So what does a novel set in 1919 Colorado have to do with the Detroit of the 1960s?

My historical novel, Zeppelins Over Denver, was released in early May by The Ridgeway Press in Michigan, Detroit to be exact.

The novel, set in the Colorado of 1919, doesn’t have much to do with either Detroit or Michigan, but its life has a lot to do with a couple of determined Detroiters. It’s the press co-founded by M.L. Liebler, a poet and author whose resume is about five miles long. As he writes about in Hound Dog: A Poet’s Memoir or Rock, Revolution, and Redemption (Cornerstone Press), he’s a Detroit native, a resident of St. Clair Shores his entire life. He was there to experienced the rise of Motown and the Detroit rock scene that flourished in the 1960s, 1970s and beyond.

He pursued an advanced degree with the vigor he brought to music and poetry. His title at Wayne State University is professor of English and Labor Studies, a one-two punch that shouts Detroit. It has been my good fortune to work with M.L. in the literary arts world, mostly through the YMCA Writers Voice Project. It was launched from New York’s West Side Y (now at the the Central YMCA of New York) by the late Jason Shinder. It has been a facet of Y programming across the U.S., in places as far-flung as the Cheyenne Family YMCA in Cheyenne, Wyo., where my wife Christine supervised the program. Sadly, the Writer's Voice program Chris supervised vanished when the Cheyenne Y closed last year. A sad day on the lone prairie.

As coordinator of the literary program at the Wyoming Arts Council, I enlisted M.L. as a judge for our literary fellowships and had the pleasure of driving him across that vast state and introducing him to The Legend of the Jackalope as well as a batch of very fine poets and writers. M.L took me on when I was failing to find a publisher. I will be eternally grateful to him for that. He was ably assisted by WSU student and editor/designer Brandon Wade. I will have more to say about this as time passes and I look for ways to lift up this blog.

Meanwhile, excuse me while I figure out intriguing ways to promote a book published by one of America's stalwart small presses. It was launched by the Ridgeway Press and Artist Collection 52 years ago. Its roots are deep in the Detroit alternative arts scene. Here's a description taken from Detroit's Book Beat:

Ridgeway Press & Collective is one of Detroit’s vital independent literary-artistic forces. With weekly online meetings, shared vacations, and a screwball newsletter, this band of creatives has remained together, loyal to the call of Ridgeway Dada. 

There is happiness aplenty (and sorrow) in This Is Happiness

This is happiness.

This is happiness.

This is happiness.

So says Christy, one of the characters in Niall Williams’ novel, “This Is Happiness.” Christy rides his bicycle with our protagonist and narrator Noel (Noe) Crowe in Faha in County Clare, Ireland. It’s the spring of 1958. Christy is an electric man, sent to the village to sign up people for “the electric,” the miracle of electricity finally coming to rural Ireland. It takes a while for Williams to reveal the man’s true purpose, to apologize to a local widow, Annie Mooney, for leaving her at the altar 50 years before. Christy finds shelter with Noe and his grandparents, Doady and Ganga.

Noe, 17, learns of the man’s mission and vows to help and therein lies the heartache and happiness of the tale. Noe fled to his grandparents’ house after his mother died, he quit the seminary and found himself at loose ends with his father in Dublin. For Noe: “All that had stitched me into this life came undone and I couldn’t escape the feeling that folded against my back were wings that had failed to open.” I don’t know of a better description of being 17 in Dublin or Faha or Daytona Beach, Florida. Anywhere.

This is my first Williams’ novel and I was entranced by its first lines, “It had stopped raining.” The reader finds that Faha is a soggy, boggy place, not accustomed to sunny days that stretch on forever and make life intriguing. It stops raining the Wednesday of Holy Week and the sun stays, as if the Good Lord himself willed it on the most sacred time of the Catholic year.

The writer’s style is beguiling, filled with his Irish voice and there is no stopping the reading once you’ve begun. You even begin speaking like the characters after awhile. You’re hooked. The ending can’t be predicted. You’re along for a joyful, sometimes heart-rending, ride.

