About the author

M.J. Carlson

<p>Like the caterpillar&rsquo;s question to Alice, I&rsquo;ve always found &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; to be the most difficult one to answer. More so because it has always struck me as less about personal trivia than the more esoteric aspects of personality, like &ldquo;what are your beliefs,&rdquo; and &ldquo;what is your philosophy,&rdquo; or &ldquo;what color are the glasses through which you peer at life?&rdquo; &mdash; not to be confused with the question I&rsquo;m more commonly asked &mdash; &ldquo;what color is the sky on your planet?&rdquo;</p><p></p><p>My home is Florida. It&rsquo;s who I am. But my Florida isn&rsquo;t tied tightly together by six-lane ribbons of asphalt, or littered with strutting, pastel, multi-million-dollar beach sandcastles. It&rsquo;s a Florida of scrub palms and sand spurs; of cool December beach breezes, forty-minute four o&rsquo;clock August thunderstorms, and sultry, honeysuckle-scented summer nights. And when I say Florida, I mean all of it. I&rsquo;ve lived in every corner of my prickly paradise, from the rusty buckle of the bible belt up in the northeast corner, to a stone&rsquo;s throw from Ft. Lauderdale&rsquo;s Slip F-18; from Gainesville&rsquo;s pines dripping with Spanish moss, to walking distance from where the road ended for Jack Kerouac. I&rsquo;ve watched the sun rise over the Atlantic and drop into the Gulf on the same day; walked the backroads; raced motorcycles across the Everglades under a full April moon; and awoke, bleary-eyed and cotton-mouthed, on Key West&rsquo;s Duval Street more than once. I wouldn&rsquo;t trade those memories for a mountain of gold.</p>