Local resident's letter inspires a novel
This article first ran Aug. 7, 2004.
A hundred pages into a letter to his son, Panama City’s Sparky Thorne realized what he was writing was going to be his first novel instead.
Thorne, a retired musician, said in an interview that he’d begun the letter to Larry Thorne to tell how a two-week gig in the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire became a nine-year stay for Sparky and his wife Donna.
“I wanted to write a letter so after my passing, my son would figure out why I left the greatest country in the world to live on a limestone rock,” Thorne, who co-owns Panama City’s Hurricane Grille with Donna Thorne, said.
100 pages into the letter, Thorne said, he realized it sounded more and more like a novel. He decided to make it one and self-published the end result, “The Carnival Never Ends,” earlier this summer.
“After about 50 people read it, I had very positive feedback,” Thorne said, “so I looked into publishing. I found it’s very much like the music business; the larger the corporation, the harder it is to get through the door. (Self-publishing), I sold less but the market was much better.”
The novel, tells the story of Bob Kaufman, a corporate attorney who discovers he’s inherited a resort in the Caribbean. When he visits his property, Kaufman has to cope with the different lifestyle on the islands, and with a powerful cabal that has its own plans for the land.
Thorne said he and Donna might still be in Bonaire — “the imagery was gorgeous, the people were gentle, it had history and class” — if the economy hadn’t collapsed, which he jokes is partly his own fault.
“A young man from one of the political parties asked me to do a political jingle for an upcoming campaign,” Thorne said. “Because they had a theme song you could dance to, they got into power for the first time in 40 years, then the economy just went down the tubes.”
Thorne said when he and Donna decided to return to the states, they looked to find a “halfway point between reality and the island,” and opened a club in Key West: “We put paintings up on the wall Wednesday, on Thursday they put up an alert Hurricane Georges was coming through ... We moved to Key Largo, then three weeks later we learned Hurricane Mitch was coming through.”
Panama City, where Donna’s parents already lived, suddenly seemed a much better choice, Thorne said. In addition to running the Hurricane Grille there, Thorne is also 70 pages into a sequel novel, “Escape from Carnival,” which he said draws more heavily on his real-life experiences.
“It’s almost scary, it’s so close to real life,” Thorne said. “The third one will be called ‘Return to America’; we’ve been in shock since we returned after 10 years gone ... The first thing we saw on TV was the Jerry Springer show.”
Thorne said other shocks came from how disrespectful younger people were and how violent society seemed to have become.
“I’ve had people accost me in the restaurant because we didn’t have the particular dressing that we wanted,” Thorne said. “We make ours from scratch, we don’t have ranch.”
Thorne said he recommended aspiring writers ““write about what you really know in depth. And cultivate your ability to lie.” His book series, he said, “is like one long lie I’m having great fun telling.”
