The Daily Campus

Issue date: 3/2/09 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Nick Hart Author Tim Dorsey speaks to a group in the Co-op about his newly released novel, 'Nuclear Jellyfish' Friday.

Author Tim Dorsey sometimes has a little trouble describing Serge A. Storms, the central character of his South Florida comedy novels, to new audiences.

"He's tall, he's wiry, he's taut. He's got little flecks of gray on the sides of his hair. I've got the female audience, so he's got to be handsome," said Dorsey.

Tall, wiry, handsome. Sounds good so far. What could be the problem?

"He's a serial killer that you root for," Dorsey continued, to the shock and laughter of his audience. "But he only goes after the jerks, the scam artists. And because he lives in Florida, he's really busy."

So began an inside look at the life and work of Tim Dorsey, held at the UConn Co-op last Friday. Dorsey is the author of ten novels in the saga of Serge A. Storms, and is currently touring to promote Nuclear Jellyfish, the latest in the series.

Curious new readers and devoted fans both showed up to hear Dorsey talk about his work, his life, and the bizarre, often unbelievable world of South Florida.

"What about Florida is producing these books? Well, spend a week there," said Dorsey. "You couldn't ask for any better locale as a writer. The people, the stories, they actually expand how weird you can get in your books."

Dorsey talked about how his years as a Florida journalist helped inspire him to begin a career in fiction. He began work on his first novel, "Florida Roadkill," while working as the night metro editor at The Tampa Tribune. Listening to the police scanner late into the night, Dorsey would hear tales of hapless criminals that begged to be preserved in more than newspaper stories.

"Oftentimes robbers or criminals, before they're caught, they think they're just the coolest customers," Dorsey said. "One guy took a limo to rob a bank. He was just ripped out of his gourd."

Dorsey's favorite story provided inspiration for the creation of Serge's drunken sidekick Coleman. In the story, a man walked into a bank and slipped a stolen bag of money down the front of his jeans.

"He walked right out, and the dye bag went off. He went down, and he didn't get back up again soon," Dorsey explained. "And that's how Serge met Coleman in a jail cell."

Continued...

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