I'd always wanted to write books ever since I was a kid.

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.

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

That's what people do when they find a special place that wild and full of life, they trample it to death.

Mickey Cray had been out of work ever since a dead iguana fell from a palm tree and hit him on the head.

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.