About
Dave Di Maggio is an award-winning advertising and marketing communications professional and Florida native whose career has spanned several decades with some of the nation’s most successful advertising/marketing firms. He has developed campaigns for a vast variety of major tourism destinations and other public- and private-sector organizations, earning hundreds of industry awards for his work.
Though much of Di Maggio’s career has focused on telling stories that inspire people to travel and experience a destination, it's also given him an unusually close perspective on the people and places behind the polished images he's presented to visitors. Over the years, he became increasingly interested in Florida's "less conventional" side — the transient communities, eccentric characters, complicated relationships and unexpected stories that exist alongside the state's postcard-perfect beaches and attractions.
Those observations provided the inspiration for his debut novel, Shady in the Sun, a Florida noir that draws on his professional experience and his longstanding familiarity with the state and its culture.
Di Maggio lives in Florida, where the landscapes, communities and characters around him continue to provide inspiration for his writing.
Featured Work
Shady in the Sun
From a man who spent decades selling the dream of Florida to potential visitors, Shady in the Sun exposes what's beneath the State's postcard-perfect veneer. A fast-paced, atmospheric, Florida Noir with sharply defined characters and a dark sense of humor, the narrative follows Miami ad executive Dan Lomas as he runs to the Florida Keys after his marriage and business partnership simultaneously implode. His goal: to "Cut the cord. Get away from all the craziness. The chaos. The dirtbags."
Unfortunately, the Keys manufacture it daily.
Soon, he's forced to trade paradise for peril, and is swept into a churning sea of unexpected characters, places and circumstances; interwoven with the complex threads of a dark and shocking crime.
One that he becomes forced to solve.
It's a reminder to all of us that for every palm waving languidly beneath the bright, warm Florida sun, there's always a darker underside.
