Key West Stories | A Blog by Rick Skwiot

Want to know what’s really happening in the Southernmost Point? Author, blogger, Rick Skwiot chronicles Key West life and its odd inhabitants, past and present.

Iguana go home!

February 13, 2012 Blog

Key West should perhaps look to Puerto Rico to address its iguana problem. The government there is proposing an eradication program that would train volunteers to capture the invasive and destructive monsters and export the meat for $6 a pound. “That is a lot more than chicken,” said Daniel Galan Kercado, secretary of the Department [...]

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Examiner.com reviews “spicy” Key West Story

February 9, 2012 Blog

Examiner.com St. Louis literary reviewer Linda Austin recently wrote of Key West Story‘s “colorful characters, seedy hotels and smoldering women.” You can read the full review here.

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Interview: Where to shove your literary vision and other writerly insights

February 7, 2012 Blog

Writer and poet David Alan Lucas has posted an interview with me on his blog, “Coffee with David.” In it I discuss how I became a writer, my desire to have a drink with the French writer Colette, and the Kosovic Theory on where best to shove your literary vision. You can read the interview [...]

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Key West book launch party set for Friday, Feb. 10

February 6, 2012 Blog

For those of you in Key West and vicinity, I hope you can make it to a reading/signing/book-launch party for Key West Story this coming Friday, Feb. 10, at the Coffee Plantation, 713 Caroline Street. Beer, wine and daiquiris will be served, along with coffee, tea, etc. We’re gathering at 5 p.m. for cocktails. I’ll [...]

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The Hemingway Project interview on Key West Story

February 2, 2012 Blog

Allie Baker of The Hemingway Project recently interviewed me from Chile about Key West Story and its portrayal of a younger Ernest Hemingway reincarnate. In addition to discussing Hemingway, we veer into sexual politics, my “harsh” assessment of his first wife Hadley Richardson, the novel The Paris Wife, Key West culture and writing craft. You [...]

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Questionable Key West

January 30, 2012 Blog

Today’s Key West Citizen reports an assault where police are looking for “a white man 40 to 50 years old, with a question mark tattooed on his head.” Makes me wonder what he was so puzzled about.

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Random Key West culture…

January 29, 2012 Blog

…Saturday night I stop into Charlie’s Grocery on William Street, which sells Cuban sandwiches and cafe con leche. Behind the counter sit two Bangladeshi guys watching a reality show on the TV affixed over the front door—Bangla television, they tell me, direct from the old country via their satellite dish… …Earlier, on Duval Street, I [...]

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Cuba in Key West?

January 23, 2012 Blog

Saturday at the Winn-Dixie supermarket here I couldn’t find Brussels sprouts so asked the produce man if he had any. He had no idea what I was talking about as he didn’t speak English, and my Spanish failed me. So he called over the young, bilingual manager who was nearby and who led me to [...]

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On cruise ships, Key West and Churchill

January 21, 2012 Blog

An ongoing debate simmers here in Key West about widening the shipping channel to allow even bigger cruise ships to stop by. Seems a dubious ploy–more of the “worsening through improvement” that Conchs moan about. Already we have hundreds of ships a year dumping hundreds of thousands of day-tourists onto a small island and a [...]

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The pleasure of reincarnating Ernest Hemingway

January 17, 2012 Blog

My thanks to Mason Canyon for the opportunity to guest blog today on her Thoughts in Progress website. There I write about what it was like hanging out with Ernest Hemingway, in my imagination, while writing Key West Story. As I note, it was like making a new friend I can always count on. Read [...]

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