Satire Writer Strikes Gold with Goodnight Marco Island Reprise

When we wrote about his book Good Morning Marco Island in November of 2022, Marco resident Glenn Livesey (whose pen name is Glenn L.) swore to us that he had written his last book about the quirkiness of our island paradise. Alas, the amateur writer and book publisher is at it again with an update of his first book, Goodnight Marco Island. It’s a bigger, better version of his 2021 hit Goodnight Marco Island.

“This will be the last one I write about Marco Island,” Livesey told the Coastal Breeze back in 2022. “I’ve pretty much exhausted, I think, all of the issues in this town." And we don’t doubt that he meant it. But just like rock bands like The Who, Livesey’s farewell tour was short-lived. And fans of Livesey’s gift of satire are glad he’s back.

How popular was the original Goodnight Marco Island? Let’s put it this way: when I dropped off two copies of the new book that Livesey signed for our editor and publisher at the Coastal Breeze News, the front desk person had her nose in the book before the door closed behind me.

The first two books sold a combined 3,000 copies and there’s no reason to think the Goodnight Marco Island reprise won’t do just as well. Instead of its predecessor, which weighed in at 39 pages, the new one is 71 hilarious pages long.

But what made Livesey beef up and re-market Goodnight Marco Island?

"The demand,” Livesey said. "I ran out of books February of last year. People were begging me to make more, and I was like, ‘You know, I gotta order 500 or 1,000 at a time. Where am I going to put them in my house? Then I decided, ‘I've got enough demand.' Mary Bartos, the realtor, said she'd buy 100 copies. So I was like, boom! I ordered a whole bunch of them and all the other stores picked them up. I've already dropped off 400 books since yesterday at 4:00 PM.”

Livesey said stores have a waiting list. Maybe not as long of a waiting list as the Racquet Center claims to have for their pickleball memberships, but it’s impressive nonetheless to have a waiting list for a book.

He said everyone is happy to have books to sell, even if they didn’t dig into it as fast as the Coastal Breeze front desk person did.

“They were pretty busy,” he said. "They didn't read through it when I was there, but they will. They'll like it.”

If you enjoyed Livesey’s observational humor and Xenia Voronicheva’s excellent artwork in the first two books, you’ll be gaga over what Livesey calls the Extended Final Edition of Goodnight Marco Island.

The new book picks up where its predecessors left off by delightfully poking fun at Marco’s latest hot-button issues with witty rhymes and artwork that always seem to hit the nail on the head.

“There are some new rhymes in here,” Livesey says as he thumbs through the book’s slick pages to find an example. He stops at the two-page spread about the island’s tiny roundabout. “Goodnight to the roundabout, at Sixth and Yellowbird. It’s tiny, nonfunctional, and totally Absurd."

Livesey said his book is targeted toward locals.

"It's a coffee table book for locals,” he said. "Well, tourists buy them too, but this is geared towards locals. They know all the issues.”

Of course, we all know that a large percentage of Marco’s “locals" were tourists themselves not long ago.

"Yeah, they come and go,” he said. “Snowbirds like them, too.”

Livesey also updated some classics from the first edition.

“It's got some modifications,” he said. "You know, the dome homes sank. So I made them sink with sharks swimming around them. And now it's an artificial reef."

You can pick up a copy of Goodnight Marco Island at Sweet Annie’s, Keep in Touch, Beach Daisy, Make a Memory, and Mary Bartos in the old SunTrust building.