August 13, 2026: New state historian; Next chapter for neighborhood of proposed Broncos; Mark Stevens' latest thriller

The state's new historian says her parents didn't like to discuss their Latino roots in Colorado. They were just trying to protect us from a history of racism and discrimination, a history of poverty. She says that family history is the engine that propelled her career. Then a conversation with one of the first companies in the state to produce mushrooms for psilocybin-assisted therapy. Later, the writer of a Colorado-based thriller talks briefly about his craft. I love a good literary novel with long paragraphs and deep chapters. But in the thriller genre, my editor said, you know, James Patterson's basic rule is you should write chapters so short you could read him at a stoplight. Mark Stevens' new mystery is out now. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News and KRCC. I'm Andrea Dukakis. Colorado's new state historian has deep roots in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. It's one reason she's forged an expertise in the history of the American West. Nikki Gonzalez is particularly interested in race relations and social and political movements, and she has plans for what she hopes to accomplish during her year-long tenure. Gonzalez also served as state historian from 2021 to 22. She's a professor of history and vice provost of Regis University. I spoke with her last week. Nikki, welcome. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. So I want to start with your own story. You wrote an article after your last term as state historian. You called it a love letter to your family. Talk about how the lives of your parents and grandparents have shaped your path as a historian. So I have always been deeply curious about my family's story because I didn't hear a lot of it growing up. I heard little bits and pieces when I would ask questions. But mostly my mom would just say, you know, you're American and, you know, trying to make it clear that I wasn't different from other people, but I always knew I was a little bit different from other people with a different history. And so it's been an intense curiosity not only about their lives, but the lives of Mexican American communities and families in Colorado and in the American West. I just want to say. I love how you've described your curiosity about your family's history and your mother's response that you were an American, sort of you were an American first. And I can really relate to that in the story of my family's own immigrant history. My dad always wanted me to give my kids American names. He didn't get that wish. But why do you think your mother hesitated to talk about your family's history? Well, that was a burning question that I had for so long. And as I learned more about the history of Mexican-American people in this area and about our personal histories on both sides of my family, I realized that she was just, and my dad, too, in not sharing a lot with us, they were just trying to protect us from a history of racism and discrimination.

a history of poverty and difficulty. And they wanted us to feel like we belonged 100%. And that education would be our ticket to kind of mainstream society or a ticket to belonging as an American. And so, you know, they didn't want to hurt us. And as I understand that your family has longstanding ties to Colorado and New Mexico. How far back can you trace your family to the region? Well, my great uncle, who just passed away a few months ago, actually traced my dad's side all the way back to Hickoria Apaches. And so however long, you know, they've been in the region in northern, like northeastern New Mexico and southern Colorado. And on my mom's side, my grandmother always told me and my sisters that we were Navajo, that there was Navajo in our background as well. So. You know, we're a mix of indigenous and Spanish. And so many, many generations. Can you point to the first spark when you thought, I really want to dedicate my life to understanding history? So I remember when I was first learning how to read, like in first and second grade, I remember a set of books that my parents gave me. And it was books that were like little biographies of historical figures like Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and Thomas Edison, Florence Nightingale. So figures like that. And I loved reading about people's lives from the past. And it wasn't until I was like a senior in college. When I remember a moment, like this was at Yale University, and it was snowing. It was during finals in December of 92. And I had this moment of clarity. Like, I think this is what I want to do. I want to be like my professors. And so. You know, I would kind of have to go through, you know, our journeys are never like a straight line and we have to zig and zag and, you know, satisfy other little curiosities here and there. But I think it was that moment that I realized deep down inside that that's what I wanted to do with my life. And I didn't really know yet how I was going to do that. But I eventually found my way. You write in that same article about this long-running dispute around land rights in a small community in the San Luis Valley, that's in Southern Colorado, which has a large Latino population who've been in the area for generations. You're also writing a book about it. Could you describe the dispute over La Sierra and what it tells you and us about the unique history of Latinos in Colorado? Sure, so I could go on for hours about this topic, but in short,

