Writers are often asked why they decided to write their book, and usually the answer is simple: a deep, frustrating need to explore the world through words. Beyond that compulsion, though, thereโs often a secondary force at playโsome urge to right a wrong, to perform justice on something too big to battle alone. So we try to connect to a larger conversation by reaching deeper into a strength weโve cultivated through intense training and personal sacrifice: our voice.
Writing is done primarily for the process. Those searching for a huge payday will be gravely disappointed.
Often, though, the readerโs real question behind the question is: What intimate thing can you share with me so I too can see the personal value in the thing youโre asking me to value too? Like, where did this book come from? Which is a more interesting query. Not that writers must lay bare their lives before the surgical publicโall that must be said is said in the book. But we must admit that writing is a vulnerable act, one we ultimately hope to share with a willing counterpart, the reader. Being the type of person who overshares anyway, who enjoys the wonky, muddy weirdness of life and all its twists, let me dip a little into the where my why came from.
I grew up in a small town in Florida that had everything a young boy could want: acres of unspoiled woods, easy access to beaches, and an endless supply of 7-Elevens with ice cold Slurpees. Poverty as a concept barely registered with me, except at dinnertime, when it was spaghetti again, or fried hot dogs with canned veggies and Kraft mac & cheese. Or at school, when I was being teased by other kids for wearing knock-off Airwalks from Walmart. Otherwise, damn, I had a bike that could fly, homemade ramps we built from shoveled mud and stolen plywood, and a chipped-up skateboard that I raced down backstreets well past nightfall.
Like many small towns, ours had a clear divide between the haves and have-nots. Beachsideโthe Space Coastโs version of East Eggโglinted with conspicuous wealth, mansions and salmon-colored condos rising beyond the Indian River. While back on the mainland, the neighborhoods splayed out like jagged shards from a shattered mirror, sectioned for the middle class, the upper working poor, the dirt poor, and the dead-ass broke. We were in the latter category, hailing from the pinelands of Palm Bay. Many of the wealthier folks worked for NASA and the aerospace giants: Martin Marietta, Northrop Grumman, Harris. If you had a job in the industry, you got a tidy ranch-style bungalow in Cocoa Beach, Merritt Island, Satellite. The rest of us made do with singlewide trailers or block houses caked in stucco. On one side you had engineers, exploiter of human ingenuity and our nationโs adventurous dreams, and on the other, my father laying block while my mother boxed Little Caesars pizzas.
When you pack a town full of kids with meager prospects, interesting things occur. They start drinking and smoking youngโme at eleven. They also began having sex youngโme at twelve. Churches were everywhere, but itโs hard to place your trust in divinity after your pastor runs off with the organist, or when the replacement pastor turns out to be an ex-gang member who hosts anti-queer rallies, book-burning pot lucks, and seminars to teach his flock how back-masking on vinyl records had Satan leaking into our ears. Some members clung to their faith, but many abandoned it, or merely ignored it until moments of real crisis, like at a dog track, or with an unexpected pregnancy.
So what would become of a recent high school grad, in such economic and social conditions?
Youโd go immediately to work. Carpentry, masonry, roofingโjobs reliant on new construction. And new construction relied on new money, and most of the new money in our region came from tourism relating to the Space Program.
Each space shuttle launch was worth roughly five million dollars to Brevard County, so you can imagine the resulting economic plummet during times of crisis. Tourism, our life source, saw a lot of pullback over the yearsโafter the Challenger explosion, post-9/11, the Columbia disaster, the Great Recessionโs housing crisis, and finally the grounding of the shuttle fleet in 2011, which cost the Space Coast over ten thousand jobs, many from high-level professions. It was an elastic style of living, feast or famine, and for those working in the trades or tourism industry, a constant source of anxiety and frustration.
Yes, there were always minimum wage jobs, like stocking groceries at Publix and Winn-Dixieโbecause poor people still had to eat. Auto shops remained busy tooโmost people I knew drove beaters at least ten years out from the lot. And houses still required upkeep, which kept plumbers and electricians in demand. But not everyone had those skills, and in tougher times, labor jobs shifted to day-labor jobs. Trying to survive the rise and falls, some people I knew searched out new ways to make a buck.
Drugs.
When cornered economically, what are you gonna do? Eat your morality? The rich didnโt seem bound by any particular codeโthey skirted every law put forward, always embroiled in some scandal involving duping people out of their well-earned paychecks. As above, so below, we figured. Our rationalization was, well, at least we made people forget their problems for a little while.
I could say I primarily wrote Florida Palms to work through some frustrations of my youth, including the manipulation of young kids by exploitative adults. But portraying the drug-life wasnโt the main draw for me, it was about identifying the reasons why people abandon hope and dignity and lawfulness in order to survive, and portraying that struggle truthfully. Itโs watching the promise of the American dream fade from someoneโs reality when they choose survival over social mores. And in their struggles maybe learn a bit more about myself, and about a world I find myself increasingly at odds with. If I am compelled to write, I am compelled further to write with intentionality. For me the struggle is the purpose.
Joe Panโs debut crime novel, FLORIDA PALMS, was recently published Simon & Schuster, available in stores everywhere. He lives in Hollywood, California.
