Florida's Wealth of Writers

I've written before about the tremendous number of top-notch writers that make their homes in Florida. From Hiaasen and Dorsey to Leonard and Hall, these folks are both prolific and bankable with many quality stories among them.

This "literary cluster" didn't escape the attention of the Sacramento Bee, and they put together a nice article here. Two years ago, Dorsey spoke at the First Coast Writer's Festival here in Jacksonville. A fan asked him why he wrote about Florida. "Just look in the papers," he replied. "Everyone's crazy down here."

It's just about the truth of it too. The plots these writers concoct are downright zany, but they aren't far off. Just two nights ago the police dragged a naked man out of a retention pond. He was high on crack and called himself an alligator whisperer. The same man lost an arm pulling this type of stunt back in 2006.

I read about a man with a pair of hooks for hands leading police on a high-speed chase at over 100 mph. It was his second high-speed chase...

And in 2005, one of our own here in Duval got drunk and stole an ambulance. He'd somehow killed a deer and when police arrested him in Georgia, the dead dear was hooked up to an IV in the back of the ambulance.

Hmmm...