Well wait a second for everyono just put away the flask and have a seat. Im there from florida, and ill tell you a little bit about myself if you dont know or even if you might care. I was born in fort lauderdale, florida, and i have my background is in newspaper journalism. Ive never lived anywhere but florida, and thats my excuse for my novels. I dont know anything finish the weirdness of florida is my daily reality. And everyones moving to florida now, which is a lot more material for me. Our newest floridian, former resident was in manhattan, apparently [laughter] now hes down there golfing. The material is priceless. Ill talk to you about the first, one of the first the first book i ever wrote with just my name on it was a book called tourist season. I had done three novels with another columnist, one about the cocape war, one about marijuana smuggling in key west and another set in china where my buddy had been stationed for the herald and one of the first reporters in beijing. Those were kind of straight thinkers. We thrillers. We actually had to sit down and plan. Collaborating on fiction was a challenge. Bill and i had very different writing styles, but we worked together in newsrooms, so we had thick skins. We each had assigned chapters and characters, and we had facing tube writers like they were pianos typewriters, and we would rip each others stuff apart. We didnt get our feelings hurt, and we somehow came up with a sing is lahr voice. Anyone who read those novels couldnt tell which of us had written. Chapters and which characters. And this was useful at the time because bill, when he was a foreign correspondent, he got very lonely. His wife and kids were back in miami, so bill when i would get the payments from him from the pages from china or wherever he was in the mideast, he might send 100 pages, and 40 of the pages would be sex scenes. [laughter] and we had the same agent. She would call me up and say we cant, youve got to tell bill weve got to take some of these scenes out. The novel is not moving forward, its just him fantasizing about being home. [laughter] and so we had i had to do this artful job of negotiating even down to the individual acts that were being described. I would say, well, can we take that out of that scene . If ill trade you one of these for one of these, but weve got to cut it down. And the other thing that we did at the time was that, because our wives at the time maybe were a little us pushes when they read something in a novel that had not happened in their real life, lets put it that way. [laughter] and so our standard line was that either of us were questioned, we would blame it on the other guy. Oh, bill wrote that. I have no idea where he got i never, ive never seen a ferret. I dont even know how it got in the room. [laughter] that kind of thing. So we did three novels together, and then we decided wed each start, we both wanted to write our own books, and i wanted to write a very different kind of book, not a traditional thriller. Just growing up in florida and being as angry as i was all of the time, so i had a novel i wanted to write called tourist season which was about tourists started disappearing from florida. A little band of sort of misbegotten ecoterrorists at the time start making tourists disappear in the hope that it would stem the whole influx into florida9 at the time that i wrote it, more than 1,000 people a day were moving to the state of florida. And as i stand here before you today, more than 1,000 people a day are moving thats net. Thats including those who die off in our populace. I know, we have to count those. Its still a net of over 1,000. So you can see how much good the book accomplished. [laughter] so anyway, the editor that had edited me and bill was kind of nervous about what i was going to do. He said its just going to be like powder burn, right . Its going to be like trap line. I said, no, its going to be different from anything bill and i did. All right, well, send me e a few pages. The early part of that novel, we used to have this big, fantastic event in south florida, the orange bowl parade. When the orange bowl Football Game was held, they would close off biscayne boulevard and have this huge parade. They had an orange bowl queen, they had floats, and they always had, the big highlight was the shriners, you know, the motorcycles and cars. Shriners were a big part of that. So early on in the book one of the people who disappear at the hands of they grab one of the. Ripers off the shriners off the beach. Now, it all happens off camera, and its very, very tastefully done. Theres no graphic shriner violence at all. [laughter] the chapter ends where all you see is the fez on the beach and little waves lapping over the fez. [laughter] i thought, you know, it made sense to me. I my editor calls and saws