The story of the San Luis community on the Sangrated Crystal Land Grant, which was granted in 1843, is one of resilience and resistance against encroachment. And they carry a very special set of land rights that were granted under the Mexican land grant system. And so what follows is a very kind of quintessential clash of cultures and legal systems and just ways of doing things. You can kind of compare La Sierra, this special piece of property that they have these historic land rights to, to being like a grocery store. La Sierra provided the community with food. They, you know, hunted and fished and gathered timber and grazed their sheep on La Cietta. And I even did interviews with people like these very, you know, tough, like strong men who would go yearly up to La Ciera and sing happy birthday to her. And the San Luis story is kind of a David and Goliath story where the tiny little town of San Luis, you know, were so dedicated and so connected spiritually to the landscape that they were able to fend off, fight off, you know, build coalitions against those encroachments on those historic land rights. And so it's a story of survival and creativity and persistence and also a love story that a community has with its landscape, which is La Sierra. And it's also a deeply environmental story. Okay, let's move on to your stint as state historian. I would venture to say not everyone even knows Colorado has a state historian. Part of your job is to shape the public's understanding of the past. You're also supposed to guide History, Colorado, which is loosely Colorado's Museum of History. Can you talk about what the role is, what you hope to be able to say at the end of your tenure? So I see my job, my responsibility as Colorado State historian, to be like an evangelist for history. So not only encouraging people to look at the past and, you know, learn from mistakes that we've made, but also to empower them to explore their own history. So many times I talk to people about their and ask them questions about their history and they're like, oh, that doesn't mean anything. Or they'll pull out an old shoebox and show me these like. these letters and these artifacts from their families passed, and they'll say, yeah, I was just about to throw these out. And I'm like, oh, my God, no, don't throw those out. So just empowering people, you know, to be kind of strengthened by the challenges and triumphs that their ancestors experience. You know, I really believe that... that will help us understand one another. And I believe that understanding leads to empathy. And one of my priorities is encouraging people to look at history as a playbook or a way to understand and process our current moment to make better decisions in the future. And this plays out in the book that I'm writing is the role of coalition building. The story of San Luis is very much a history of building successful coal.

that are very unexpected at times. And if you look at history in general, you see examples of this coalition building in the pursuit of kind of an objective of, you know, a society in which people feel like they can belong or in, you know, there's a sense of justice and fairness. You study race relations and social and political movements. In Colorado and Denver have a long history of racial strife and divisions, policies and practices like redlining, busing, issues like white flight to the suburbs. How do you view the state's history of race relations and discrimination? when you compare it to the rest of the country? I think there are many similarities. It's just a different context. Like Denver and Colorado kind of reflect a more Western history of those racial issues, whereas, you know, the American South is quite different. The groups are different. I mean, you can take the example of Colorado being a... hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity in the 1920s and look at the various groups that they tried to go after. It wasn't just African Americans the way it was in the American South, but it was against Catholics and Jews and Mexican Americans both as non-white people and as Catholic people were a major target in that. And so. You have different industries like the mining industry and the segmented labor force that emerged that really discriminated workers of color, especially like the Chinese who were here and who were at the bottom of the totem pole. And then you also have the presence of, I guess, a greater presence of indigenous tribes who were put on reservations, were removed. I mean, the Sand Creek Massacre is a very good example of how these racial relations. flare up, you know, in 1864. And it ends up in the murder of over, over 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho people. So there is this, you know, history of institutional racism and violence and intimidation. And this isn't unique to Colorado, but I like to highlight in Colorado. The history of race relations in our state and in the city of Denver is also one of resilience and creativity. If you look at the most oppressed groups, they were able to find ways to kind of stick together, work together, and create their own businesses, create their own parts of the city. Five Points is a great example of that for the African-American community. And I've done deep studies into the history of the Mexican-American communities, Chicano communities, and the types of resistance that they engaged in. and the progress that they've made by resisting that legacy of racism.

