Carl Hiaasen talks about young adult debut

BOOK EVENT

Carl Hiaasen. 7 p.m. Wednesday. Free. Decatur Library auditorium, 215 Sycamore St., Decatur. Co-hosted by Little Shop of Stories and Georgia Center for the Book. Doors open at 6 p.m.; seating is first come, first served. You must make a book purchase to enter the signing line. 404-373-6300, littleshopofstories.com/events.php.

While bringing attention to dirty dealings and environmental issues, Carl Hiaasen has made kids howl over best-selling books such as “Hoot,” “Flush” and “Chomp.”

In six of his adult novels, including “Sick Puppy” and “Double Whammy,” fans have cheered on Skink, a big, one-eyed “wandering hermit of the wilderness” who chows on roadkill. Skink’s always on some crusade to conquer bad guys, ranging from greedy land developers to turtle-egg poachers.

Now, with the fast-paced “Skink — No Surrender,” Hiaasen dives for the first time into the teen or young adult market. In this road-trip and river adventure, Skink hooks up with Richard, a high school boy. Their mission: find Richard’s 14-year-old cousin Malley. Lured by an online predator, the girl has run away from home.

Skink, real name Clinton Tyree, is also a former Florida governor. According to Wikipedia, the renegade ex-gov is dead, which is just how Skink likes it. Being presumed dead makes it easier for him to stay under the radar while he rights one egregious wrong after another.

Hiaasen (“hiya-sun”) will be in Decatur Wednesday to talk about “Skink — No Surrender” and sign books. The author, a lifelong Floridian who is also a columnist for the Miami Herald, was interviewed recently by phone.

Q: Congratulations on "Skink — No Surrender" just being named a finalist for the National Book Award. Your reaction?

A: My first thought was that they'd made a mistake. A friend of mine, Howell Raines, who used to be with The New York Times, sent an email congratulating me. I thought he was just messing with me, because I don't even know how these nominations are devised. Then I got another email and thought, wait a minute, is this real? It's a wonderful surprise and I'm very happy that it happened to a book involving Skink, a character for whom I have a lot of affection.

Q: Yeah, Skink's a doozy. Why do we love the leech-slurping Skink so much?

A: You create a lot of characters, and you create some who you think are going to be great and then they may turn out to be boring. But whenever I bring him onstage, I'm never sure where it will go. Of all my characters, he's the one I get the most mail about. He's eccentric and he's irreverent — but his heart is true and he's always on a mission where the stakes are high.

Q: Where do you draw the lines between writing for children, for adults, and now for teens?

A: I've met 6-year-olds who could read Tolstoy and newspaper reporters who couldn't read Dr. Seuss, so you never can say what's right for everyone. Some kids are mature enough to handle any book in print and others might not be. These are decisions parents have to make.

I wanted to bring Skink to a younger readership because my son, who’s 14, has read some of my adult books featuring Skink and he really liked him. But I didn’t start out writing a book meant for any specific age group. I just had a story in mind in which I could include Skink. The way best-seller lists are drawn, they have to put you in a category, so this seemed the category that fit well for this story and these characters.

Q: You've been a newspaper journalist for 30 years. Do you get most of your ideas from news headlines?

A: Always. There's a potential novel in almost every news story in Miami. Every dawn brings a new scumbag. You don't have to make up very much. You take the basic news item and you add the "what ifs." It's that simple, as long as you can also create characters that readers will care about.

Q: You don't shy away from dark terrain, even when writing for a younger audience.

A: It's a rough world with a lot of bad stuff. A young girl gets swept away online — it happens all the time. I don't sit down with any social agenda. It's my job to entertain, but I also want to bounce off the realities of what kids and families are dealing with today. For me, it's always important to be timely and relevant.

Q: Why do you think the Sunshine State has such a steady stream of crooks?

A: Think about it. Florida is where people chasing a dream come, and it also attracts people who are running from something. Then you've got all those who come down to prey on the old folks. Anything goes, insurance fraud, identity theft, every possible (kind) of slimy behavior. It's also much more pleasant to be a criminal when the average temperature is 78 degrees.

Q: While writing, do you find it easy to think like a kid again?

A: Very easy, too easy. My wife would tell you I am in a perpetuated state of adolescence. I have such great memories of my own childhood here in Florida. In writing books for kids, it's always fun for me to have another adventure in the wild. As kids, we looked for turtle eggs — that's a real thing. Just the other day, they arrested another knucklehead for trying to steal turtle eggs. So it's not hard to channel the outrage through a good kid like Richard, or also channel the story through a force of nature like Skink.

Q: Can you talk a bit about your writing process?

A: I'm always working on a book. I don't read a lot of fiction because I don't want to be unconsciously influenced by the style or rhythm of another writer. It's not a cop-out. I find that I work better in a vacuum. I'm easily distracted by things and can't multi-task very well. I need to be completely zoned in.

Q: Do you have any tricks for zoning in?

A: I live in Vero Beach. I could have a view or at least a window, but that would be distracting. I purposely have a blank wall in front of me so that the only thing in front of me is my own words. And I wear earmuffs — shooting earmuffs. They're noise suppressors.

Q: You've said you sometimes have a hard time controlling Skink. Does this mean you don't have everything plotted out from the beginning?

A: I have some "what ifs" in my mind, but I have no idea how my books are going to end. That's kind of cool, maybe, but also scary.

Q: Writing for adults or for kids — do you have a preference?

A: Many writers of adult fiction have taken a shot at the kids market. Popular writers such as James Patterson and John Grisham have been successful at it, but what all who've tried it have discovered is that it's tough. And the reason it's tough: Kids are really smart. So, if you're not at the top of your game, you're going to lose them.

Q: Writing for kids versus adults: How are the rewards different?

A: I wasn't prepared for the amount of mail, the hundreds and hundreds of wonderful letters I get all the time from kids. Their letters are sharp, funny, perceptive and they always want to know when my next book is coming. That's been such a high.

Q: You've been compared with great humorists, from Mark Twain and Will Rogers to Woody Allen.

A: That's an honor, of course. Satire can be such an effective weapon. The goal is to make people laugh about something that's pretty serious — but they will still get the main point. No one does it better than Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Stephen Colbert — using acerbic comedy as sly commentary, making you laugh about something that's deadly serious and demands our attention.

Q: What can you say about the next book you're writing?

A: I don't like to talk about a book while I'm working on it. The story, once again, came from a real story in the news that seemed pretty unbelievable and bizarre, but it really happened. OK, I will tell you this much: A traffic accident that involved nudity and a razor blade.