7/7/2023 0 Comments Sanibel flatsIt is a rare day I do not wake up psyched to get to work. I packed the manuscript in a box and mailed it off to New York, unaware the fictional world I had created would fulminate, grow and expand over a period of three decades, and transform my life in a way that seems the stuff of dreams or incredibly good luck.īoth, I now realize. Six months later, I finished Sanibel Flats, the first novel which I felt was good enough to attach my real name. But now the welfare of my family was at risk. I’d written a bunch of potboiler thrillers under pennames. I’d sold a few articles to major magazines. In truth, I’d been working at the craft of writing throughout my fishing career, and I’d had some luck. It wasn’t the first time I’d made a bumbling decision and pushed ahead without a safety net, nor would it be the last. “Don’t quit your day job,” a prospective agent warned me, unaware that I no longer had a day job. By night, I sat at an old Underwood typewriter and bushwhacked my way toward a new path – that of a novelist. As the father of two young sons, spooked by the financial disaster that loomed, I put my boat on a trailer and continued chartering from local hotels. Worse, I wasn’t qualified to do anything but drive a boat. In 1988, after more than a decade as a full-time fishing guide at Tarpon Bay Marina, Sanibel Island, the federal government decided to close our bay to powerboat traffic – permanently.
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