Denver Author’s First Book Will Become a Film, and Her Third Is Already Winning Awards

Cynthia Swanson is known for telling Denver stories. The author served as the editor of the short-story collection Denver Noir, and two of her first three books have been set in the Mile High City. The first – New York Times bestseller The Bookseller – is set to become a film. Her latest, Anyone But Her, is divided into two periods of Denver’s history: 1979 and 2004. A murder. A mother. A ghost and Colfax Avenue.

“Denver and Colorado overall have such a rich history,” says Swanson. “We have the spookiness of a place like Cheesman Park, and the benefit of so many years passing and so many things happening in that time.” Still, Swanson says she’s only scratching the more modern surface so far. “There are so many other spiritual things that are contained in Colorado that aren’t my place to write about. Those stories aren’t mine to tell, but there are so many that should be told, stories that existed long before white people arrived.”

Nonetheless, the spirit of Denver that Swanson does tap – East High School, that area of Colfax Avenue, the surrounding neighborhoods and even places that live now only in memory, such as the Rainbow Music Hall. All those elements of being a teen in Denver in the late 1970s.

“Since the book’s been out since September,” Swanson says, “I’ve already started to get comments from my readers sharing memories they themselves had about East High back in that era. Some have said that they recognized Colfax just from the descriptions in the book, which is always good to hear. I didn’t live here back then, so that’s all research for me, and I’m glad to do those details and that time for local readers.”

Those details are a bonus of sorts for locals; the book has pleasures all its own, as a mystery, as a family thriller, as a ghost story. But there are “Easter eggs” in the book that are laid in purposefully – not only to communicate some verisimilitude, but also as a nod to the city Swanson’s called home now for decades. “There’s sort of a universal nostalgia that attracts all readers,” Swanson says. “You know, the yellow Ford Pintos and stuff like that. But some of the language is so specific to this city. Like in an early draft of the book, I called a certain house a Denver Square. One of my early readers asked if I was talking about a Foursquare house, which is what they’re called outside of Denver. So I had to more or less translate that term for a wider audience, even though locals would have known exactly what I was talking about.”

Like many authors, Swanson chose her protagonist and the era-setting of the storytelling so as to match up relatively closely with her own experience. “The main character isn’t exactly my age, but she’s close,” laughs Swanson. “I wanted to have an adult perspective on something that happened to her at fourteen. And I wanted her to have that distance, be in that stage of life at around forty years old when you have kids and you’re still trying to build yourself professionally, and still trying to be yourself, even with all the stuff going on in your life.”

The two eras in the book actually create a third: the present day in which it’s read. “It was very intentional that I wanted to get the novel out and in readers hands this fall,” Swanson adds.

That’s part of why she chose to self-publish this time; so she’d have greater control over the publishing process and be able to more precisely control the release schedule. “The book takes place over election season 2004, which holds echoes of the election year we’ve just gone through. Colorado was a different place even only twenty years back. We were still largely red, not even yet a swing state. My main character gets to be a little prophetic in that regard, since she forecasts that Colorado’s future is pretty blue. It’s one of the nice things about writing a story set in the past; I can make a character right about what she sees coming.”

What’s coming for Swanson? More accolades. Just last week, Anyone But Her was awarded a 2024 Indie Author Project award for Best Mystery/Thriller.

“It’s an organization that connects libraries with the authors of independently published books,” Swanson says. “It’s so gratifying that the book is getting that sort of attention already. Only out for two months, and already won an award? That’s pretty cool.”

Cynthia Swanson’s Anyone But Her is on shelves now. Swanson will be at the Douglas County Libraries’ Highlands Ranch branch, 9292 South Ridgeline Boulevard, at 6:30 p.m. Friday, November 15; the Denver Women’s Press Club, 1325 Logan Street, at 5 p.m. Tuesday, November 19; and at the DPL Sam Gary branch, 2961 Roslyn Street, at 6 p.m. Wednesday, December 4. For more information on the book and other upcoming events, see Swanson’s website.