Carl Gregory is a sixth-generation Floridian, writer, musician, designer, and artist. He lives where the shadows of what used to be Florida still hang with the moss in the oak trees. In his second novel, "Approximately Moonlight", he explores memory, longing, and desire in a hidden corner of the tropics.
The seed for "Approximately Moonlight" grew out of the time he spent living on the strange and beautiful island of Key West. Beneath its postcard sunsets and seductive lifestyle lay a world that can be intoxicating, lonely, and sometimes dangerous—a place where outsiders arrived in search of freedom, love, or escape, and often found something far more complicated.
Those years introduced him to a landscape of sensuous nights, whispered rumors, island superstitions, and people searching for connection in ways both tender and destructive. The emotional currents of that world—longing, desire, alienation, and the fragile hope that someone might stay—became the heart of "Approximately Moonlight".
Though the island in the novel is fictional, its atmosphere was shaped by real experiences and the sense of dreamlike intensity that places like Key West can hold. On what most of us would consider an island paradise, the undercurrents of darkness and decay run strong — it’s heaven, and it’s hell.