Author Michael Connelly delves into Florida experience for next streaming series

Michael Connelly, best-selling author and UF and Independent Florida Alligator alum is now writing about his days as a reporter in Daytona Beach in the 1980s. He’s also writing about his time covering crime in Fort Lauderdale which includes forays into the South Florida cocaine wars.

I met Connelly in the first part of this century at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival. I came to town for the Wyoming Arts Council to meet with colleagues at WESTAF, our regional arts organization. Now Creative West, it keeps track of the MAGA attacks on the arts funding world through its Action Center. 

I waited in a long line to meet Connelly at the L.A. Bookfest at UCLA and he signed two books because I wore my Gators cap. The Gator connection led him to take a book tour detour to Wyoming a few years later and many fans turned out.

The first Connelly novel I read was "The Poet" (1996) because it was a mystery about poetry (I thought) and it's set among the two Denver newspapers I once worked for. From 1978-82, I was writing in-depth articles about prep football, college hockey, and the Coors Classic cycling race. After that, I was managing editor and columnist for Up the Creek weekly which had its origins covering rec softball leagues and wet T-shirt contests at Glendale singles bars. I still have clips if you’re looking for something to read about the halcyon days of the 80s.  

In The Poet, Jack McEvoy is a crime reporter for The Rocky. When his twin brother Sean, a Denver homicide detective, is murdered. McEvoy pursues the story. He finds  his brother’s murder was staged, and uncovers a pedophile ring which leads to other murders committee by a serial killer known as The Poet because he features Poe in his killings. I was impressed. I read more and now have quite a collection.

The Poet won the 1997 Anthony Award, presented by the Mystery Writers of America and the Dilys Award, presented by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.

When I moved to Denver in 1978, the RMN and Post were battling for readers. The Post won the fight.  

When I met Connelly in L.A., I asked if he ever made it to Wyoming. His answer, as I suspected, was no. I asked if he might take a 100-mile detour from his next Denver book stop if we could find funding for a presentation, reading, and book signing in Cheyenne, Wyoming’s oft-neglected capital city. He put me in touch with his agent and the YMCA Writers Voice chapter wrote a grant and brought him to town. An SRO crowd came to the Y’s meeting room where an arts exhibit arranged by my wife Chris was on display. A great time was had by all. Barnes & Noble sold a lot of books.

That meeting room is now forever empty. The Cheyenne Family YMCA closed its doors for good yesterday. No more swimming pool. No more creaky weight machines. No more Writers Voice.

I send whatever I can to arts organizations in Wyoming, Florida, and elsewhere. I will report on some of those entities in the coming months. The anti-arts savagery shown by Trump and his minions have taken a big bite out of the creative industry. Not surprising since arts and arts education were prime targets of Project 2025.

I hear from poet and performer M.L. Liebler in Detroit that “all of our arts programs getting money from the NEA has collapsed.” Medical research funding has also been hit: “All research on cancer has been halted.”