Can you give me your favorite piece of trivia about Colorado history? Well, I have many, I guess, trivia questions or trivia facts, fun facts about Colorado history. But I would say the one that people are most impressed with is that Colorado was the first state to grant women the right to vote. And people never get tired of hearing about that and kind of taking pride in Colorado history. Nikki, thanks for talking to us. Oh, thank you for having me. It was so much fun. Thank you, Andrea. Nikki Gonzalez is a professor of history and vice provost of Regis University. She officially began her tenure as Colorado State historian August 1st. The same day Colorado celebrated its 150th birthday. The neighborhood next to where the Denver Broncos want to build their new football stadium has seen a lot of changes over the years. Before the city of Denver ever existed, the land was home to Native American tribes. During the Civil War, it was the location of Fort Weld. At different times since, the area is housed immigrants from around the world, white-collar workers, and a significant Latino population. But its next chapter has some longtime residents. worried. That includes Jason Torres. Economically and financially, it's the way of the world that when things come in like a stadium and people want certain things out of their experience when they come down, that at some point, somewhere down the road, those organizations and those services that are in the community will be affected. Denverites Paulo Shalceda has been talking with people who call Denver's La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood home. He asked how they feel about the Broncos plans and shared what he heard with CPR's Arlo Perez Esquibel. So let's start with a bit more of the history of the neighborhood. The area that we're talking about is south of downtown, which includes the Santa Fe Art District, a bunch of small businesses, a park, and several residential areas. Yeah, like you said, as a neighborhood, it's... first really started to take shape in the early 20th century, when various immigrant groups started moving there, in part because it was so close to Denver's rail lines. Fast forward to the 1950s, when many white Americans began flocking to the suburbs, Denverites of color came to Laamalingan Park. That's when the area really started to emerge as a Latino neighborhood and a gathering place. Here's Jason Torres. Again, he lives in La Malincan Park and runs the Denver Inner City Parish. La Malincan Park was one of them hubs in the neighborhood where your family members and your friends would go and hang out because you lived on one side of the park and your cousin lived on the other side of the park. It was very a familial neighborhood, very much rooted in the history of Denver and when it comes to Chicanos and Latinos or Mexicans, whatever you want to call them. It was rooted in that culture.

It sounds like Torres and others who live there are worried about what this new stadium might mean for them. Yeah, La Malingan Park is certainly no stranger to gentrification and redevelopment efforts. Some of the families living there today came from Auraria, where hundreds of mostly Hispanic households and businesses were displaced in order to build the higher education campus there. Now we see the Broncos in the city looking for blight around Burnham Yard. That's the decommissioned rail yard west of the neighborhood, and that can open up tax incentives for the team to redone. developed the area. That's got some people concerned. And we did, in fact, get a glimpse of what the Broncos actually want to do with the area last week. It was pretty ambitious, right? That's right. Last week, the team released some renderings of their vision for the area around the new stadium. In those illustrations, they paint a picture of a stadium surrounded by green spaces and four different mixed-use districts. That includes repurpose pieces of the old rail yard, shops, apartments, and a running and walking path. Mix-use being the key word there, so housing and businesses. So theoretically, that could coexist with the neighborhood as it is right now. Theoretically, but we know the city's urban renewal authority did find signs of blight on the Burnham Yard property, which could pave the way for a redevelopment plan for a largely undeveloped part of the neighborhood. It's worth noting that the head of the renewal authority has downplayed the potential that eminent domain could be used to force people out, but the impact of the redevelopment is likely to spill out. into the residential neighborhood next to it. Various studies have found that commercial rents and property values are likely to increase in areas where stadiums have been built, and that has a lot of people worried they'll be priced out. For their part, the Broncos say they hear those concerns and want to be good neighbors. They've been meeting with residents and negotiating a community benefits agreement with the neighborhood collective. And Mayor Mike Johnson's administration has vowed to build or strengthen systems to prevent displacement, but those are all sort of working against those market forces that follow. of the development money. Okay, so what's next for this stadium, though? Well, we still haven't seen their plan for the stadium itself, just the area around it. There's also several more steps if the team wants to get an official blighted designation for the area, which would involve going through the city council. From there, it's more negotiations with local neighborhoods and businesses and getting the finances squared away before shovels hit dirt. That was Denverites Paulo Shalceda, speaking with Colorado Today host Arlo Perez Esquibel. Read Paolo's reporting on this story and see pictures at denverite.com. Coming up, what does it look like to grow magic mushrooms? I'm Andrew Dukakis. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News and KRCC. You're back with CPR News and KRCC. I'm Andrea Dukakis. I'm not sure what I expected when I visited one of Colorado's first licensed cultivators and manufacturers of psilocybin, better known as magic mushrooms, but it was pretty eye-opening. For one, it was a highly sterile environment with strict rules to avoid contamination. Before I could check out the mushrooms growing, the company's founder and CEO Rhonda Ron DeSantis gave me a full-body hooded white suit and mask to wear. And she wiped down my recording equipment. Don't worry. We'll just wipe it down with like an alcohol pad. Is that okay? Yep, that's fine. Okay. Okay. The name of Ron DeSantis's company, Silo.