i dont im like, no, this is the book. This is so different from anything you ever did with bill, im not sure how were going to market it, how were going to sell it, but okay. The book is published, it got a pretty good review in the new york times. Tony hillman, god rest his soul, he was just great. My editor said what are you going to write about now. I said i have a great idea for a second novel. I said its about sex, murder and corruption on the professional bass fishing circuit. [laughter] and my pitch was this is literary territory that ive pretty much got to myself at this point. [laughter] im waiting for chiefer, and theyll discover the world of bass furbing eventually, but im going fishing. There was all kinds of cheating and s p scandal going and scandal going on. My editor looked at me with the blankest expression, what is bass he had no idea what i was talking about. It was a book called double whammy, and im still proud to this draw that it ever got into print because you could pitch that to 30 editors and all of them would just say very nice meeting you, good luck with your fishing, and they would send you home. But i had sort of a larger picture in mind at the time about what was sort of happening in the culture, and there was a tv preacher in it who was hypocritical, he was fooling around, you know, that never happened. [laughter] i mean, this is like before jimmy swaggert. I was ahead of the curve. And ill tell you how bizarre it was. I was trying to be topical because i still am working for the newspaper, but at that time i was going into the actual the newsroom days a week with. I hadnt started my column yet, i was writing at night. You want to be topical, and at that time when i was writing that book, it was the beginning of the pit bulldog fascination in this country. And it sort of started in south florida. Every two bit drug dealer would get a mean ass pit bull and chain him in the yard to forward their stash. And they would break off the leash, and theyd attack the kids and awe tack old people, and attack old people. At one point Newsweek Magazine had a, like a snapping, snarling pit bull on the cover, a cover shot of the magazine. So i thought, well, ive got to work a pit bull dog into this novel. Ive got to stay timely. So back in those days, i think there was even a statute in florida that every Mobile Home Park had to have at least one or two feerunning pit bull dogs. It was written into the Homeowners Association contract. [laughter] so i have a burglar in the book. A burglar, im not a big fan of burglars, so i have him breaking into a trailer. And if hes breaking in, and hes got a screwdriver. Hes breaking into a trailer and suddenly out of the shadows flies this big pit bull, grabs onto his arm, theres a big struggle. The guy takes his i screwdriver and killeds the pit bull kills the pit bull. The dog doesnt let go of his arm. The dog is dead as a door nail, but its stuck on his arm. [laughter] so it, and it begins a relationship about 104 pages in the novel between the guy and the dead pit bull [laughter] it was kind of, in a way, it was a disney journey sort of thing. [laughter] he names he becomes delirious from the pain and the infection, and he names the dog. He drives with it everywhere. It was the i just found, i didnt find anything marley strange about it particularly strange about it because, to me, it was the ultimate pit bull story. [laughter] so this is true. So i was out doing what little touring i was talking to a group of lawyers in kendall, florida, when the book came out. It was a lawyers line luncheond afterwards im shaking hands, signing some books and some guy comes up, pulls on my sleeve and he goes he was a lawyer. You know, who told you about the pit bull . I said, what . He said, who told you about the pit bull . And i said i just, i just made that shit up, what, are you kidding me . No, you didnt. So he proceeds to tell me this story that hes, he lives in a very nice neighborhood, hes walking, hes walking his golden retriever minding his own buzz. Out of the blue his own business. Off the blue one of the neighbors out of the blue one of the neighbors pit bull breaks the fence comes charging across the neighborhood, and this poor old golden retriever, and the pit bull jumps on, bites him on the back of the neck. And the golden retriever breaks, is just trying to break so this is miami. So the lawyer does what every attorney whos walking his dog does, he reaches into his waist and talks out his. 9 mm [laughter] and he opens up on the pit bull dog. Kills the pit bulldog. Pit bull dog doesnt let go of the golden retriever. The noise of the gunfirer terrifies the golden retriever, takes off [laughter] down the street. All the neighbors run to the end of the culdesac, the poor golden is just sitting there, hes got a dead dog. Let me