Gunfights and Florida History: An Interview with Tim Dorsey
by Allan Shaw
Tim Dorsey was born in Indiana, moved to Florida at the age of 1, and grew up in a small town about an hour north of Miami called Riviera Beach. He graduated from Auburn University in 1983. While at Auburn, he was editor of the student newspaper, The Plainsman.
From 1983 to 1987, he was a police and courts reporter for The Alabama Journal, the now-defunct evening newspaper in Montgomery. He joined The Tampa Tribune in 1987 as a general assignment reporter. He also worked as a political reporter in the Tribune’s Tallahassee bureau and a copy desk editor. From 1994 to 1999, he was the Tribune’s night metro editor. He left the paper in August 1999 to write full time.
Tim has since published thirteen novels in several languages: Florida Roadkill, Hammerhead Ranch Motel, Orange Crush, Triggerfish Twist, The Stingray Shuffle, Cadillac Beach, Torpedo Juice, The Big Bamboo, Hurricane Punch, Atomic Lobster, Nuclear Jellyfish, Gator A-Go-Go and Electric Barracuda.
He lives in Tampa with his family.
_______
Alan Shaw: Your main character, Serge A. Storms, has this irrepressible fascination with the state’s history. Where did that come from? Was this a deliberate decision on your part to show something about the state, something to add depth to the character?
Tim Dorsey: His obsession with Florida is totally me. He’s my mouthpiece on those things. I started putting that in the book and I kind of held back because I felt like I was being indulgent. I didn’t want to bore the reader by doing that, but I found out that it was a connection that I made. Either people who had lived in Florida a long time liked hearing about old trivia, lore, or history, or people who hadn’t felt like they were getting some insider’s peek into Florida. It was one of those accidental things that I got feedback from, so I just let it go. I opened it up and let Serge be the guy through which I would channel these things.
AS: Has this encouraged you to find out more unusual or darker things about Florida’s history?
TD: It’s helped a lot because readers will email me, pointing out things, or when I’m traveling around the state doing a signing, readers who are in tune with the books will point out places or take me to places, so it’s growing as the series goes along. I don’t have to put in a lot of effort. I know a lot of the stuff to begin with and the rest is happening because promotion for the books takes a lot of travel and a lot of that is around Florida.
AS: Florida seems to have this split personality. We’re the sunshine state, the Disney state, but we’re also the state where the cocaine wars were fought. How do you wrestle with that in your writing? What do you choose to show?
TD: I don’t make the choice; I show both. That’s part of living here. I grew up here, I couldn’t live anywhere else, and that’s the way I feel about it. You know, am I crazy to stay here, but at the same time I couldn’t live anywhere else.
AS: In the decade and a half that you’ve been writing about the state through Serge’s eyes, has it changed for you, the way you see the history?
TD: What I’ve noticed as I’ve been going along is that a lot of the places in the books have disappeared. A lot of the cool nooks and crannies are getting closed down. But at least I’m writing about them while they’re still around, so they get their due. But it’s happening fast. You look at just in the ten years of the series, the fact that the places are vanishing, that’s the big thing. The state’s so young but at the same time it’s happening so fast; things are coming and going over night.
AS: Can you name one of those vanished places?
TD: One classic place was the Big Bamboo Lounge in Kissimmee. It was in the book The Big Bamboo. It went pretty quickly; it was on its last legs for a while. People loved it and were trying to keep it going, but it disappeared.
AS: How do you avoid falling into clichés about Florida? Land, politics, history, tourism, and Disney?
TD: Well two things, I’m not sure I always do avoid falling into them, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. But I think that if you live here, if you have a subscription to the newspaper, then you follow what’s going on. We’re very dimensional, and the clichés are part of that dimension, but you can write it out, so that it’s not completely cliché driven. Geographically, we’re like Europe, a bunch of different countries, almost, just going county to county. But there are some of the same themes coming up and you can’t really avoid them and have it still have that Florida feel.
AS: How do you manage to go beyond the character stereotypes of other Florida writers? Are there any you are aware of? What do you think they are? Do you try to defy them?
TD: Can I answer that in a different way? I think we have a great Florida subgenre which departs from the stereotype of writing genres in other parts of the country some times, but we have a great group of writers and I think we’ll look back and see that we had it good in this area. These writers are practically writing the history of Florida in real time because, like I said, it’s young. We’re growing and a lot of people are fostering it, but there’s less heritage here than in other places. I mean you look at Carl Hiassen, James Hall, Randy Wayne White, Edna Buchanan, there’s just a whole bunch of great writers who are covering Florida. A lot of them have a journalism background or are still in journalism. A lot of people think this Florida gang, they’re out on the edge, they’re way over the top, but actually they’re closer to reality than a lot of people realize if they’re not from around here, and they’ve created an appetite for Florida-based fiction. They were my heroes and my inspiration. I never thought it would happen, but I feel fortunate to have in a small way joined them, by getting a few books.
AS: You said before that Florida writers are writing our history as it’s happening, so do you see that as being similar to the way people treated the West and stories of cowboys?