Ann Patchett promoted the novel on one of her “New Book Friday” sessions from Parnassus Books in Nashville. I love her books so anything she suggests gets my attention. I am Irish-American, my grandfather came as a lad from County Roscommon with his own sad story that took him all the way to his 90^th birthday. He was a serious man yet kind, the man who always brought ice cream to our house. When I lost my college scholarship, he sent me a 20-dollar bill every month. That was happiness!

There is an Irish voice in literature. You know it when you hear it. Filled with words and humor and sadness. You could say that about writers from other traditions. Jewish writers, for instance, know a bit about dark humor. But literature has a strong Irish voice and that’s what you hear in Williams. He  lives with his wife Christine Breen and their pets in a renovated cottage in west Clare abandoned in 1910 when Chris's grandfather left for the U.S. 

This Is happiness. Keep saying it while pedaling your beat-up bicycle through the heather in County Clare or wherever you may be.

This Is Happiness.

Postscript: Checking out Williams' web site, I entered his world and his wife's. Listening to a snippet of their book, "In Kiltumper: A Year in an Irish Garden," I decided to buy the audiobook. I don't listen to many audiobooks but this one combines the voices of the writers with gardening and a view of rural Ireland in 2021. How could I resist?

A breakthrough by any other name

Shawn Rossiter wrote a review in 15 Bytes magazine of The Nomad Literary Magazine’s new "Breakthroughs" issue. During our Zoom "flash-reading" on May 19, editor Rachel White noted that the review was accurate but not entirely complimentary. Here's how it opens:

THE NOMAD’s Issue 4, “Breakthroughs,” is more about the through than the break. There are few explosive moments, not many trumpet blasts. Instead, the issue gathers fiction, memoir, lyric essay, prose poem, and poetry—fifty-four pieces by twenty-seven writers—around breakthrough as passage, as a moving through.

15 Bytes is a publication of the Artists of Utah in Salt Lake City. The Nomad is based in Bountiful, Utah. Rossiter goes on to describe some of the stand-out Nomad pieces. Rossiter had praise for Shari Zollinger's piece which she read at the May 19 event:

Shari Zollinger’s “Found” gives the issue one of its purest formal breakthroughs. The essay enters “psychedelic space” through a microdose on the morning of an eclipse—Alice falling through, the red pill and blue pill hovering at the edges—and searches backward along memory’s “thread-gauzy timeline” for a self left waiting in a Taipei hospital. The strangeness of the piece, its Alice-and-Matrix layering, its eclipse-as-wormhole logic, enacts a consciousness genuinely working at the borders of what language can hold. What is found is not restored intact. Instead, the abandoned self is allowed to burn, scatter, and become movable. “It was okay to let a piece of me die,” Zollinger writes. “It was okay to blow away.” Her author’s note makes the connection explicit: the piece itself emerged from a breakthrough into the lyric essay, “at the crossroads between breakdown and breakthrough.” Form and subject meet as the essay’s fragmented, luminous movement enacts the kind of healing it describes.

That's the key to Rossiter's interest and I thank him for the attention. As a retired arts administrator, I respect anyone's desire to be part of an arts non-profit. It is a constant struggle. Funding comes from a State Arts Agency (SAA) or Local Arts Agency (LAA), sometimes a Regional Arts Organization (RAO), which is Creative West in Denver. Also memberships and subscriptions and any local funding the org can muster. 

The National Endowment for the Arts is in there, either through one of these agencies or directly, with applications to the NEA. For those of us paying attention, all of these entities have been under the gun since Jan. 20, 2025. Funding is tight. Some private foundations have stepped in to relieve shortfalls.

All of this is important. I may not have the exact lay of the land because I've been retired from day-to-day arts-funding functions for 10 years as I wrote and published a historical novel. I also still submit to lit mags via Submittable or directly to places where I know editors, such as The Nomad. Thanks Rachel and her business partner, the traveling poet/musician Ken Waldman, now somewhere in Texas. 

The poets and writers on our May 19 Zoom gathering all have interesting stories to tell. Their ages and backgrounds are revealed on the Nomad web site, and their stories are their own to tell. The challenge is to make it interesting for the reader. In a way, every poem and story is a breakthrough for the author. Every literary magazine is a breakthrough into imagination. 

