Bathed in orange sunshine and perched on a wooden boat dock railing overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway in Clearwater Beach, Florida, the seagull smoothed her feathers, cocked her head and stared at me.

“I know, Margot,” I said. “I know.”

My editor and manager Stephanie to whom I am married grinned at me from across the patio table.

“Yes, yes,” I said. “You planting the seed in my head sprouted a fruitful wild orchard of overgrown madness.”

As Harry Nillsson sang, “She put de lime in de coconut.”

I drank ’em bot’ up.

About 2 1/2 years after wrapping up a whirlwind 50-chapter novel called Swan Dive! published as a free serialization on my website, the time had come to again plunge deep into Gulf Coast culture and soar. My publisher Lee Sebastiani at Avventura Press, Stephanie and I decided to take this freaky subtropical tale of intrigue to new heights with a major rewrite, update and publication as a polished new paperback available everywhere books are sold.

Margot, who plays an important part in the adventure, showed up to greet me the week before Christmas at Frenchy’s Oasis Motel where Stephanie and I hide out whenever we can and eat grouper and the famous fish spread at Frenchy’s Saltwater Café right across the street. Stephanie, Margot, a diverse cast of characters and an increasingly mean society helped make up my mind to rise again.

The plot took shape as I drank Nicaraguan rum and fresh sweet orange juice on the patio outside our retro efficiency and started taking notes in a used reporter’s notebook. Like the misfit I am and proud to be, I welcomed my role as an outlaw wordslinger ready, willing and able to create original stories tattooed with my indelible personal brand.

Turning 75 this year I take everything personally and am sick of listening to well-meaning people ask if I’m retired. Not everyone can or wants to be a cultural desperado. But the best of us are outlaws, one-percenters who let our freak flags fly. People like us know even good people drown in the mainstream. Instead we soar, gliding high above routine the way my characters do in Swan Dive! No matter your age, my novels offer the wings that propel you airborne. If you need to kiss the sky, I invite you to lift off with us and ascend on a head trip designed to help free your mind.

Set in Clearwater Beach Swan Dive! tells the tale of old-timer Sam Bennett, a grizzled and lovable eccentric who writes poetry, lives alone in a seedy room, drinks martinis ‘til his face starts to bleed and wants to fly like the seagulls he loves more than people. Will he or won’t he fly? Can he possibly embrace his dreams?

Meanwhile back-to-back killer hurricanes hammer the Tampa Bay area while RayRay’s Elbow Room beach bar owner RayRay Gagliardi wields a mean hockey stick in a brawl. Russian mobster real estate developers poison the environment. ICE freezes humanity. A Black Afghanistan combat vet hunts a white ex-cop from Philly for familial revenge. And smooth-talking twin AI chatbots try to destroy the world one best friend at a time. Swan Dive! alerts society to potential deadly consequences that might define America’s future.

We’re tentatively planning an autumn launch in Clearwater Beach and a funky barnstorming book tour to Key West and back, a route Margot herself has traveled on vacation with her eye-patch-wearing pirate parrot boyfriend Dillon. But that’s another flighty yarn that packs birds-of-a-feather into the pages of Swan Dive!

So prepare for take-off.

Get ready to fly!