TD: Sure, the analogy of the Wild West is perfect. They even used the term the Cocaine Cowboy Wars to describe what happened down here in the Eighties. To a degree it has been mythologized, but by the same token it’s a real enough frontier that you don’t have to stretch the story much and still have the truth. As a matter of fact, Carl Haissen wrote an article responding to the question of what’s with Florida writers. They have this off-center view of things, what’s with their imagination. His answer was that, and I’m paraphrasing, you almost have to subtract imagination. He said that these are stories that you have to back away from. Real life stories from the newspaper, because they would seem like fiction. That’s how plentiful the material is and the strangeness is down here.
AS: You were a newspaper writer for several years, and Florida almost has a tradition of turning our newspaper writers into crime writers. Do you see this as a natural transition?
TD: Yes, a lot of people think it might be a difficult transition, because you’re used to just the hard facts and then you go to fiction, but it’s actually a natural progression. Journalism gives you a solid writing foundation, and it affects your style as a writer, I think, in a positive way. You can often tell if a writer has been a journalist from the way they write. I deliberately went into journalism by design. I wanted to work for newspapers because that was my plan to learn the craft and ultimately write novels. It ended up being indispensible, and in that time I also built up a reservoir of material to write about. It makes complete sense to me that people in the Florida crime genre came out of that background.
AS: Did you ever expect the main character of your books to have such longevity?
TD: No I didn’t. I was pragmatic. I had a dream, and I was going to keep pursuing it, but I knew it was a real long shot just getting one book published. But it turned into a series which keeps continuing and continuing. That was completely unanticipated. Probably the fortunate thing was that in the first book I just went with what I loved, which is writing about Florida, and I had a good character to be my spokesperson. When the publisher wanted more books I just continued along. What I chose for the first book was fortunate because it lent so well to continuation because it was so close to my heart.
AS: I’ve always been curious about Hemingway in your stories. He shows up often as impersonators. You have the Running of the Hemingway lookalikes in the first book. In another book you have an Invasion of Normandy-style scene with them. What was the impulse with this? Was it his history with the state as a literary figure or going after sacred cows?
TD: I think it’s a bit of both. His was definitely a unique American talent. A legend and an influence on modern American writing. Plus he was an inhabitant of Key West for so long. So there’s that whole part of it. And I’ve been to the Hemingway house numerous times, and it’s just fascinating. And then the other side of it is how Florida makes things tacky. If you’ve ever been down there [Key West] and seen the Hemingway lookalikes, it’s a scream. It’s so Florida. We have this top shelf literary figure and yet at the same time we have these guys at Sloppy Joe’s drinking beer and comparing beards. It was irresistible.
This interview originally appeared in Volume 6.
From 1983 to 1987, he was a police and courts reporter for The Alabama Journal, the now-defunct evening newspaper in Montgomery. He joined The Tampa Tribune in 1987 as a general assignment reporter. He also worked as a political reporter in the Tribune’s Tallahassee bureau and a copy desk editor. From 1994 to 1999, he was the Tribune’s night metro editor. He left the paper in August 1999 to write full time.
Tim has since published thirteen novels in several languages: Florida Roadkill, Hammerhead Ranch Motel, Orange Crush, Triggerfish Twist, The Stingray Shuffle, Cadillac Beach, Torpedo Juice, The Big Bamboo, Hurricane Punch, Atomic Lobster, Nuclear Jellyfish, Gator A-Go-Go and Electric Barracuda.
He lives in Tampa with his family.
_______
Alan Shaw: Your main character, Serge A. Storms, has this irrepressible fascination with the state’s history. Where did that come from? Was this a deliberate decision on your part to show something about the state, something to add depth to the character?
Tim Dorsey: His obsession with Florida is totally me. He’s my mouthpiece on those things. I started putting that in the book and I kind of held back because I felt like I was being indulgent. I didn’t want to bore the reader by doing that, but I found out that it was a connection that I made. Either people who had lived in Florida a long time liked hearing about old trivia, lore, or history, or people who hadn’t felt like they were getting some insider’s peek into Florida. It was one of those accidental things that I got feedback from, so I just let it go. I opened it up and let Serge be the guy through which I would channel these things.
AS: Has this encouraged you to find out more unusual or darker things about Florida’s history?
TD: It’s helped a lot because readers will email me, pointing out things, or when I’m traveling around the state doing a signing, readers who are in tune with the books will point out places or take me to places, so it’s growing as the series goes along. I don’t have to put in a lot of effort. I know a lot of the stuff to begin with and the rest is happening because promotion for the books takes a lot of travel and a lot of that is around Florida.
AS: Florida seems to have this split personality. We’re the sunshine state, the Disney state, but we’re also the state where the cocaine wars were fought. How do you wrestle with that in your writing? What do you choose to show?
TD: I don’t make the choice; I show both. That’s part of living here. I grew up here, I couldn’t live anywhere else, and that’s the way I feel about it. You know, am I crazy to stay here, but at the same time I couldn’t live anywhere else.
