Jay Davis, Karen Turville, and I created a Florida non-profit, GREEN FLASH SALVAGE, as a result of our work on the 1996 6th John D. MacDonald Conference in Sarasota, Florida. I chaired that event, and it was quite an experience, highlighted by a barbecue held at the MacDonald home on Siesta Key. The new owner very graciously let all 110 of us enjoy the meal while seated on the spacious veranda facing the Gulf of Mexico. We were also allowed to traipse through the home, which was almost as JDM left it. Other than the writing area ,whose wall had been removed opening up the living room quite a bit, JDM could have stepped into the home, looked around, and found everything quite familiar.
We decided to expand the area in which we were interested since so many of the current mystery novelists in Florida had paid tribute to the influence of JDM and they represented an opportunity to help showcase their books.
We have had only one event, but it was very successful in that 17 Florida authors participated in MYSTERY: THE FLORIDA CONNECTION (April, 2002) Nearly every panel had some reference to JDM.
Authors who attended included James Hall, Randy Wayne White, Aileen Schumacher, James Swain, Steve Glassman, Tim Dorsey, Les Standiford, Caroline Garcia-Aguilera, S.V. Date, M. Diane Vogt, Jonathan King, Jeff Lindsay, Vicki Hendricks, Stuart Kaminsky, E.C. Ayres, and Christine Kling, and Peter King.
If we decide to do another it will be publicized on this website.
