You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

Today I'm in Vero Beach, Florida, a pleasant oceanside community outside Orlando, which is home to a hugely successful writer who has made Florida the backdrop for a

lifetime of newspaper journalism and novel writing. Carl Hyerson takes the picture postcard images

of beaches, theme parks and the Everglades, and adds his own filter of darkness and slees. His Florida is being strangled by

greed, corruption and environmental vandalism. It's peopled by crooks, chances, and oddballs. His novels

are darkly comic, but anger pulses through them too, and sometimes it is deeply personal.

Is Carl Hyacens, Florida, the place where the American dream turns sour?

Well, I'm delighted to say he joins me now.

Welcome to Hard Talk.

Happy to have me on, thank you.

Here we sit in Florida, the state you were born in,

raised in, have worked in all your life, and you are still here. What keeps you in the state

that you confess is crazy? It's where my family is from. I think one of the things about

writers is you have to care about what you write about and as messed up as this state is. It's where my family is from. I think one of the things about writers is you have to care about what you write about

and as messed up as this state is, is absolutely screwed up and insane as this state is.

I still care about it.

All my family's here.

Either that or I'm just too lazy to leave.

But I will also say that there are weeks when you see the stream of headlines that come out of Florida

where even a diehard Floridian says there's got to be someplace better to live and less crazy.

And I have those weeks where I've just, what am I doing here?

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