AS: In the decade and a half that you’ve been writing about the state through Serge’s eyes, has it changed for you, the way you see the history?
TD: What I’ve noticed as I’ve been going along is that a lot of the places in the books have disappeared. A lot of the cool nooks and crannies are getting closed down. But at least I’m writing about them while they’re still around, so they get their due. But it’s happening fast. You look at just in the ten years of the series, the fact that the places are vanishing, that’s the big thing. The state’s so young but at the same time it’s happening so fast; things are coming and going over night.
AS: Can you name one of those vanished places?
TD: One classic place was the Big Bamboo Lounge in Kissimmee. It was in the book The Big Bamboo. It went pretty quickly; it was on its last legs for a while. People loved it and were trying to keep it going, but it disappeared.
AS: How do you avoid falling into clichés about Florida? Land, politics, history, tourism, and Disney?
TD: Well two things, I’m not sure I always do avoid falling into them, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. But I think that if you live here, if you have a subscription to the newspaper, then you follow what’s going on. We’re very dimensional, and the clichés are part of that dimension, but you can write it out, so that it’s not completely cliché driven. Geographically, we’re like Europe, a bunch of different countries, almost, just going county to county. But there are some of the same themes coming up and you can’t really avoid them and have it still have that Florida feel.
AS: How do you manage to go beyond the character stereotypes of other Florida writers? Are there any you are aware of? What do you think they are? Do you try to defy them?
TD: Can I answer that in a different way? I think we have a great Florida subgenre which departs from the stereotype of writing genres in other parts of the country some times, but we have a great group of writers and I think we’ll look back and see that we had it good in this area. These writers are practically writing the history of Florida in real time because, like I said, it’s young. We’re growing and a lot of people are fostering it, but there’s less heritage here than in other places. I mean you look at Carl Hiassen, James Hall, Randy Wayne White, Edna Buchanan, there’s just a whole bunch of great writers who are covering Florida. A lot of them have a journalism background or are still in journalism. A lot of people think this Florida gang, they’re out on the edge, they’re way over the top, but actually they’re closer to reality than a lot of people realize if they’re not from around here, and they’ve created an appetite for Florida-based fiction. They were my heroes and my inspiration. I never thought it would happen, but I feel fortunate to have in a small way joined them, by getting a few books.
AS: You said before that Florida writers are writing our history as it’s happening, so do you see that as being similar to the way people treated the West and stories of cowboys?
TD: Sure, the analogy of the Wild West is perfect. They even used the term the Cocaine Cowboy Wars to describe what happened down here in the Eighties. To a degree it has been mythologized, but by the same token it’s a real enough frontier that you don’t have to stretch the story much and still have the truth. As a matter of fact, Carl Haissen wrote an article responding to the question of what’s with Florida writers. They have this off-center view of things, what’s with their imagination. His answer was that, and I’m paraphrasing, you almost have to subtract imagination. He said that these are stories that you have to back away from. Real life stories from the newspaper, because they would seem like fiction. That’s how plentiful the material is and the strangeness is down here.
AS: You were a newspaper writer for several years, and Florida almost has a tradition of turning our newspaper writers into crime writers. Do you see this as a natural transition?
TD: Yes, a lot of people think it might be a difficult transition, because you’re used to just the hard facts and then you go to fiction, but it’s actually a natural progression. Journalism gives you a solid writing foundation, and it affects your style as a writer, I think, in a positive way. You can often tell if a writer has been a journalist from the way they write. I deliberately went into journalism by design. I wanted to work for newspapers because that was my plan to learn the craft and ultimately write novels. It ended up being indispensible, and in that time I also built up a reservoir of material to write about. It makes complete sense to me that people in the Florida crime genre came out of that background.
AS: Did you ever expect the main character of your books to have such longevity?
TD: No I didn’t. I was pragmatic. I had a dream, and I was going to keep pursuing it, but I knew it was a real long shot just getting one book published. But it turned into a series which keeps continuing and continuing. That was completely unanticipated. Probably the fortunate thing was that in the first book I just went with what I loved, which is writing about Florida, and I had a good character to be my spokesperson. When the publisher wanted more books I just continued along. What I chose for the first book was fortunate because it lent so well to continuation because it was so close to my heart.
AS: I’ve always been curious about Hemingway in your stories. He shows up often as impersonators. You have the Running of the Hemingway lookalikes in the first book. In another book you have an Invasion of Normandy-style scene with them. What was the impulse with this? Was it his history with the state as a literary figure or going after sacred cows?
TD: I think it’s a bit of both. His was definitely a unique American talent. A legend and an influence on modern American writing. Plus he was an inhabitant of Key West for so long. So there’s that whole part of it. And I’ve been to the Hemingway house numerous times, and it’s just fascinating. And then the other side of it is how Florida makes things tacky. If you’ve ever been down there [Key West] and seen the Hemingway lookalikes, it’s a scream. It’s so Florida. We have this top shelf literary figure and yet at the same time we have these guys at Sloppy Joe’s drinking beer and comparing beards. It was irresistible.
This interview originally appeared in Volume 6.
