Without question, we have some of the most spectacular sunsets in the world. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I challenge anyone, anywhere, to prove me wrong. I’ve seen many beautiful sunsets in other places, but consistently, the spectacular Scenic 98 Coastal sunsets are incredible. 

For those who want to complain about the stickiness, I believe it’s the humidity that makes us number one in the world in sunsets. Just ask the folks who live on Dauphin Island.  It could be the green flash just as the sun disappears from view. Did you see it? I always claim to see it just to see others' reaction….

I received an email recently from Nic Schuck in Pensacola. Nic teaches English at Escambia High School and is an adjunct professor at the University of West Florida. After visiting with Woody Speed (The Lost Republic), he asked if I would help promote his latest book, Green Flash at Sunset, which was released on June 3. I told Nic I was traveling for a couple of weeks and needed something to read. He emailed me the e-book version, which I read on my iPad, and I loved it!

Writing and publishing a novel is a bold endeavor. I appreciate anyone who can do it well. There are endless stories of famous authors whose work was rejected dozens of times before finding a home. With technology, the process has become easier, though no less daunting.

After finishing Nic’s novel, his third, I arranged to meet him at his ‘office’ at Pensacola Bay Brewery after his teaching gig at Escambia High School. A native of Pensacola, his father retired as a Chief Petty Officer at Pensacola Naval Air Station the year after Nic was born. When Nic was 14, his dad passed away from complications from exposure to Agent Orange. 

He describes his teenage years as “undisciplined surfer beach bum” — sometimes imbibing in the lifestyle more than the sport, with no clue what to do with his life after graduating from high school. “I had no plans. When I was 19 or 20, a buddy, saying we could live cheaply, suggested we take a trip to Costa Rica.. We stayed about three months.” 

While in Costa Rica, a girl left him a copy of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, which Nic read and was intrigued by. His buddy, who suggested the trip, ended up in an unknown hospital in Costa Rica (a story used for his first novel, Native Moments). 

“I knew he was in the hospital, but I didn’t know which one. I was recounting the adventure to someone at our camp, and they said, ‘You should write that down.’ That was the catalyst for me to become a writer. I decided I wanted to write like Hemingway.”

After returning to the United States, Nic enrolled at the University of West Florida to study English and learn how to become a writer. “I went to college to learn to write. Allen Josephs, my professor, was a Hemingway scholar. From my experience in Costa Rica, I had the seeds of my first novel in my head. I knew what I wanted to do and worked hard.” He graduated at the age of 24, moved to Miami, and began teaching English in 2004. He also took weekend trips to Key West.

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After some teacher friends in Miami told him about Fantasy Fest, he took his first trip to Key West. He boarded a Greyhound bus at 6 am, dressed as Gilligan, and arrived around 11 am. “It was crazy. I couldn’t afford a hotel room, so I stayed up all night and caught the 6 am bus back to Miami.”

Living in Miami for three years, Nic says he picked up some new bad habits there. “I made great friends, immersed myself in the culture, and continued studying Hemingway. I will write that story about my early teaching years one day, but I might have to retire first.”

I asked Nic how long it took him to write his first book, Native Moments. “It took 17 years. I finished the first draft in seven years and started sending it to publishers.” An adage by author and screenwriter, Ray Bradbury, states that if you had one room in your house, and hung all your rejection letters on the walls, you would get one yes before you covered the entire room. “So that’s what I did. It took another ten years and many rewrites before I found a publisher to say yes.”

Writing Native Memories was an exercise in perseverance, says Nic. He started writing in 2000, finished the first draft in 2007, gave up on it, picked it back up in 2012, and published it in 2016. He stopped writing for nearly five years after that first round of rejections, but when his first daughter, Zoë, was born, he said, “I had this inner monologue, 'How am I going to convince her to follow her dreams if I give up on mine?” So he reopened the file of his nearly forgotten draft of Native Moments and continued working on it. 

Nic says he’s becoming a better writer with each book. His first two novels, Native Moments in 2016 and Panhandlers in 2018, were published by a small publishing house in Texas, called Waldorf. “I asked my professor, Allen Josephs, who now lives in Spain, to write an endorsement. ‘You’re not ready yet,’ he told me. He didn’t know that I already had a publisher. He did end up writing an endorsement for my second book, Panhandlers.” 