THE NOMAD Literary Magazine takes a trip from Bountiful to Zoom tonight

Two of my short stories are included in "The Breakthroughs" issue of The Nomad Literary Magazine based in Bountiful, Utah. I've been submitting work to The Nomad since its first issue which became a print book. The project was launched by traveling writer/musician Ken Waldman (I just spoke to him -- he was traveling near Terlingua, Texas, which he said was remote and pretty cool) and Utah-based writer Rachel White. Rachel does most of the editing work as Ken travels coast-to-coast. Ken was a frequent visitor to Wyoming and he always stopped to see me in Cheyenne when I was the literature coordinator at the Wyoming Arts Council. While a trip to Bountiful was just a short jaunt across the Rockies from Cheyenne, I relocated to the edge of the Florida wetlands and couldn't be farther away from my old stomping grounds of WY/CO/UT. It's a good thing we'll be releasing the issue and reading our work on Zoom tonight at 7 p.m. MDT, 9 p.m. EDT. Free. FMI: THE-NOMAD.eventbrite.com

Want a signed copy of "Zeppelins Over Denver?"

Title: Zeppelins Over Denver

Author: Michael T. Shay

ISBN: 9781564390905

Price: $30 list, $35.22, signed and mailed

Print length: 426 pages

Format: Paperback

Publishing date: May 5, 2026 by The Ridgeway Press of Michigan

How to order: Venmo $35.22 (book plus USPS Media Mail shipping) to Hummingbird Minds Press on Venmo (307-241-2903); put address and name for signing in notes. It also is available on Amazon and at your favorite bookstore. My new favorite is Novel Tea Books in Ormond Beach, a place with comfy chairs and a distinctive selection of teas and munches. It is accessible for those of us in walkers, rollators, and e-scooters. I suggest using a rollator for the ramp in the back and for the quaint spaces inside. There's also a cool front porch with only two steps that can be managed easily.

BTW, when Ingram Spark was uncertain about pub date, I did a test order with Ann Patchett's Parnassus Books in Nashville (I'm reading one of her "Friday Favorites" now) and Books & Books in Miami, originator of the fantastic Miami Book Fair. It took about ten days but books arrived safely. 

Zeppelins Over Denver is a historical novel set in 1919 Colorado 

July 1919. Irish immigrant Patrick Hott and U.S. Army nurse Frannie Lee meet on a train going west through Colorado. He's a lung patient headed for the West's healing climate and she's off to an assignment at a new army hospital outside Denver. As they strike up a conversation, neither realizes that the train is hours away from a disaster that will upend their lives and bring them together to face new dangers as America tries to forget The Great War and race into the "Roaring Twenties." Inspired by his maternal grandmother's war diary and years of research, Shay gives readers a new look at Colorado's post-war boom that also saw the rise of the KKK, a "Red Scare" prompted by fear of Bolsheviks, and labor strife fueled by the infamous Ludlow Massacre

 Michael Shay’s work has appeared in High Plains Literary Review, Nomad, Colorado Review, Owen Wister Review, Poetry Hotel, Flash Fiction Review, WyoFile, Silver Birch Press, Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams from Coffee House Press, and Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers. He was co-editor of the Pronghorn Press anthology Deep West: A Literary Tour of Wyoming. He’s a graduate of Father Lopez High School, Daytona State College, and University of Florida. He earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from Colorado State University. Michael worked as an arts administrator for 25 years, promoting the literary arts for the Wyoming Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. He and his family live in Ormond Beach, Fla.

Contact: michaelshaywyo@gmail.com; hummingbirdsminds.blogspot.com; Michael Shay on Facebook

Writers talk books on a rainy May evening in Ormond Beach

The rain waited until I rolled myself inside the Novel Tea Book Shop in Ormond Beach. In Central Florida, we’ve been waiting for rain since last summer and it seems to be returning. Two days ago, the wide-eyed forecasters on the Weather Channel predicted a Tuesday deluge to cross the state. The clouds appeared but the rain was more a whisper than a monsoon. But yesterday, it came down.

