I love reality shows. The folks who dream up some of these concepts are either geniuses, or totally stoned.

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.

I never laugh or smile when I am writing. When I come home for lunch after writing all morning, my wife says I look like I just came home from a funeral. This is not bragging. This is an illness.

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

Unfortunately, Florida is a mecca for the shyster element, and there are apparently no rules on the kinds of advertising a lawyer can do.

It's actually not very hard to re-set between the adult novels and the ones for younger readers. The narrative voices are very similar, the smartass attitude, the environmental battles. Kids love books that are irreverent and challenge authority, when authority is arbitrary, greedy or foolish. They also love it when you make fun of grownups, and I've spent my whole life as a writer doing that.

I still do a weekly opinion column for the Miami Herald, and it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Rotten fish.