Tampa Speakeasy: December 2008

Man Overboard

MAN OVERBOARD

In 1994, city workers in Tampa, Florida, uncovered a series of underground passageways and rooms while installing a new storm drainage system in the old Latin town known as Ybor City. One chamber held an oak bar with empty wine and liquor bottles, suggesting that the place might have been a speakeasy during Prohibition.

Also found in this room were boxes of premium handmade cigars, a straw fedora, a gold key-shaped pin with a missing stone and a file, dated 1928, containing the case notes of a private detective named William Heart, a.k.a. Billy Corazon. This is his story.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Poets and Pineapples

Geez, it's been four months since I posted anything on my brand spankin' new blog. Four months I'd be happy to just completely wipe from my memory banks. There have been some bright points, though. Seeing poets Gianna Russo and Silvia Curbelo read again at David Audet's word fest Deep Carnivale. Discovering Emanuel Leto. His reading was so good, so evocative of Ybor's angsty history, it almost made me cry. In addition to being a spoken word star around these parts, he has been managing editor of the wonderful Cigar City magazine, but recently moved to a position as outreach program coordinator at the Tampa Bay History Center.

Ah, the other bright point? Growing these outrageous pineapples all over my yard.

I'll pull out of this malaise soon and start posting regularly about stuff you might not know about Florida and the Tampa Bay area.

About This Blog

MAN OVERBOARD is a fictional detective story based on the suspicious real-life disappearance of a notorious real estate developer during the 1920s land boom in Florida. The mystery was never solved but several clues remained, torturing the author until she was forced to make up her own solution. Some characters are completely made up and others are based on actual people. The names have been changed to protect the innocent, the guilty and the author.

I started this blog to publish the book in installments because I can't stand the thought of actually trying to get it published and sold. I just want to tell the story.

What Some People Have Said About Man Overboard

"Man Overboard is a vastly entertaining, compelling read, and almost as great a pleasure as freshly made flan. Lara Diamond's mystery carries the reader backwards in time to Prohibition in Ybor City with great historical accuracy. It is impossible for me to look at my hometown Tampa and its tradition of Gasparilla in quite the same way once completing Man Overboard."
—Tim Ohr
Author of Florida's Fabulous Natural Places and Under the Gun

"With lyrical imagery and an intriguing set of characters, (Susan Edwards) takes her readers back to a world of heat, wicked dames and murder. From the first word, the sights, scents and sounds of 1920s Tampa boiled off the pages and enticed me into the fascinating tale! I felt the burning sun and breathed in the pungent aroma of fine cigars - while trailing alongside detective Billy Heart on a complex case that gets hotter by the minute."
--Sahara Kelly
Author of dozens of novels, including Madame Charlie