffett provided songs for the soundtrack, and actually even appeared in a role of Mr. Ryan and a middle school teacher. Carl has written a number of subsequent children's novels Flush Scat Chomp and Skink No Surrender, which, very interestingly, introduces younger readers to some of his adult characters from his other books. He started with as I said Tourist Season in 1986 Double Whammy 1987 Skintight, Native Tongues, Striptease, Stormy Weather. Naked Came the Manatee. Lucky You, Sick Puppy, Basket Case & Skinny Dip. Nature Girl, Star Island, Bad Monkey, Razor Girl and Squeeze Me in in 2020. For many of those of you who are in Florida and our readers, you probably virtually all those names probably resonate with you 

Lastly and certainly not least - John MacDonald, John MacDonald, wrote the Travis McGee series. Many Floridians know this series from the 60s through the 80s. While you might not know about John DanC McDonald, was that he was a truly prolific author of not only Travis McGee novels, but crime and suspense novels, and a variety of those including Condominium for example, were set in his adopted home in Florida. While it's a little less known today, he was one of the most successful American novelists of his time. He sold an estimated 70 million books. And of course, his best known works include the popular and critically acclaimed Travis McGee series, as well as the 1957 novel The Executioners, which was filmed as Cape Fear in 1962 and then remade later in 1991. McDonald, his first published short story, G robot appeared in the July 1936, in Double Action Gang magazine. Following his 1945 discharged from the army, McDonald's spent four months writing short stories, generating 800,000 words and losing 20 pounds while typing 14 hours a day seven days a week. He received hundreds of rejection slips, but Cash on the Coffin appeared in May 1946. pulp magazine Detective Tales. He would eventually sell nearly 500 short stories to various mystery and adventure fiction magazines. Selections from his early magazine fiction somewhat revised were later republished in two collections, the Good Old Stuff in 1982, and more Good Old Stuff 1984.

Starting a little bit later, with The Brass Cupcake in 1950, McDonald also wrote more than 40 standalone crime thrillers and domestic dramas, mostly published as paperback originals, and many of course in Florida. Among them, as we previously mentioned, was The Executioners. He also wrote three science fiction novels, including The Girl The Gold Watch, and Everything, which was filmed for TV. And after introducing his series character Travis McGee in 1964. McDonald concentrated mostly on that series, although he did publish additional standalone novels. So Travis McGee started in 1964, when McDonald published The Deep Blue Goodbye, the first of 21 novel starring Travis McGee, a self described salvage consultant who recovers stolen property for a fee of 50%. McGee narrates his adventures in the first person - he originally was to be called Dallas McGee, but McDonald dropped that name after the Kennedy assassination, using instead the name of Travis Air Force Base. The McGee adventures each of which has a color in the title mostly play out in Florida where McNeil is a hedonistic bachelor life on a houseboat. It travels some other stories to the Caribbean or to Mexico, and many of them features friend and sidekick Meyer, a renowned economist who helps Travis deconstruct elaborate swindles, and cases of business corruption. Meyer is often thought of as McGee’s cerebral alter-ego in the series. Many of the novels build upon each other and it really is encouraged to start with the deep blue goodbye, and work your way through the list. This list of 20 novels are among the most beloved fiction Florida fiction that there is. And really, there are foundation for they've been acknowledged as a foundation by authors such as Carl Hiaasen and Randy Wade white and even Jimmy Buffett. Some others that reference and acknowledge a debt to McDonald include James Hall, Jonathan King, and Tim Dorsey. 

In 1972, The Mystery Writers America bestowed upon McDonald's its highest honor the Grandmaster Award for Lifetime Achievement. Stephen King praised McDonald as the great entertainer of our age and a mesmerizing storyteller. Kingsley Amos said “MacDonald is by any standards a better writer than Saul Bellow. Only MacDonald writes thrillers and Bellow is a human heart chap. So guess who wears the top grade laurels”. 

In May 2016, New York Times interview author Nathaniel Philbrick said, I recently discovered John McDonald's Travis McGee series and every time I finished one of those slender books, I tell myself, it's time to take a break and return to the pile on the nightstand. But then I find myself deep into another McGee novel, and before there was Lee Child, before there was Carl Hiaasen, there was John McDonald as prescient and verbally precise as anyone writing today can possibly hope to be. 

In all of these novels, McGee had his lodgings on the 52 foot houseboat the busted flush - that was won a poker game on a busted flush and it was docked at slipped a FAA team in Bahia Mar marina in Fort Lauderdale, right south of Las Olas. And in 1987, the friends of libraries USFA installed a literary landmark plaque around slip F18, at Bahia Mar marina. Those of us who were around at the time saw that but after the docks were remodeled, the plaque was moved back to the dock masters office, but we all know that slip F 18 will forever be right there in Bahia Mar in Fort Lauderdale. 

There’s a multitude of great Florida writers but those who evoke the most emotion and love of Florida include  John MacDonald, Carl Hiaasen, Jimmy Buffett and Randy Wayne White. 

So thanks for listening in on this episode of the Sunshine Republic and we look forward to seeing you on an upcoming episode very soon. Thank you very much.