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Like the main character in my "Mace Bauer Mysteries," my family roots were set in Florida long before Walt Disney and "Miami Vice" came to define the state. As a Florida native, and a former, longtime reporter for USA Today, I know every burg and back road. I've visited spots not found on maps: Molasses Junction. Muse. And now, Himmarshee, my own tiny slice of "Authentic Florida."
Home to cowboys and church suppers, Himmarshee is hot, and swarming with mosquitoes. And that's about all it has in common with Carl Hiaasen's Florida. This isn't the state everyone thinks they know. To create it, I borrowed a little from the present-day ranching town of Okeechobee, and a bit from long-ago southern Florida, where I'm from.
Not far from Ft. Lauderdale, in Davie, my daddy walked to town, leading the family's cow. A generation later, when I was a girl, my Quarter horse and I galloped over the same terrain. Dotted then with citrus groves and ranches, it's all interstates and strip malls now.
The difference between Mace and Mama's hometown and mine: Himmarshee may be threatened by over-development, but I'll never let it be ruined.
Born in Fort Lauderdale on Jan. 6, 1954, I'm a middle sister - just like Mace. I went to elementary school at Southside, high school at Stranahan, undergrad at Florida Atlantic University (This was PF: Pre-Football, when the big campus sports were tennis and water polo). What a culture shock when I headed "up north" to attend the University of Georgia, home of rabid "Dawgs" fans and alumni, who return for football games in huge RVs with horns that toot out "Dixie."
I earned a master's degree in psychology, and then switched to journalism, much to the dismay of my Ph.D. committee. Like most things in my life, it wasn't planned. The J-school was right next to the Psych building. One night, our vending machine ran out of my favorite lemon-cream cookies. I wandered across the courtyard in search of junk food, and found a new career.
It was a good one, too, for more than 20 years. I started in 1982 at the News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla., where I would have paid them to let me write all those articles about manatees and panthers, cops and courts. My favorite assignment: Writing about playing a zombie when ''Day of the Dead" shot on Sanibel Island.
My fellow extras praised my excellent lurching.
A News-Press bonus: I met my future husband, TV reporter Kerry Sanders, covering damage to the winter vegetable crop in Immokalee, Fla. We both shivered in a pre-dawn freeze, waiting to see if the green peppers would turn into popsicles.
Kerry and I have been married since 1989. No kids, no pets. We had goldfish once. Turned out badly.
After the News-Press, I moved to Tampa, Fla., in 1986. Gannett News Service gave me the chance to roam the state, writing features: The Strawberry King of Plant City. The Swizzle Stick Sultan of St. Pete. And, to prove it wasn't all a giggle, the haunted life of the sole survivor of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge collapse.
Then, in 1991, it was back to my hometown of Fort Lauderdale. Kerry landed a job with NBC in neighboring Miami. The occasional stories I'd been writing for Gannett-owned USA Today became a flood. Miami may be crazy, but what a news town! Riots. Murdered tourists. Hurricanes. Elian. I kept busy, traveling over Florida and the south, racking up bylines.
And then, 9/11. So much death and destruction. So much changed. Anthrax. Terrorism. Wars. I felt sad all the time, interviewing people who had lost so much. One of my last assignments for the paper was to profile soldiers killed in battle. Grieving parents; spouses; kids. My 50th birthday rolled around, and I decided I couldn't do it anymore. Life's too short, as they say, and I'd seen over and over the truth of that.
So, mystery-writing beckoned: A world where I could punish the bad and reward the good; where I get to say how the stories turn out. And not thrillers or dark suspense or serial killers stalking kids. I chose to write light, funny mysteries--which basically means very little blood and nobody gets autopsied. And, I throw in some romance, too.
MAMA DOES TIME and MAMA RIDES SHOTGUN are traditional mysteries with a comic, Southern edge. Agatha Christie Meets "My Name is Earl." Mama, married four times, wears sherbet-colored pantsuits and performs beauty parlor aromatherapy at Hair Today Dyed Tomorrow.
Now, I don't care who you are, as Larry the Cable Guy would say, that's funny!
And don't we all need a laugh now and then?
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