You might say that A.C. Brooks has seen it all in his 20 years at the area’s watering holes, restaurants, fishing boats and boat docks. And what Brooks, a Lantana resident, hasn’t seen he’s made up in his first book, Foul Hooked.
Subtitled A Shagball and Tangles Adventure, the 463-page paperback tells the tale of a struggling TV fishing-show host, Shagball, and his newfound friend, Tangles, as they help an elderly marina owner and her niece outwit a corrupt mayor, the incompetent son of a local restaurant mogul and a Jersey mobster.
Tangles, by the way, is a dwarf and a former Elvis impersonator whom Shagball “foul hooked’’ out of the ocean after Tangles threw himself over the side of a cruise ship. You’ll have to read the book to find out why Little E left the ship.
Brooks weaves Shagball and Tangles through a fast-paced story that features characters and locales familiar to almost anyone who has spent more than a few months eating and drinking between Lantana and Boynton Beach. For example, there’s the Water’s Edge marina set in between two waterside restaurant bars — the Habana Boat and Three Jacks in Boynton Beach — as well as the Ole House in Lantana.
Brooks, 49, based the Shagball character on his own time as a host of a locally produced TV fishing show called Reel Adventures.
“I was a co-host,’’ Brooks said. “There were three of us. I did it for a year-and-half and then I quit.’’
And yes, Brooks briefly had a dwarf sidekick.
“In real life he was a chef, so the producers used him in the cooking segment of the show, helping our regular chef,’’ Brooks said. “He did it for two or three episodes and then it just kind of blew up and went away.’’
Well, not entirely. Brooks took his original idea of having a first mate on the show and fleshed it out into the Tangles character. Some of the other characters in Foul Hooked, including Rudy the bartender, Hambone and Tooda, are based on Brooks’ friends and fishing buddies. But the story itself, Brooks emphasizes, is pure fiction.
“Hambone still charters out of the marina down there,’’ said Brooks as he looked across the water from the upper level of the Old Key Lime House. “I got a call from Tooda the other day. He was out at a funeral and had someone there who wanted to ask me a question about the book. It was the daughter of the woman who owned the marina. I had no idea that it was owned by an old lady who sold it. I just made up that stuff.’’
With the Shagball (Brooks was a walk-on member of the Southern Methodist University golf team) and Tangles characters firmly implanted on his mind, Brooks took his motivation to write Foul Hooked from a newspaper story he read about British thriller author Lee Child. Child (whose real name is Jim Grant) had been fired from his job as a producer for Granada TV but wanted to stay in the media, so he pursued writing. His first novel, Killing Floor, was a commercial and critical success.
“I’ve read all his books,’’ said Brooks. “I grew up on John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series (McGee lived on a 52-foot house boat in Fort Lauderdale) and have read a lot of early Carl Hiaasen.’’
With his Florida setting and fishing-themed backdrop, Foul Hooked reads somewhat like Hiaasen’s early books, particularly Double Whammy, which takes its title from the name of a fishing lure.
Brooks’ book gets its title from the phrase “foul hooked,” which basically means to hook a fish accidentally by some part of its body other than the mouth.
A commercial real estate broker by trade, Brooks found himself with a lot of time on his hands after the real estate crash, so, like Child, and at the urging of wife Penny, decided to pursue writing.
“I didn’t really know where to begin when I started,’’ Brooks said. “I had an idea of how I would start the book. I had no idea of the plot line or anything else, but I thought, ‘Let’s start it and take it from there.’ ”
Brooks began Foul Hooked on July 20, 2009. He remembers the date because it was the 40th anniversary of the first American moon landing.
“I had a ball,’’ Brooks said. “I’d write a couple chapters and my wife would read what I’d written and make a few tweaks. A couple times I got a little off track and she brought me back.’’
Brooks finished the manuscript in November 2009 and gave it to a few family and friends, each of whom encouraged him to find an agent to help publish it.
Like most first-time writers, Brooks came away with rejection letters and dead ends. All the while he kept refining the manuscript and then found CreateSpace, a division of Amazon.com that helps authors self-publish their books.
The editors at Create Space laid out the book, formatted it and created the cover. He’s currently writing a sequel to Foul Hooked, which he again plans to self-publish, “unless something happens in the meantime. The goal is the get a real book deal.’’
After he got his first shipment of Foul Hooked, Brooks took a copy to Old Key Lime House manager Kristine Sullivan.
“She loved it. She wouldn’t let the owner (Wayne Cordero) have her book, so they bought a copy on Amazon.’’
The book sells for $16.99 on Amazon.com, but sells at the Old Key Lime House for $15.
“I haven’t sold that many on Amazon. This is where I’ve sold the most of them,’’ Brooks said.
Shagball would have it no other way.
Brooks will be signing his book from 6-9 p.m. on May 5 at Hand’s Stationers, 325 E. Atlantic Ave. in Delray Beach.
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