Mystery
Date Published: 11-15-2025
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: I am very fortunate. My wife and I moved to Estes Park, CO in 2018.
Careers were over, our daughters had flown the nest. Estes Park is an hour
and a half drive from Denver. It is the gateway city to Rocky Mountain National Park.
Over three million people from all over the world visit the national park
each year for the mountains, alpine meadows, and wildlife. As I type this, I
can watch a herd of over a hundred elk from my office window. What
a privilege. The majority of the stories I tell are set in the Western outdoors. It's
right outside my front door.
How long have you been writing?
KW: I can point to a specific moment when I decided I could write a novel. I had
toyed with the idea and had a few false starts. But lightning
struck in the Detroit Airline terminal on a Friday afternoon.
It was after the events of Nine-Eleven.
I traveled two to three weeks a month for business. Like other travelers,
I was adjusting to the new restrictions. You never knew for those first few months
if you would wait in the security line for two hours or whisk through in
twenty minutes. I had completed a week in Detroit. I was anxious to get home. I
arrived at the airport at about 2 PM for a five something flight. In twenty
minutes, I had removed my shoes, had my carry-on x-rayed, and
followed the other travelers through security. I found myself in a
mostly empty terminal with two hours to kill before my flight.
I visited the sundry store and perused the selection of paperbacks. When
nothing caught my eye, I told myself it was time. There in the Detroit terminal,
on a Friday afternoon, this travel-weary would open his laptop and plunked
out the first sentences of a story that I had kept in my head.
I remember the first two sentences of what I was sure would be a
blockbuster mystery: She was the kind of woman men noticed. He
was being paid to notice. It got worse.
Over the next few months, I added more pages, found an adult education course
on creative writing. I read On Writing by Stephen King added a few pages
to my work in progress each week. And in six months
I had a 60K word manuscript. It wasn’t very good. I know I read it.
Several times.
I attended a Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers conference, joined the
organization, began to meet with a critique group, and
couldn’t shake the storytelling bug. Seven published novels later
and I still add a few pages each week.
About the Author
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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