Fame & Fortune: Novelist Carl Hiaasen Novelist Carl Hiaasen always kept his day job
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Bankrate: Did writing novels on the side lift you from poverty?

Carl Hiaasen: The first book contracts I got were ridiculously small. Even "Tourist Season" was very, very small. I did some ghostwriting on a couple books and I think I got $500 for the whole book. And that was big money for me. With the thrillers I wrote with Bill Montalbano ("Powder Burn," "Trap Line," "A Death in China"), I think we got a $5,000 advance on those.

Bankrate: "Tourist Season" is such a classic that it's hard to imagine it didn't pay well.

Carl Hiaasen: That's because they didn't know if I could write a whole novel by myself. "Tourist Season" was so different from the other three that the publishers wondered if they were taking a chance. It was a very unusual book and they didn't know how to approach the marketing of it. I was just happy to get published at that point; I certainly wasn't writing for the money. The amount of time you put into a novel, at that level you can't expect to get compensated even by newspaper standards. Each book, the advances went up. It wasn't an overnight thing; it was a gradual building up. Getting on the bestseller list regularly, the advances became substantial. I felt I was always treated fairly; I never felt like I was being underpaid by the publisher. Most people don't understand that you don't get it all at once; it's spread out over a number of years.

Bankrate: You always kept your day job. Was that due to an underlying skepticism that the fiction writing would work out?

Carl Hiaasen: Absolutely right. There's no business as unstable for a writer as book publishing. I mean, most people get a paycheck regardless of what kind of week or month or year they've had, they still get a check every week. The security of having the paycheck from the Herald coming in was essential, because there are gaps in royalty payments and gaps in the advances you get. At the beginning of each year, I have no idea what I'm going to make that year, none whatsoever, so it's pretty tough to budget when you've got a family, a college plan for your kids, this and that. I could have a great year or I could have a lousy year. If someone in Hollywood buys one of the books, suddenly it's a great year. It is uncertain. I think all writers live with that insecurity unless you're Stephen King or John Grisham and you know that your worst-case scenario is going to be pretty damn good.

Bankrate: Do you take an active role in investing your money?

Carl Hiaasen: Yes. I'm very conservative. I have a couple of financial advisers and I trust their decisions; they don't make a move without telling me, but by and large I believe them. But it's all conservative stuff. When there has been a point in your life that you haven't had any money, you are very careful with it, and I am. You look for the balanced portfolio and all that stuff that kind of bores me to even ruminate about. But if you're a responsible parent and adult, you do it. With a 4-year-old, a 13-year-old stepson and a wife and two grandchildren, I have a lot more that I think about now than I did when I was younger and had more limited responsibilities. But I don't read the Wall Street Journal everyday and I don't study the stock market; I rely on these folks to do that for me. If something's working, I'll leave it for 10 years. I don't buy or sell or day trade; that scares the hell out of me. I can't think of anything more tedious or boring or uninteresting.

Bankrate: Do you happen to favor environmental stocks?

Carl Hiaasen: Yes, I've got some of those funds. There are certain stocks that I will not own, Disney and others that clearly I have moral problems with and would be hypocritical for me to own. Having said that, I also have a fair share of mutual funds and I try to keep track of everything that's in them but sometimes you can't; some of these have hundreds of stocks. But in terms of major investments, there are some things my advisers know they're not even going to buy because I don't want them in there. If I'm going to rant and rave about something in a newspaper column, it would be pretty hypocritical of me to go out and buy their stock. You try to be as socially careful and responsible as you can.