through and empties the club into the pit bull dog. Anyway, the golden was fine, the golden was okay. The point was id written a scene that i thought was so detestable that it would never happen in real life, and then this guy comes up with something better. Its not the first time. [laughter] that this has happened to me. So i just, i find myself and these days its even harder. I did a novel a couple years later, and this was i had a couple novels out, and i had, someone sent me theres a magazine or a periodical journal of popular culture. And there was an article about my work in there. And i thought, man, a journal of popular culture, so i start reading it. The guys its somebodys thesis. He analyze ared all the novels id written at that point. He says the one recurring symbol that appears in every carl hiassennovel is a floater. In florida its a dead body in the water. And almost all of them are in the water, we have so much water [laughter] but he said this recurs like, and he had paragraphs on the whole floater phenomenon. Im reading this, first of all, my first reaction is i didnt know i was this brilliant. [laughter] i mean, symbolism, id had no idea. Then the second thing is i realize im halfway through a novel right now, no reporter in. I dont have a floater no floater. Im about to blow this guys thesis out of the water. So im scrambling around now in the middle of the novel, the i gotta get me a floater. This is how the literary mind works. [laughter] im going i gotta get me a floater. So at the time the novel i was working on was called native tongue, and it was about a third rate theme park that was erected in this, right in this very tell candidate area. There was a coral dell area. There was a coral reef on one side, and a real sleazy guy. He does everything on the cheap. Hes got a bad, bad killer whale from sea world, all these bad animals. [laughter] one of these hes got in the novel, hes got a bottlenosed dolphin whos just no good. His name is dickie the dolphin. And hes got him in a tank, and hes like the obligatory florida dolphin thing the. I dont know if youve been to florida lately, but you can go to these exhibits, and you get to swum with the dolphins. Swim with the dolphins. For a couple hundred bucks, you can get in a Little Lagoon with the dolphins which is, believe me, the highlight of every dolphins day [laughter] tour u. S. Number 75 jump in the water squeaking like flipper, groping for the dorsal fin. Yeah, they love that. So when it started happening, there was a story. It came out on the west coast of florida, but they were starting to have these incidents at these marine swim with the dolphins. Peta that not just that, but a lot of these other groups were trying to get these dolphin programs shut down because some of the dolphins in these programs had had enough. They were done. [laughter] and they were exhibiting what miami herald, being a family newspaper, euphemistically called aggressive behavior towards some of the human swimmers. It was more than aggressive behavior. It was sexual behavior. Directed primarily at female humans. And its a terrifying manifestation if you know anything about porpoise biology [laughter] a full grown male dolphin is 700, 800 pounds. They are endow canned proportionately endowed proportionately. [laughter] there is a if prehentile aspect to their equipment [laughter] so they may not have arms, they may not have legs, but they can grab you. [laughter] and this, of course, i had two, my two roles. First of all, in my role as a columnist for the miami herald, i always felt a duty to put anything in the paper that would scare the loving hit out of shit out of tourists. [laughter] i felt it was my duty. First thing i do was i interviewed a legal secretary whose boyfriend for her birthday had bought her a dolphin encounter in key largo. Shed gone down there, jumped in the lagoon, and you know the guys, the guys all wear steve irwin outfits and theyre really tan, and theyre hopping on the side of the lagoon. They will not go in the water if you give them 100, they are not going in the water. So shes in the water, this dolphin takes a liking to her [laughter] in a big way, and she starts screaming help me, help me. Shes fighting the dolphin off, and the guys are [laughter] try to get out if you can, were not going in there. So she extricates herself from the relationship, and she climbs, she climbs out, is very upset, and she doesnt, you know, they did videotape in those days. She doesnt want the videotape. [laughter] who would you show it to . Why would you show it to them . [laughter] but anyway, i get the first person story about this attack. And of course i do a column, we slam it into the paper. I, you know, its, again, tastefully done, it doesnt get too graphic, but it gets the point across. I believe it was Something