I was in a comfy chair inside Novel Tea for the Wednesday evening Writers Haven. It was billed as a chance to hang out with other local writers to exchange tips and stories, the kind we were working on and the kind you tell about writing’s daily travails. An interesting group arranged around the snack table and living room-style reading room. Me, a novelist and short story writer; a striving sci-fi writer; a guy with copies of the cover of his dark fantasy novel due out this summer; a young woman writing a film script; two romance writers; a writer/editor for two local motor-sports magazines (an illustrator, too, as he’s the shop’s artist-of-the-month); and a woman “between projects” chosen by staff to be the moderator.

I sipped an Earl Grey Moonlight iced tea. The tea was Earl Grey with orange, blue sunflowers, and natural flavors. I drank it and chipped away at a monster chocolate chip cookie that I shared with my son Kevin. I shared the story of my new historical novel set in 1919 Colorado, as foreign a land to Floridians as Florida is to Coloradans (do I have that right or is it Coloradoans?). I had copies with me. Four were signed copies to my sister-in-law Nancy and her three adult children. I slipped her the books while nobody was looking and she slipped me the cash which I could use on any number of novels or teas or giant cookies. I also slipped a copy of my novel to Stephanie Gonter, one of the shop’s co-owners. I brought along my book of short stories. I am on a mission to monetize my writing journey, no easy task for us small-press-published authors.

One of the more interesting conversations was on A.I. Many self-published authors are avoiding A.I. writing yet they also employ A.I.-designed covers. Angel Lowden, the store’s other co-owner, worked the counter. She said that she and other booksellers are on the lookout for A.I. covers and usually won’t accept them in their book stock. The cover is hugely important these days and she suggested getting a professional to do the job. My daughter Annie designed the “Zeppelins” cover. She’s an artist and marketing ace and gave her dad a special deal.

Novel Tea is everything an indie should be. It’s located along a leafy street on the main floor of an old two-story house. It features a big front porch with easy chairs. Inside are overstuffed chairs and many, many books. There is a food bar and a bar-bar that serves beer and wine. Some in the gathering jumped right into happy hour. I am a teetotaler these days so Novel Tea’s specialties and their huge array of leaf teas add to the allure of its name. The play on words is nice too. I noted the shop features an array of craft brews including those from Ormond Brewing Company which is on the other side of the tracks on the line that serves Ormond Station. In reality, there is no train to Ormond Station but me and my neighbors are working on it. The shop’s next big event is June 3 with Boozy Books at the brewery. Here are details from the web site:

Our Summer Boozy Book Fair returns on June 3rd from 5 PM to 9 PM at Ormond Brewing Company.

Browse books from Novel Tea Book Shop, shop local authors and artisans, and enjoy a relaxed evening with a drink in hand. Whether you’re building your summer TBR, looking for a unique gift, or just want a fun night out, this is your spot.

We’ll have:
Local authors and book signings
Handcrafted goods from local vendors
Books for all ages and interests
Ormond Brewing featuring your favorite brews

Come out, support local, and celebrate the start of summer with us.

Free to attend. Bring a friend. 

It’s wonderful, really. Support local. Stephanie stressed that she and her partner are always looking for fun new ways to sell books and teas. I am now local but didn’t sign up in time for Boozy Books. Next time…

Note on accessibility: From the street, Novel Tea appears inaccessible for those of us using walkers, rollators, and e-carts. But it's very accessible. Parking on the east side of the building is ample (mind the cats!) and there is a ramp inside the entrance located near the artist studio. Staff will rearrange chairs to accommodate.

DNC in Denver 2028?

A DNC exploratory committee visited Denver last week to see if it's the best place for the 2028 Democratic National Convention. Other possible 2028 locations include Boston, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. 

I covered the 2008 Dem convention in Denver as an embedded blogger with the Wyoming delegation. Why not return to those glory days, when Barack Obama was the nominee and all set to move into the presidency (twice) while the GOP plotted to never let anything like that ever happen again. And look what they did. Just take a look around and see what they did to guarantee themselves a Democrat-free future, a democracy-free future. Use search bar to find my DNC Denver 2008 posts.

This was then...

