Now it’s time to learn more about the authors we read. . .
What drew you to the genre you write?
Florida did. I’m a Gulf Coast kid at heart — and even now, writing from the Tennessee mountains, it’s still the place that owns my imagination: funny and heartbroken and a little unhinged, full of one-of-a-kind spots quietly getting bulldozed for another gas station. Carl Hiaasen and Tim Dorsey showed me you could write that Florida fast and funny and still mean every word. I just wanted to add the ache underneath the comedy — the places worth saving — and see if a road-trip mystery could carry both at once.
How did you come up with your pseudonym?
Nothing clever, I’m afraid — they’re simply my initials.
Tell us how you got into writing.
It comes down to one book: Tim Dorsey’s Florida Roadkill. I read it and saw, clear as a fresh coat of Florida sun, the exact ridiculous, glorious thing I wanted to do. Years later I directed a video for one of Tim’s contests with my friend Cash Cutler, came in second — and won the grand prize of a whole reading life, which turned out to be pizza in a motel room with Tim himself, teaching two Clearwater kids how you build a road on a page. I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.
What jobs have you held before, during, and/or after you became a writer?
A little of everything: a decade in hospitality, then sales and sales management, newspaper publisher and editor, entrepreneur, a decade in the horticulture industry, and tech and software. Writing hasn’t paid a full-time salary yet — not even now — but I’m hopeful that someday it might.
How many books do you have published?
The Long Way is my debut novel and the first of the Department of Small Wonders series.
Where do you write?
Everywhere. A laptop, my home office — and stacks of notebooks I stash anywhere I might end up, because the good lines never wait for a desk.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Comic crime fiction, first and always — the Florida strain especially. Give me Hiaasen and Dorsey, the books tearing along at ninety where the heart sneaks up on you at a rest stop. Beyond that, I’ll read anything with a strong sense of place and a wry voice — road novels, Southern fiction, stories that love the people nobody else bothers to write about. If a book can make me laugh and then quietly break my heart three pages later, that’s my genre.
What is something people would be surprised to know about you?
I love to whitewater kayak, I’m scary good at table tennis, and I will happily cross state lines for epic barbecue.
Who is an author you admire?
Tim Dorsey, without a doubt — for the speed, the mischief, and the love of Florida running under all of it; and Carl Hiaasen for the same reasons, a little more buttoned-up. Past my Florida guys, it’s a mixed convoy: Poe, for the craft and the beautiful dread; Lord Byron, for the Romantic swagger and the sheer nerve of the man; Thoreau, who taught me that paying close attention to a place is its own kind of devotion; John Grisham, for the pure engine of a story you can’t set down; and Dr. Seuss, whom I’ll defend to anyone as one of the great American writers — nobody ever did more with joy and a well-made-up word. And though he’s a songwriter, Jimmy Buffett taught me as much about writing as any of them: how to be funny and wistful in the same breath, and how to make people homesick for a place they’ve never been.
Have you any advice for aspiring or beginning writers?
Write the thing only you can write — the world has plenty of competent books and not nearly enough honest ones. Put the real place, the real ache, and the real joke on the page, then finish it, because a done draft you’re a little embarrassed by beats a perfect one still living in your head. And take the long way. The detours are the book.
What is next for you?
Book Two, The Last Great Road Trip, lands December 1 — Miles and the crew go cross-country this time, Florida to a wedding out in Santa Barbara, with a vanished father and a hive of bees along for the ride. After that, more of the series; the whole road’s already mapped. The plan is a new book about every six months, so nobody has to wait long for the next stretch of highway.
Where can we find you?
I’m @thelongwaybook on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, X, and YouTube, and L.B. Phillips on Facebook. The Long Way is on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover — and the socials are the best place to keep up with the series and the “Places Worth Saving” spotlights. Come say hello; I answer.
NOW TO HAVE SOME FUN . . .
Breakfast, lunch, or dinner
Lunch. Especially a Red Robin cheeseburger.
Fruits or vegetables
Both equally — but the tie goes to the pineapple.
Sweet or salty snacks
Salty. Pretzels, cashews, the whole crunchy tribe.
Ice cream, cake, or pie
A tie: Dulce de Leche ice cream and Key Lime pie.
Cooking, baking, or dining out
Cooking and dining out, both, gladly.
City life or country living
Country.
Beach or mountain
For decades, beach — but now, mountains.
Early bird or night owl
Night owl.
Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall
Fall.
Extrovert or introvert
An extroverted introvert.
AND EVEN MORE FUN . . .
What is your favorite movie?
Fletch.
You are stranded on a deserted island. What are your three must-haves?
A water purifier, a fishing pole, and bait.
My bio:
L.B. Phillips grew up in the Tampa Bay area, on the sunburned, salt-rimmed, gloriously independent Florida that keeps getting flattened into parking lots and franchise signs — the Florida his books are trying to save. These days he writes from Knoxville, Tennessee, having traded the beaches for the mountains because he wanted seasons that weren’t just hurricane season — autumn most of all, which Tampa Bay has never once managed to produce. His debut novel, The Long Way, opens The Department of Small Wonders, a warm, funny Gulf Coast road-trip mystery in the Carl Hiaasen and Tim Dorsey tradition, powered by the overlooked people and disappearing places worth pulling over for. He writes with the windows down.