Like if oh, i forget, if tourists dont have enough to worry about, now you have to worry about getting i dont think i used the word screwedded [laughter] something by flipper, blanked by flipper. This is just right. Flipper, flipper was a tv show of my general rawtion, and the whole flipper name is trademarked, apparently, and across the bay from the miami herald is the miami sea aquarium where the current flip lived at the time, the existing flipper. And the owners of this aquarium seemed to think that i might have in some way libeled the reputation of the real flipper by casting him as a horny specimen [laughter] so im sitting at my desk in the newsroom, and the phone rings. This guy named art who opens the aquarium, yeah, that column, we dont our flip doesnt do that, we dont even let anybody swim with flipper. You slanderedded flipper. You need to do a retraction. I said, okay, art, im going to im just going to read to you what the retraction would say. Sorry i said that flipper was going to hump the tourist. [laughter] the aquarium saws that he will not says that he will not, and ill get into the whole thing. Would you like that retraction . He listens, no, forget about it, and he hangs up the phone. [laughter] anyway, now ive got more importantly in my novel which i dont have a floater yet, i have dickie the dolphin swim anything this tank, and theres a bad guy in the novel whos based on a Real Life Group of Police Officers who had been arrested in miami. They were crooked cops, and they were all heavily on steroids, and they just went nuts and started killing people and everything. So i based one bad actor in the novel on that. So hes, my protagonist is a the theme park guy. My protagonist at the time was sneaking around the theme park trying pedro, the steroidaddicted security guard, hes mainlining, dragging an iv drip pure steroids, mainlining. Thats how hes guarding the theme park. [laughter] so they meet face to face on the cat walk above dickies picture this. [laughter] its a moonlit night, dick keys minding his own business in the tank, and theres a fistfight between the protagonist and pedro. My good guy gets off a punch, pedro goes tumbling, iv tumbling after him. Dickie, on a moonlit night, is having romantic thoughts [laughter] and he proceeds to romance pedro to death. [laughter] i got my floater [laughter] , pedros got what he deserves, i felt a sense of great literary achievement as i finished that chapter. [laughter] again, it goes up to the editor. Theres questions. [laughter] i send him the clippings about the dolphins that had it now that are sort of getting with the humans, and i settle things with newspaper clipping. Thats what i always do. When theres doubt raised, even in new york they dont believe some of the stuff that i write. So i send them the clipping or the headline okay, thats enough. This was before the florida man hashtag where now Everybody Knows what a demented place it is, but at the time i had a lot of convincing to do. I saved the guys thesis because there was a floater in the novel. The book was called native tongue, and in all the novels since then i really you try to talk take a shred or things that really happened, and its getting harder and harder on the dial to find where you can crank it and get ahead of the news, particularly in the last few years. There was a story that i, my son, my oldest son was a reporter at the time, and he, he had sent me a story from the lower keys. I i lived in the keys for a while. And i was living there when this happened, and i didnt really realize it happened. But there was a woman dave barrys written about this in real life too. There was a car accident on a place called ramrod key if youve ever been to the keys. Its like 23, 24 miles out of key west. It was an unusual car accident. A car full of tourists were struck from behind on u. S. 1, the overseas highway. Both cars pull over, and they find state troopers quoted the miami herald story, it was a great quote. He wanders up to the scene, and he finds something very unusual in the driver of the car that struck the other driver is a female, woman, who had been again, in the heralds way we wroit, had been shaving her bikini area while driving 60 miles an hour. [laughter] down the overseas highway. Became distracted [laughter] bam. Hit somebody. I mean, so the poor state trooper, and shes going and shes, questions her. Maam, can i ask why youre doing that while youre driving . Why . She goes, well, im going to key west, and i have a date. [laughter] passenger next to her speakes up and says, thats right, she has a date. Passenger is her exhusband. [laughter] hes accompanying her. He had reached over and was steering the to give her a little extra dexterity during the hygiene session. [laughter] they went to jail. Newway, the state trooper anyway, th