Denver August 2008

Wrong shipping date confuses book buyers and me too

I was flummoxed (yes, flummoxed) to see my historical novel "Zeppelins Over Denver" listed for pre-order on Amazon.com with a shipping date of Nov. 19. On the product page, a May 5, 2026, pub date is listed and that is correct. At the same time, I was holding a copy of "Zeppelins" in my hands, wondering why an entity such as Amazon, which can speed a supply of Dude Wipes to me overnight, wants readers to wait until almost Thanksgiving for my first novel. I have alerted the site's problem-solvers and hope for a quick solution. I mean, the book is worth waiting for, might even make a great holiday gift, but I may be an old man before that comes around. Pause for fact check: I am an old man now, typing this with the same four fingers I used on typewriters and keyboards since the 1970s when I was putting my first words to paper. Yes, paper. So, if you are anxious to read a novel set in 1919 featuring characters out of The Great War in Europe, leave a comment and I will sell you a copy and mail it the old-fashioned way. 

Travel now with Patrick as he contemplates a new life in the West

The opening paragraphs of my new novel, Zeppelins Over Denver:

Patrick Michael Hott pulled his cap down on his forehead and slumped into the seat on the east side of the southbound train. It was the last day of July 1919. He shifted in the seat, trying to bend his lanky frame into the limited space. He looked out the window. Cows grazed on brown swatches of grass that stretched all the way to the flat horizon. He passed green wavy ranks of ripening corn. There was a man laboring out in his field. An old farmhouse. More cows.

He looked in the other direction, past his seatmate and to the opposite side of the train. That was the west and the Rocky Mountains. Heads and hats blocked that view out of the passenger car windows. So many big people. So many hats. Floppy women’s hats adorned with feathers. Towering cowboy hats worn by towering cowboys. Straw boaters worn by rangy young dudes. Beat-up hats worn to protect farmers from the mile-high sun. Every blessed American wore a big hat that obscured his view of the mountains. They were all on his train.

Why couldn’t they wear sensible headwear such as the soft cap he bought in Chicago on the Fourth of July? He had joined his brother’s family to picnic on Lake Michigan for the first Fourth that America celebrated after The Great War. Not even a month ago. He bought the cap from a street vendor. He liked it immediately and spent too much of his hard-earned pay for it. He liked that he could pull it down over his big ears when the winter winds blew off the lake. The bill kept the sun off his face, which would come in handy now that he was on his way to Arizona. It also gave him a dapper air, or so he believed.

To be continued

Order Zeppelins Over Denver by Michael T. Shay now from your favorite bookstore. Just yesterday, friends ordered copies from Parnassus Books in Nashville, co-owned by the magnificent Ann Patchett,  and Mitchell Kaplan's Books & Books in Miami. Mitchell was co-founder of the amazing Miami Book Fair that began in 1984. These bookstores are key parts of the literary world that keep hope alive even when dark forces try to destroy us. 

May 4, 1970, Four Dead in Ohio, thousands in Vietnam and Cambodia, it never stops

Kent State Massacre, May 4, 1970; me (in uniform w/DEWAT rifle) marching at U of SC Navy ROTC drill, May 7, 1970; me (in civies) marching against the war on streets of D.C., May 9, 1970. Four dead in Ohio, two shot dead at Jackson State U, May 15; thousands in Vietnam, more in Cambodia, dozens of school children blown up by U.S. in Iran. It never ends.

Riding along on Peter Richardson's Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine

I read the new book by Peter Richardson, "Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine." It's published by the University of California Press. Early reviews say the book does a credible job tracing the influence of Rolling Stone with its "new journalism" or, as Hunter S. Thompson fans and critics called it, "gonzo journalism." Thompson influenced many of us but in different ways. He was criticized for his unorthodox style of reporting the 1972 U.S. presidential campaign. The establishment press had its way of covering campaigns and Thompson had his own glorious approach.

Others viewed it differently. Said novelist Nelson Algren in a 1979 review of "The Great Shark Hunt" in the Chicago Tribune: "Now that the dust of the '60s has settled, his [Thompson's] hallucinated vision strikes one as having been. after all, the sanest." 

The book's original 1973 cover has
a secret to reveal.

Thompson and Algren are both long gone. Both of these rowdy writers documented brutal eras: Thompson the 1960s and '70s; Algren the Great Depression through the 1970s. We may never see their like again. We need them now. Wouldn't it be thrilling to see Dr. Gonzo clash with Trump's oily apparatchiks?

