No bullshit, some of the best books in the world come from people like Roland. I've ranted about this before in the thread, but the thing that really made a lot of old-school authors good at their craft was that they went out and did all kinds of interesting things first, then started writing later, like Joseph Conrad and Ernest Hemingway. Living and working in Vegas would give you so much fodder for, say, a casino heist thriller or a crime novel set in the shitty parts of town that the punters and tourists don't visit. Something like Carl Hiaasen's Florida novels.