I've always enjoyed making people laugh. But in order for me to be funny, I have to get ticked off about something.

Actually it was the mark of the stupid, which is what you get for sitting under a tree during a thunderstorm.

Every writer scrounges for inspiration in different places, and there's no shame in raiding the headlines. It's necessary, in fact, when attempting contemporary satire. Sharp-edged humor relies on topical reference points.

There is no writer's block in a newsroom. There's only unemployment block.

I was born and raised here [in Florida], so I still have tremendous affection for the state - especially the few wild places that haven't disappeared under concrete. What's left is still worth fighting for, and that's why I stay.

As frightening as this may sound, what you see in the books is the way I see the world. And so far I haven't seen anything, either in Florida or elsewhere, to dissuade me from it.

The Thieves of Manhattan is a sly and cutting riff on the book-publishing world that is quite funny unless you happen to be an author, in which case the novel will make you consider a more sensible profession-like being a rodeo clown, for example, or a crab-fisherman in the Bering Sea.