New York Times best-selling author Randy Wayne White has been a farm hand, a brass and iron foundry worker, a telephone lineman, and, for thirteen years, a full-time fishing guide at Tarpon Bay Marina on Florida's Sanibel Island. His official bio also goes on to state that White has been stabbed, "shot at with intent," and was in a hotel that got blown up by Shining Path Anarchists in Peru. As a columnist for Outside magazine he has covered the America's Cup races in Australia, gone dog sledding in Alaska, searched for wild orangutans on Borneo, brought back refugees from Cuba, been diving in the infamous Bad Blue Hole lake on the desolate Cat Island in the Bahamas, and even participated in a mission to steal back General Manuel Noriega's bar stools.
In 1981, White turned his hand to crime fiction with the first book featuring Ex–Navy SEAL Dusky MacMorgan, Deep Six, written under the pen name of Randy Striker. He went on to pen seven novels under the Striker name and eleven novels as Carl Ramm, writing various series under the various pen names, including the Hannah Smith and Hawker novels, But White's primary focus has been his series featuring marine biologist and former secret operative, Doc Ford, who first appeared in 1990's Sanibel Flats.
In the twenty-fourth work in that series, Mangrove Lightning, legendary charter captain and guide Tootsie Barlow has come to Ford, muttering about a curse. The members of his extended family have suffered a bizarre series of attacks, and Barlow is convinced it has something to do with a multiple murder in 1925, in which his family had a shameful part. Ford doesn’t believe in curses, but as he and his friend Tomlinson begin to investigate, following the trail of the attacks from Key Largo to Tallahassee, they, too, suffer a series of near-fatal mishaps. Is it really a curse? Or just a crime spree? The answer lies in solving a near-hundred-year-old murder . . . and probing the mind of a madman.
White stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about his writing and the inspiration and background behind it:
Novel Writing Tip #102: Use What You Know
by Randy Wayne White, Author of Mangrove Lightning: A Doc Ford Novel
Among the great strokes of good fortune -- and there were many junctures where I could have gone awry -- was the decision to write about, via fiction, my small marina family at Tarpon Bay, Sanibel Island, Florida, where I was a fishing guide from 1974 to 1987. This marina family embraced a wider tribe of watermen from along the Gulf Coast, fascinating characters, and also decent, caring people, who now populate my novels.
When my marina closed, I was out of a job -- a tough period financially, but a powerful motivator to write a good book that would sell. I did exactly that, but it didn’t happen as easily as it might sound. During my years as a guide, I’d also worked hard in my spare time at writing. I sold some stories to Outdoor Life (not about fishing) but my big break came when Rolling Stone founded Outside Magazine. This led to calls from other magazines, and a New York editor who asked me to write a series of thriller novels under pennames; jobs of work that paid $5k each. I wrote 18 of those tawdry bastards; called them D&F books (Duck and F---). I didn’t complain. They helped fund college accounts for my two young sons, and also provided a
bruising trial-by-fire during which I learned the rudiments of how to structure a novel.
I was not unprepared, then, when I set out to write not only a book I would be proud to carry my name, but one that sold. First, the protagonist: I was an experienced fishing guide, so why not a marine biologist? Also, thanks to Outside Magazine, I’d traveled countries torn by wars and revolutions, so why not a biologist who was also a clandestine operator – a “spook” with skills and knowledge far beyond my own.
Florida is an American microcosm that lures the best and the worst sort of people from all of the Americas, not just the U.S. I love the social diversity as much as I adore the varieties of subtropical land and waterscapes. For much of my life here, I’ve lived in an old Cracker house, tin-roofed, with a fireplace for heat, built atop the remnants of a shell pyramid that was constructed more than three thousand years ago by contemporaries of the Maya. Florida is an ancient place, but as modern as the latest South Beach fads in fashion and food. From my acre on the bay I can stand atop a mound, where kings once parlayed with Conquistadors, and watch the Space Shuttle arch toward the moon.
The boating experiences played out by characters in my books mirror my own, for I know no other way to write. One of the joys of writing is the opportunity to come as close as I can to capturing on paper the intimacies of water, mangroves, bays, backcountry and open sea. During my thirteen year guiding career, I spent three hundred days a year on the water, in small boats, in every possible type of weather. I was up at first light to catch bait, and, during the busy spring season, often tagged a third half-day charter onto my schedule, trips that went from seven p.m. until midnight. In Southwest Florida, where there are bays and many islands, it is often easier and faster to travel by boat, so I travel a lot at night, sometimes using night vision optics, always attuned to the various landmarks and ranges important when running shallow water.
As a writer, I still enjoy advantages gained by growing up in rural areas where isolation and boredom were relentless motivators and keys to the limitless worlds that lie between covers, not coasts. Better yet, my isolation was split between bipolar geographies: farms in the Midwest and my maternal home of Richmond County, North Carolina, a solid place of cotton mills, tobacco, truck farming (of the vegetable variety) and some of the finest people I’ve known. The fact that many of these fine people were also my aunts, uncles and cousins only added to the richness of a Midwestern and Deep South childhood that practically guaranteed that, even if I had failed as a writer, I was bound to succeed at something.
© Randy Wayne White, author of Mangrove Lightning: A Doc Ford Novel
You can find out more about Randy Wayne White and his books via his website and by following him on Facebook. Mangrove Lightning is available via all major book retailers and just hit the New York Times Bestsellers List.