Thompson's writing in RS influenced my writing but not my lifestyle. Both would have considered me a square. That said, I read everything Hunter S. Thompson wrote. I read every feature in Rolling Stone of the '70s and it shaped my attitude and my writing.  Once I unlocked the secret of reading at five, I absorbed everything: cereal boxes, billboards, all the books the librarians let me check out. The three important books in my life: "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller,  "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, and "Slaughterhouse-Five," by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I was so wild about "Catch-22" that I forced it upon my Catholic high school friends and we were as impressed it as they were surfing and girls. It was funny. It had something to tell us. Heller was a messenger and, in 1968, we really had to listen. One of the book's suggested titles was "Snowden's Secret." Heller teases the secret throughout the book; its revelation toward the end is almost too much for Yossarian to bear. 

Every book I read told a secret. I loved the act of reading but was blissfully unaware that I also was unlocking life's secrets. 

Richardson spills plenty of Rolling Stone's secrets along the way. The magazine's biggest secret is that is existed at all. It spilled the secrets of my generation, the good (music coverage), the bad (Manson), the ugly (Altamont). It was fun. It was cool to be in the circle of readers. It shaped me into a different person than the one expected by me as a young man and those around me. 

The last five years of the 1970s were, according to the author, the magazine's golden era. The '70s were a golden era for many of us Boomers, locked into our 20s and early 30s. The mag helped us through those years, helped us get a handle on being young in America. Mischief was afoot. Cults were big. Rock grew into a giant industry. Right-wingers plotted their takeover of America which fizzled with Nixon but they wouldn't let that happen under Reagan and the cons who followed. Jann Wenner moved the Stone to New York where da big money was an it gradually grew into something much larger but also smaller. I read it only occasionally now. I like the political coverage and introduction to new music styles and new bands. 

The thing I love about Rolling Stone is that it taught me to write. It was a writer's workshop if you were paying attention. Hunter Thompson and Joe Eszterhas. I also was learning how to write like a traditional journalist while learning about "new journalism." I was too much of a straight arrow to be gonzo but the techniques are in me and enter into my fiction. Woodward and Bernstein caused a rise in J-School students while Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Tim O'Brien, Joni Mitchell, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Harry Crews, and Toni Morrison taught us to by-God write like we meant every damn word. This is a short list of my writing heroes/heroines, one befitting a blogger who keeps on truckin'.

Richardson's book was published by University of California Press. It is a university press, a key player in the publishing universe. As you might expect, documentation is required. Richardson provides it in spades. A "Random Notes" section brings readers up to date on the key players. That is followed by Acknowledgements, Notes (lots and lots of notes), and Index. Use the book as a handy guide to a decade, 1967-76, that could be called "the shadow 60s" for its many USA-rockin' events. 

"Zeppelins Over Denver" now available to pre-order

On April 24, I guesstimated that "Zeppelins Over Denver" would be out by summer. You have to be careful with these things as publishing tends to take time and you don't want to get readers' hopes up unnecessarily. 

"Zeppelins" is now on pre-order (May 5 official pub date) at your favorite bookstore or even from your least favorite big-box outlet that places book bins somewhere among twelve-packs of underwear and rows of gleaming BBQ grills. 

My goal is to get the book into local stores and those in my old stomping grounds of Wyoming and Colorado. It's a bit tricky because the book is set in Colorado, specifically Denver, in 1919. I'm now officially a Florida resident, a return to my roots and the comfort of family. My Colorado roots go back to 1919 when all of my grandparents decided Denver was the place to be. 

My grandmother Florence decided to extend her tenure as an army nurse in France to the new army hospital in someplace called Aurora. There she met and married my grandfather Raymond, a cavalry officer from Iowa who left the war with lung problems so they shipped him to the hospital that eventually became Fitzsimons Army Hospital. Cavalry officer met nurse and there you go. 

My Irish immigrant grandfather Martin left sweltering Chicago after having a lung surgically removed due to empyema. The surgeon urged him to recuperate in a drier clime, Arizona, for instance, or maybe Denver. He chose Denver. Grandmother Agnes, the first postmistress of a tiny town near Cincinnati, jumped into a Model T with her sister and two gal-pals and drove the rugged road to Colorado. She and her sister decided to stay while the others returned to the banks of the Ohio. Martin and Agnes met at the Hibernian Club and one thing led to another and here I am.