My visit to the company, located in Avon, Colorado, was for The Trip, a CPR news series on Colorado's new psychedelics movement. Rhonda Ron DeSantis is the CEO and founder of Silutions, one of the state's first licensed cultivators and manufacturers of psychedelic mushrooms. Read our ongoing reporting at cpr.org slash the trip. Up next, an interview with a Colorado author who writes thrillers that include scenes from Denver. I'm Andrew Dukakis. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News and KRC. You're with Colorado Matters from CPR News and KRCC. I'm Andrea Dukakis. Having taken down a serial killer, Denver television reporter Flynn Martin is looking forward to returning to a calmer life and career. But that doesn't seem to be in the cards, as echoes from the past threaten her at work and at home. That's the premise behind Colorado-based novelist Mark Stevens' latest book, Two Truths and a Lie. He spoke with my colleague, Anthony Cotton. You're sitting in your office. We're doing this via a Google meet. And I just asked you if this is where the magic happened. And your response was, well, this is where I work. And I never think of art as work, I guess. How do you approach this at this point in your career? I think for me that it starts with the work. It starts like a job. It starts with having a schedule. It starts with showing up. It starts with getting to the point where you're actually writing and not thinking about writing because nobody can read a book if it's up in your head. You've got to get it down on something that you can pass to your agent, your editor, to a friend, whatever the case may be. for me it's just if you do show up the inspiration will come if you put in the time and just make it a habit it's got to be a habit well the last time you were on a couple of years ago is it was for the fireball a book about a colorado raised baseball player with a troubled past Now we're going to talk about two truths and a lie. That's not really easy to say. Yeah, it's not. And this is a mystery about a Denver-based television reporter with a, let's say, troubled crescent. It seemed to me like the fireballer was kind of a departure from what you usually do, but then I'm thinking maybe that's not really the case. How do you look at it? Well, that's a great question. because when the idea for the fireballer came to me, I had already written a bunch of crime fiction. I had five books published, but I'd also written some other drafts of other novels. They were all entirely crime fiction suspense. And that's where I kind of developed my thinking about how to put a novel together. So when the idea for the fireballer came to me,

I guess I kind of applied that template of just needing to have, first of all, hopefully suspense and interest and a hook on every page to kind of pull. people along in the case of the fireballer it wasn't so much trying to solve a murder mystery or putting a main character in jeopardy in a thriller kind of setting like two truths and a lie or like the book before it no lie lasts forever it was more a case of a guy dealing with his own darkness dealing with something he endured and so i just sort of applied that sense of tension and suspense to what I know it's, you know, probably I shouldn't say literary fiction, but something with a more of a general fiction kind of model. And both books, you know, are pretty Denver, Colorado-centric. And I can see the appeal for someone who lives here, you know, like all the streets that are mentioned or the little or places where people would be familiar with. But do you worry about? people outside of the region and how like will they get it? Yeah, I can say I don't worry, but I understand that that, you know, I think we read books about New York and L.A. and San Francisco and sort of the hotbeds of fiction, Miami, maybe. You know, there's a lot of crime fiction written in those places or New Orleans. And, you know, if we run across Urban Street or Canal Street, we just, and, you know, no, these are big names in the... consciousness of most people who get around a little bit or read a fair amount uh yeah i balance all of the feedback I've gotten from Denver readers who love that kind of detail, and one actually told me he got out his map to look and plot where characters were going and things like that. And I think most suspense readers, mystery readers, like myself, we want to be transported. We like being taken to other places. That's part of the joy, whether it's Jon Ossoff or Stockholm or Paris. And we don't necessarily know every... around de small or every little neighborhood we just accept the names in the streets and go for the ride along the same lines with like with the two books how does your mind move from one world to another like you know it's got to be more than like getting a wild hair sitting at the coffee table one morning

Well, actually, in the case of No Lie Last Forever, which is the book that started the trilogy, The Two Truths and a Lie, which just came out this year, is the second of three, and it'll be over and done at the end of three books, I'm told by my editor. The actual... Uh-oh. No, it's a good thing. She said at the outset when she bought... See, no lie lasts forever, came out last year. it was in my mind always a stand-alone it was over and done story was over one book move on and but the editor who bought it said no i would like to see two more books out of this situation out of this character and my agent also encouraged me to think along those lines so i said okay let's see what we can do The actual beginning with No Lailas Forever was a seed blowing in the wind. The whole idea for the setup of the book came to me in about three and a half seconds driving down I-25. I can point to the spot going over Broadway on the flyover on I-25 one night where the whole idea just sort of came to me. this relationship between these two characters. I didn't know anything about it, but it was just this moment of thinking, here's the situation I can kind of develop. And so that started eight million questions that you start answering in terms of shaping up. no lie, last forever. And that was actually a long time ago. I had that book in my sort of back pocket for years waiting for all sorts of other things to happen with my writing career until it kind of hit the right agent at the right time. And it went to the first editor after 20 plus years. It went to an editor in March of 2024. And it came out a year later. It was just to my absolute shock and amazement that something that had been floating around my desk and I'd pull out every now and then from time to time and kind of look at it and still say, you know, this isn't too bad and I keep working at it. And to see it actually in a 12-month span from purchase to launch date, all of a sudden be out in the world. When you do a trilogy, do you indeed map out the entire thing, or do you find yourself like doing the first one and saying, well, in this case, also because you didn't plan on doing the trilogy, like, do you find yourself saying, well, I think I'll explore this in the next one? It's mostly... very organic for me. It's crawling through the mud one inch at a time on my hands and knees. It is much just, I cannot, I can't get that big picture outline kind of thing going unless I just have my head down and I'm just working in the details of the moment from every, every movement of the main characters in a book. And so,

