Wolf writes in a tough game with bad odds
April 6, 2025Elisabeth Sherwin -- ensherwin@gmail dot com
Columnist
“I am a story-teller,” said Kevin Wolf, 73, of Estes Park, in a recent interview.
Wolf also is a published author of a half-dozen books, the most recent of which is “Trailridge,” a mystery/adventure set in Rocky Mountain National Park.
In it he introduces Guy Hogan who will be a recurring character in future stories. In Hogan’s debut novel, he solves a crime involving poaching, the Lawn Lake Flood of 1982, a beautiful blonde and a red Corvette. (In truth, Wolf says, poaching is not a big problem today in RMNP but it has been in the past in other national parks.) Wolf and his wife Nancy had been coming to Estes Park from their home in Littleton for many years before they decided to move here permanently in 2018.
He’s a fly-fisherman and hunter who also coaches basketball at Estes Park High School (he’s 6-foot-5) and supports the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He is a disciplined writer. His routine begins on Monday nights when he facilitates a Zoom group called Writer’s on the Brink. There he reads the 2,000 words he put on paper over the previous week. Then the process starts over again.
Wolf’s career before writing was sales. He graduated from Cedarville University, a Baptist school in Ohio, with a major in business and sales and sold manufacturing equipment and industrial storage. He had to travel for the job.
One day in 2001, he was sitting in the Detroit airport waiting for a flight. He had nothing to read and nothing in the bookstore caught his attention.
“I opened my laptop and started writing a book,” he said. “It wasn’t a very good book.”
But the writing bug bit him, hard.
“I took adult education courses, found the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, attended conferences, and got serious about writing.”
And good things started happening.
“I signed with an agent and won the 2015 Tony Hillerman Award for new mystery writers for ‘The Homeplace’,” he said. “I thought I was on my way.”
But the publishing world is a very cruel place. And technology has turned publishing upside down.
“When I first started writing, self-publishing was anathema, but technology has changed the industry. My agent encouraged me to self-publish,” Wolf said. And it seems like everyone is self-publishing.
Wolf, now the vice president of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, said Amazon carries something like 12 million book titles with more being added every day. Macdonald Book Shop in Estes Park carries 8,000 titles. Competition is fierce.
“It’s a brutal world,” he said. But he keeps at it.
This fall his second Guy Hogan mystery will be published and the sequel to “The Homeplace” also will be released.
And he’s working on a short story close to his heart. Members of his family were early homesteaders in eastern Colorado in 1910. The land and an abandoned two-story home are still in the family today. Wolf and his nephew went hunting there in October.
“In Estes Park, the mountains shout at you. There, it’s a different kind of beauty with rolling hills and prairie that whispers.”
His short story is going to meld family tradition and connection to the land.
In the meantime, he’s going to keep writing. “It’s easy not to write. But my Monday night group gives me accountability.
“And I still have a dream. Maybe one of my books will be used as the basis for a screenplay some day.”
Photo: Author Kevin Wolf at his family's pioneer homeplace in Eastern Colorado.
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-- Reach Elisabeth Sherwin at ensherwin@gmail.com
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