That's just background. The setting is important to me as I was born in Denver, did some of my growing up there, returned after college to work, left Denver to go to grad school up I-25 at CSU, and then moved north to Cheyenne to work for the Wyoming Arts Council for 25 years. Retirement party with great homemade pie on a Friday in January 2016. On Monday morning, I sat and started writing this book.

Co-worker at retirement party: Hey Mike, whatcha gonna do after retirement? You can't just sit around, you know. 

Me: I'm gonna sit around and write a novel. A historical novel.

Co-worker: That's nice. Give me another slice of that pie.

Ten years later, I'm in Florida and I have a book. Easy as pie.

Stay tuned here for more updates. 

"Zeppelins Over Denver" due out by summer

Just finished reviewing the galley proofs of my first novel. My first published novel. I’ve been writing for a long time, since I was in my 20s. I actually started earlier, as a kid writing letters that were rarely answered. My first readers were disinterested friends and family members. Maybe that’s where I learned how to hold an audience. Most of my early writing had an audience of one. I discovered journaling and keep up that written practice with this blog. I registered with the original Blogger from Pyra Press in 2001 and posted my first weblog in November 2005. I began blogging regularly in January 2006.

But back to the novel. The title is “Zeppelins Over Denver” and it will be out in May from The Ridgeway Press of Michigan in Detroit. Publisher and friend M.L. Liebler helped me get the ball rolling and I am forever grateful. Small presses rule! Big presses are great too but they have spent a lot of time ignoring me. C’est la vie! I was learning how to write all of this time, from the early 1970s until now. I’m still learning. Always will be.

“Zeppelins” is a historical novel set in 1919 Denver. Its origins lie on the yellowing pages of my paternal grandmother’s diary from her time as a U.S. Army nurse in France, 1918-19. She kept one diary in her lifetime and it was lost for decades, existing only as a rumor that faded with each passing year. It was rediscovered in my sister Molly’s basement in Tallahassee. She’s a nurse like our mother and my father’s mother. Eileen, another sister who also was a nurse, took the diary and transcribed it. She asked me for editorial assistance. As writer and editor, I gladly provided it. I whipped it into shape, working more as a conservator than a fiction writer. I corrected spelling and punctuation. I changed no contents, censored nothing. It was lovely just the way it was.

Eileen asked me to put together a little book for the family. Along the way, I researched the service of army nurses in the Great War and the Great War itself. I thought I knew at least some of the history. I had read war novels such as “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “The Good Soldier Schweik,” “Soldier of the Great War,” and “Winter Soldier.”  I had read “The Guns of August” by Barbara Tuchman and Paul Fussell’s excellent “The Great War and Modern Memory.” I’ve read the poetry: Wilfred Owen, Siegried Sassoon, and Robert Graves. I have read some of the celebratory war poetry, too. Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees" was my father’s favorite poem. I wondered if Dad had contemplated the shattered trees in the Bulge battlefield in the Ardennes in 1944. Kilmer’s reputation lives on at Columbia University’s annual Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest. The Columbia Daily Spectator once ranked the contest as number one among the “Best Columbia Arts Traditions.”

The more I read, the more I realized how little I knew. I dug deeper. In the end, I decided to absorb everything I knew and let it come out in what I see as a historical novel colored by the darkly humorous war novels of Joseph Heller, Juroslav Hasek, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. And there you have it. Ten years of work poured into almost 400 pages. I hope you enjoy it. If you are inspired by the characters, some of them will return in the sequel, “Patrick of the Mountains.” The draft manuscript is complete and it will be published once the edits and revisions are complete. I have roughed out a plot for a third novel but we will see where that goes.

The NOMAD LitMag launches "Breakthroughs" issue tonight in Salt Lake City

Two of my stories are in the new issue. There's a 
sampler tonight at the Sweet Library in SLC. Not
really in my neighborhood anymore but check it
out, you readers around The Great Salt Lake. Some of
us far-flung writers will be part of a Zoom reading
coming in May.

The choice is clear for us Rogue Catholics

Fallen-away Catholics like me have a choice to make.