When I was asked to make the first book into a trilogy, I had to go back in and crack the egg a little bit and make some things leak out a little bit so I could play with those in book two and book three. Had I not known ahead of time that I would need to do that, it might have been even harder, but I could just take a few things and make them a little more messy so I could then move on to book two. But when I started book two, all i did was do what i normally do which is figure out a starting point and just start asking myself those questions where am i what's happening who is this and what's going to happen the next minute and then what's going to happen the minute after that it's all that just head down in the trenches kind of thinking for me. Colorado-based writer Mark Stevens speaking with Colorado Matters senior producer Anthony Cotton. When we come back, Stevens talks about the pacing necessary in writing a thriller, as well as the impact of algorithms and AI on writing. I'm Andrea Dukakis. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News and KRC. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News and KRCC. I'm Andrea Dukakis. Let's get back to Anthony Cotton's conversation with Mark Stevens. He's the author of a trilogy. The second chapter, Two Truths and a Lie, came out earlier this year. Let's talk about this chapter of the trilogy. Two Truths and a Lie centers around Flynn Martin, a local television reporter who... has a lot going on in her life. We met her in the first book, No Lila lasts forever. And in that book, she helped basically take down a serial killer. This picks up that story. And I never know, like with a mystery thriller, suspense kind of thing. how to talk about it without giving away things to readers. I'm sure you have this down by now. So you take it from here. Well, the main thing after taking down the serial killer in book one. a guy who was a state bureaucrat and who 15 years had gone by. He had committed his killings 15 years prior. He was hiding in plain sight. After helping track him down and all of that, I won't go into too much about the first book. The one thing in the first book is she is put out of her job. most of the first book, she is not a daily reporter because of something that happened that she did that causes the station to say, let's just chill and take you off the air for a few weeks. And so in book two, I wanted to see her as a reporter. And the first thing I wanted to do is really give her a story to sink her teeth into and so we could watch her work as a reporter. And then at the same time, we needed to keep...

the sort of serial killer theme going. And because the bad guy from book one is off to prison at the beginning of book two and being packed away for several lifetimes, you know, we are pretty sure it's not him because he's in Canyon City and in all sorts of, you know, very heavily guarded situation. So she's off working on this new story. It happens to do with the disappearance of a family of four from a suburban home. They're a family that doesn't come home from vacation, basically. And right as she's sort of digging into this, she starts getting messages that very much feel and look and read like messages she used to get from the serial killer she tracked down in book one. And one of those notes comes home in her son's backpack from school, which is, needless to say, alarming. Another note is found on her dashboard as she leaves a press conference dealing with the details of this disappeared family. And so she instantly is starting to try to piece things together and try to get... some traction on what this might be. The writing, the book, is a roller coaster in any number of ways. Like the chapters are kind of staccato, like a one page here, four pages there, back to one page. And even within the book, it seemed to me like... there was this buildup about what was happening and you didn't know. And then all of a sudden there was like a fire hose of information being thrown at you, even though you still couldn't really put together what was going on. How do you approach the idea of pacing and story structure and especially in a thriller type book? Yeah, I wish I could put it in some concise way other than to say, I appreciate readers' attention span. I think there's a lot of competition out there for eyeballs, including just sitting on the couch and watching Netflix to the very end of time and watching HBO and just consuming all the entertainment we're thrown at from the World Cup to football. which we all love, of course, to, you know, just anything that comes our way, entertainment. That's the business I'm in. I love a good literary novel with long paragraphs and deep chapters and character development that goes on for pages. As a reader, I love that. But in the thriller genre, my editor, who's a fabulous editor, said, you know, James Patterson's basic rule is you should write chapters so short you could read him at a stoplight. And that's a little frightening to think of that short. But, you know, it's, you know, right, it's, there's got to be momentum. And I think we all can feel that, that you're being taken from one chapter and you're sort of being.

