Mystery
Date Published: February 18, 2026
Narrator: Greg O'Donahue
Run time: 5 hours 20 minutes.
EARLY SNOW
Odyssey Pruit paints pictures of the ghosts and spirits she saw in the halls
of an old hotel where she worked ten years before. GUY HOGAN doesn’t
believe in ghosts. Hogan is hired to guard Odyssey’s pictures for her
first art show in the same old hotel. When an early blizzard closes the roads,
knocks out the power and telephone, Hogan is trapped in the hotel with
Odyssey’s quirky fans. When imps and ghouls make their presence known,
Hogan questions his doubts, and the answer could be murder.
Author Interview
Tell me about yourself. Where are you from?
KW: My wife and I left Denver’s suburbs in 2018 and moved to Estes Park, CO. We live in a small but cozy townhome. The third bedroom is my office. What’s outside my window fuels my imagination. In late September, great bull elk strut, bugle, and gather their harems of females right outside. In January, I’ve watched a lone coyote pad across the fresh snow. In the spring, a mama duck and her ducklings cruise the creek, and Broadtail hummingbirds hover around our back porch. On any day, perhaps a deer, bobcat, bald eagle, or redtail hawk may distract me from my writing or inspire the next scene.
If summer tourists don’t clog the roads, in thirty minutes I can pretend I’m Guy Hogan (my novel’s protagonist) on the curves of Trail Ridge Road. It is the highest continuous paved road in the United States. It crosses the Continental Divide, where streams and rivers flowing east ultimately mingle with the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The west side is the headwaters of the Colorado River. Its waters spill into the Pacific. Perhaps this picture is worth a thousand words.
Favorite sports.
KW: I am a basketball junkie. I watch the pros, college, and for the past five seasons, I have been on the coaching staff for the local high school’s men’s basketball team. (I’m team grandpa), As I write this, I’m watching the clock. The final four games are this afternoon. I’ll watch the games today. The women’s championship game is tomorrow. The men play on Monday night. And in a couple of weeks, the NBA playoffs will begin.
What is your writing process like? Are you more of a plotter or a pantser?
KW: Neither. But a little of both. On everything I’ve written, I knew where the story would start. I had the opening scene in my mind before my fingers touched the keyboard. And I knew how the story would end. Like a pantser, I begin to discover the scenes and secondary characters. The story plays out in my imagination from beginning to end. I write chronologically and rarely skip ahead. When I have a first draft, I read for story arc and sometimes move scenes to where I think they fit better, which moves the story.
How do you celebrate finishing a book?
KW: There is a great satisfaction in typing “The End”. But my mind is already planning out what I'm going to write next.
How do you name your characters?
KW: If I’m stumped for a character's name, I watch the names on the back of college football jerseys. If I need A woman’s name, I watch women’s college basket ball.
Kevin Wolf is an award-winning Mystery and Western author. His books include
Trailridge (2024), The Homeplace, winner of the 2015 Tony Hillerman Prize and
the 2016 Strand Critics Award finalist for Best Debut Mystery. His short story
Belthanger received the 2021 Spur Award for Best Short Fiction and his novel,
The Bootheel was a 2024 Peacemaker Award finalist.
The legends and landscape of the West are evident in everything he writes. His
newest novel, Trailridge, is set against the grandeur of Colorado’s
Rocky Mountain National Park and the 1982 Lawn Lake Flood. Those who visit
Rocky often or have chosen the national park for their once-in-a-lifetime
destination will recognize the mountains, valleys, rivers, and the twists and
turns of Trailridge as this story races to its climax.
In The Homeplace, a schoolboy hero returns after sixteen years to solve a
murder in a windswept, dying town on the eastern plains of Colorado. In his
short story Belthanger, readers are given a glimpse of a 1950s small town,
soon to be bypassed by the new Interstate Highway System, and the drama that
unfolds on the town’s darkened streets one night. The BootHeel is a
coming-of-age tale of a teenage orphan and an aging gunman as they follow a
treasure map into Mexico as the nineteenth century draws to its end.
Kevin Wolf is a member of Western Writers of America, Mystery Writers of
America, and serves as Vice President of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. He
facilitates a weekly critique group for other writers. The great-grandson of
Colorado homesteaders, he enjoys fly fishing, old Winchesters, and almost
every 1950’s Western movie. He lives in Estes Park, CO with his loving
and patient wife.
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POSSESSIVE ENEMY BY MICHELLE HEARD
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