Catholic or not? Am I on the side of the outspoken Roman Catholic Pope Leo XIV or am I not? And, if I am, should I not be allied with the Catholic Church and what it stands for, even though I oppose its policies on abortion, women’s rights, gay rights, and its awful record of child abuse. I have long criticized the Catholic Church’s alliance with the Religious Right, which I’ve always called a pact with the devil.

But Pope Leo of Chicago is socking it to Donald Trump, the creepiest human to ever be elected U.S. president.  We know the agenda of the Religious Right as we’ve seen the movement in action all our adult lives. The underlying precept of the RR is hatred of Catholics. We worship false gods: saints, martyrs, The Holy Ghost, and the pope. We used to worship in a foreign tongue, Latin, and we think that a cracker and a bit of wine are the body and blood of Christ. We are demon Papists!

Meanwhile, the Christonationalists of the RR bows down to images of Trump and Christ together, best buds, not the holy trinity but the holy duo. We laugh. They nod and say amen. Let me tell you this, brothers and sisters. If you don’t know hypocrisy when you see it, you weren’t raised as an Irish-Catholic. I saw hypocrisy. What I really mean is irony. What I mean is that Trump, Vance, Hegseth, and irony of ironies, a Kennedy, are all humorless monsters. They are Nazis without the spiffy uniforms. Trump wouldn’t know humor if it bit him in the ass. He demolishes the White House. He plans to build the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile without any triomphe to his name. Have you seen the artist renderings of this monstrosity? Looks like he summoned Herr Speer from Hell.

I have to find a leader of stature who is not a nincompoop. I choose Pope Leo. Play ball! But please not the White Sox variety. Did you see how they surrendered to the Rays on Thursday? A 55-pitch ninth inning? Pope Leo, after you’ve vanquished Trump, the Sox need your blessings.

For another look at this topic, go to Matt Lewis's Substack article 

Tribute to my brother Tommy, Daytona Paddle Out

On Saturday, April 4, our family held a Paddle Out for my brother Tommy. As the eldest of nine brothers and sisters, and a writer, I was selected to be the speaker. I will let myself do the talking. In case you're wondering, I need assistance to move around this earth. A spinal injury demands it. Cruising the beach with a walker would not have been my idea of a good time back in my surfing heyday in the 1960s and '70s. But the alternative is not my idea of a Good time in 2026. Life is for living. Surf's up, Tommy! P.S.: Watching on YouTube carries various risks in this era of unfettered blathering. I am a practitioner of this art. Viewer beware! 

Get Out Now!

Remembrance: Paddle Out for Tommy Shay, Daytona Beach

Family members and friends paddle out and scatter ashes for Tommy Shay at Hartford Avenue approach in Daytona Beach. April 4, 2026. Photo by Robert Hougham.

Reminder: Paddle Out for my brother Tommy Shay set for April 4

A reminder for my brother Tommy Shay's Paddle Out this Saturday, April 4:

Join us at the Hartford Approach in Daytona Beach at 1:00 PM as we come together to celebrate Tommy’s life.

Bring your board, share some stories, and help us send him off the way he would’ve loved — surrounded by friends, family, and the ocean.

If you can, wear Tommy’s favorite color red in his honor.

Open house to follow at the Martinez home.

We’d love to see everyone down by the sea.

Way back when: My son Kevin with Uncle Tommy
on Daytona Beach.

Ormond Beach No Kings Day Rally brings out the crowds and the creativity

Great crowd of concerned citizens at this morning's No Kings Day Rally at the Grenada Bridge in Ormond Beach, Florida. Many, like me, veterans of previous protests, others just concerned veterans. I parked my scooter next to Vietnam combat vet in a walker who doesn't support whatever this war is we are raging in Iran and vicinity. He grew up in Ormond and knew some of my b-ball teammates from Father Lopez High School (Go Green Wave!). Met a woman my age who, late at night, assembled her big sign held up by a mop handle. She moved recently from Long Island. "Left my blue state to come here." People with their dogs and kids and grandkids. They felt the need to be here on this sunny Saturday. I felt privileged to be in their company. A few photos below by Kevin Shay.

 

That's me with the cool compression socks. The man
behind me, a Navy vet (didn't get his name), lent me his wife's sign.