compelled, utterly compelled to have to turn the page and find out what's going on. And so there are a number of different ways to do that. You could have fewer chapters and just let things breathe a little more. But yeah, I've definitely moved to a shorter chapter approach in these three books for sure. The new book, the third book has even more chapters in less words. Okay. Well, we kind of started this talking about the idea of the novelist at work. You know, I'm always curious about the idea of what art is in a world of algorithms and having to hit certain benchmarks in order to be considered viable. Like how do you, how do you navigate those two disciplines? Yeah, I wish I knew the answer, and I think every author writer, you know, wants to know the trick to break through to some... level where your book is in the jet stream. In other words, it's just part of the public consciousness, like a Gone Girl or something like that, that any thriller, self-respecting thriller reader will have read Gone Girl. Just one of these seminal kind of books that is so well done, you just have to read it. But there are, on the other hand, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thriller writers. being well published, let alone all the others who are also writing great books, but maybe they're self-publishing, independently publishing. So you're constantly trying to figure out what it is that takes to elevate into something. And there is no answer. There is no one formula. If there was one formula to get out there. we would all follow those steps, that there would be a menu, there'd be a list of things you have to do. And that doesn't exist because it is a subjective world with subjective opinions happening all the time. I think the one thing the artist, the writer, can do is just keep listening to yourself and to keep... you know, just doing your own thing and not try to copy, not try to do anything mimicking others. It's to, you know, dive into your own what you bring to the table every morning when you get up to write and listen to your own opinions, listen to your own points of view and try to find a way to incorporate those. in a meaningful way. I think we have to realize that readers, and at least for me, I guess I'll just speak as one reader. I'm reading other books to process how other characters are understanding this crazy world and to see how they're navigating a world. So it creates a bond, a connectivity. Nobody knows everything I'm thinking all the time. That would be a scary thing.

But I can go read a book and get inside somebody else's head in a deep way and privately just consume another author's character and sort of triangulate, try to understand this world and how others make choices and how others figure out major problems and get through life. And that's kind of, I think that's the trick of the business. hearing you talk about if there were a formula that everyone would follow it. My immediate thought was AI, AI would give you that, which is kind of a scary thing even to think about. Very scary. And Jesse, that's reductionism, dehumanizing pros to the max. It's stealing from everybody else. you know, that big common denominator kind of a machine, oh my gosh, it's just a repulsive idea to think that that's anything close to fiction or entertaining. I guess it could be entertaining. It could be that you are tricked into not knowing it's AI, but it's, oh, I just, the misery of that is just unfathomable. Where are we? What is happening to us? Right, right. No kidding. Well, again, like no spoilers, but knowing now that the book is completed, like maybe give us an idea of what we should be expecting in this final chapter. Sure. Well, book two ends on a cliffhanger. Okay, I said it. Some people are upset. My editor said some people will be upset. She said, just fly ahead. When they get to the final book, they'll be able to see the whole arc. But in book two, we still have a big question about who is terrorizing Flynn. I'll just leave it at that. So book three is... really back to the cat and mouse. It's a big chase. Back to that sort of cat and mouse from the first book when our first serial killer, Harry Kugel, also known as PDQ, hiding in plain sight. He and Flynn begin this chase. And book three kind of echoes that, but we follow and get to know. our serial killer who is after Flynn. And I will just say it has to do, she's a, Flint's a veteran reporter and it has to do with a sort of quasi innocuous story that she did 20 years prior, just one of these in and out stories that she did in a day. And it's all the ripple effects of all the things that happened based on just sort of a quick story that at the time she didn't think meant anything, but actually set off a falling dominoes of staggering proportions. It is always a pleasure. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you, Anthony. I really appreciate the time. Mark Stevens speaking with my colleague Anthony Cotton. Stevens is the author of Two Truths and a Lie. It's the second chapter in a trilogy thriller centered around fictional Denver television reporter Flynn Martin. The final entry is expected to come out next year. Thanks for joining us today and to the Colorado Matters team. Jack Armstrong. Tyler Bender. Carl Beulick. Anthony Cotton. Pete Kramer. Zan Huckpichoni. Matt Hers. Tom Hess. Pedro Lumbraño. Daniel Mashir. Shane Rumsie. Haley Sanchez. Shandra Thomas Whitfield. Ryan Warner. And I'm Andrea Dukakis. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News and KRC.