When the company closed in 2020, his two books were in danger of going out of print, but luckily, all the rights were reverted to Nic, with the files included. Instead of trying to find a new publisher, he went ahead and self-published them. 

Through that experience, he decided to self-publish his latest work, Green Flash at Sunset, through IngramSparks, a division of Ingram Content Group, one of the largest book publishing and distribution companies in the world, located in Nashville. 

“Publishing in today’s world is much easier. E-books, audiobooks, and hard or soft copies are on demand, so there is no middleman. The revenue percentage is better, too. Also, it had been seven years since my last book came out, and I didn’t want to wait any longer to go through the querying and rejection gauntlet of traditional publishing.”

In 2012, Nic launched Emerald Coast Tours, a historic tour of Pensacola via Segways. “A buddy of mine from Hawaii suggested it. They are 1 to 2-hour historic tours for up to 8 people. We are still doing them 13 years later. We also do Walking Pub Tours where we drink beer and tell stories of Pensacola’s past. I like to tell people that I’m a barroom historian.” 

Nic tells me they had a storefront office on Main Street at the time, and he had plenty of “down” time, and that was when he started writing again. “Finishing and publishing my first book was important to me. I had to prove to myself and my daughter that if I start something, I’ll finish it.”

He says his biggest influences as a writer are Hemingway and Jimmy Buffett. He mentioned Barry Hannah, who was a professor at the University of Alabama when I was in school, and wrote Airships. 92 in the Shade by Thomas McGuane, a close friend of Jimmy Buffett, is another favorite. He mentions Patrick Smith’s A Land Remembered and Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country as books I should read. Heaven of Mercury, written by Brad Watson, who was a writer in residence at the University of West Florida when Nic was in school, is another influence on his writing.

“Brad read one of my short stories and told me, ‘You might be cursed as a novelist.’ I took that to mean that I should become a novelist.” After Brad died in 2020, Nic realized many of his favorite writers were no longer living, so he started emailing his favorite living writers to let them know how much he enjoys their work. “I think it’s important for writers to hear that from their readers.” 

In 2018, Nic published Panhandlers, which is a collection of self-contained short stories that work like a novel. “It highlights the characters living amongst us that you don’t know exist. Some stories are from experiences I’ve had, and others I just made up. It came together as I was writing Native Moments.”

When he finished the first draft of Native Moments in 2007, he started writing a Key West novel immediately. That novel was forgotten for nearly fifteen years. “But then Julie and I honeymooned in Key West in 2019.” It was the first time Nic had been back since leaving Miami, and it triggered memories. That’s when he started writing Green Flash at Sunset. “I like fiction. You can still tell the history of a place, but play around with the narrative. You can take any bar you’ve been to and move it to wherever you want.”

Green Flash at Sunset is the result of many experiences in Nic’s life. He’s an adventurer at heart. At age 27, he went to Spain to participate in The Running of the Bulls held in Pamplona during the San Fermin Festival. Again, he couldn’t afford a hotel room, so he attempted to stay up all night so he wouldn’t miss the 6 am start time. He fell asleep on a park bench and was woken up by two Americans who gave him a beer and told him the run was starting soon. He made it on time and ran the entirety of the course, ending inside the Plaza de Toros.

Nic’s wife, Julie, hasn’t been to Pamplona, so he suggested they go in 2026 for the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Sun Also Rises. 

Julie is from New Orleans, and they always attend the New  Orleans Jazz Fest every May because the second week aligns with her birthday. They love supporting local musicians around the Scenic 98 Coastal area, including Grayson Capps, whose dad, novelist Ronald Everett  Capps, wrote Off Magazine Street, on which the movie A Love Song for Bobby Long is based. “We love visiting the Frog Pond in Silverhill.” 

The release party for Green Flash at Sunset, which is loosely based in Pensacola and Key West, will be held at Nic’s “office” at Pensacola Bay Brewery on June 29th, starting at 2 pm. Nic will be there to sign hard and soft copies of his latest work. Local musician, Pat Meusel, will be the entertainment, and artist Dan Dunn will have his artwork for sale. Pensacola Bay Brewery is offering pints of Panhandle Lager for $5.  It’s sure to be a good time!

You can order Green Flash at Sunset at Panhandle Books, or anywhere books are sold, or show up for the release party. It’s a solid, fun beach read, just in time for summer!