How a Westword Assignment Turned Into a New Book

Escaping Denver was always my plan. Not my new novel of the same name — that was someone else's plan. But getting out of the Mile High City. Absolutely.

When I moved here in 1998, I thought I was getting royally screwed on the price tag of the little house in Highland that I was buying — compared to similar properties in Arizona, where I'd lived for decades, it was almost twice the price. After scraping up that amount, I planned to stay no longer than five years before moving on to whatever city and state was next. That, I thought then, was where I'd put down roots.

In all of this, I was wrong.

As it happened, buying a house on the Northside back in 1998 was a great idea. And I never moved out of Denver; instead, this was where my roots were planted. My kids have never lived anywhere else. Turns out that Denver is a tough place to leave.

So it's ironic for a few reasons that I ended up writing a novel called Escaping Denver. Like calling the Queen City of the Plains home for more than a quarter-century and counting, Escaping Denver wasn't my idea. That honor belongs to a trio of Canadian fellows that I'm glad to call friends these days: Mike Howerun, Brady Roberts and Matthew Hall, who started a podcast about Denver International Airport back in June 2021. Had they even been to DIA? Nope. But they'd seen some YouTube clips about the many conspiracy theories surrounding the Denver airport, and decided that it would be a rocking-good setting for a sci-fi thriller.

They could stuff a lot of other obsessions into that setting — cryptids, legends, lost civilizations, mysteries of history, world-level cabals running things from behind some intricately developed scenes. Two characters wake up in a complex they don't understand, their only connection being that they both remember flying out of the Denver airport. They understandably want to get out, and to figure out what's going on. But nothing is that simple. Far from it.

Those characters' stories are told over the five seasons of the podcast, the last of which is just launching. But that's not the story of Escaping Denver, the novel.

I came into the picture between the first and second seasons of what was then just the hit podcast Escaping Denver. It was at first a normal assignment for Westword: here's a weird and cool thing happening locally to write about, a narrative series set in the world of DIA conspiracies. It was fun to interview Mike and Brady and Matt, and I admit I was a little envious of their concept, since I'd followed those conspiracy theories, too — but as a writer, you get used to purposefully choosing to turn what could be creative jealousy into admiration and, hopefully, inspiration, and I cheered them on. I became one of their legion of podcast fans, too.

That came in handy about a year later, when I was assigned to cover the Escaping Denver podcast a second time—this time, following where the smash-hit series was going, and how the creators were starting to look at expanding the universe through other media. There were rumors of TV treatments, and the third season was just about to drop. By then, the creators had finally gone through the Denver airport, have been guests at FAN EXPO.

Then, early last summer, I heard through friend and former CU Denver student David Slayton — now a successful writer with many books, including Dark Moon Shallow Sea, under his belt and more coming all the time— that his publisher, Blackstone, was looking for someone to write a book in the Escaping Denver narrative universe. That caught my attention because of the connection I had to the podcast, and I'd also published a novel before (The Pull of the Earth won the Colorado Book Award back in the day, and I was just finishing two more I'd started during the pandemic). On somewhat of a lark, I wrote to Blackstone to check out the opportunity. I ended up talking to Brendan Deneen, who's not only an acclaimed author himself, but is also Blackstone's director of media, TV and film.

What I didn't know is that on the Canadian end of the process, Mike and Brady and Matt were hunting for a novelist to tackle this project — and as they report on the podcast episode in which Mike and I talk about the book — they recognized my name on the list of potential authors, and remembered our conversations about the podcast over the years. They thought it was a great match, for which I'm grateful. Deneen's response: "What the hell, let's do it." And so the process began.

I was given a few pages of suggestions as to plot and cast — a skeleton of a treatment, really. The characters were types that didn't even have names yet. The plot arc was there, but it was touchpoints, really; how the story moved from exposition to rising action to climax was an open question. It was, in short, the perfect thing: a collaboration. An invitation, really, for me to come into the sandbox and play. I grabbed my shovel and dug in.

I had until New Year's to finish the first draft, which was a brief enough period, but Deneen suggested that earlier was better, and was really thinking of Thanksgiving as a deadline. I'm trained to write fast, so I told him he'd have it by the end of October. That was a little optimistic, but it turned out to be close: I wrote the first draft in about a month and a half, and turned it in just a few days after Halloween. The editing process took about triple that time, which only made sense: We had a lot of cooks checking the soup.

But I was assured throughout the process that the novel was really mine, even if the world wasn't, and for that, I'm truly thankful. It was an admirably cooperative process, in the end; The team up in Canada loved my ideas, and I loved theirs. I was able to write a strong female lead; I was able to put to use some of my personal knowledge of the area around Ward, Colorado; I was able to write some fun dialogue with some characters that I really came to love. I was able to develop my own narrative in an adopted world, add to something I already admired.

Escaping Denver, the novel, is about to hit shelves, and I couldn't be more proud. I'm already taking notes for the sequel, making plans to do appearances where I can, staying in touch with Mike and Brady and Matt in terms of where we go from here.

They say that success is just preparation meeting opportunity, and my Escaping Denver story is proof of that. It's the lot of a writer these days, or so I tell my students: You say yes to every writing gig that you can and are open to what comes. You do the work, and see what doors might open — even just a crack — as a result. That's the lesson, and it's been a fun one to learn.

Thanks to Westword for supporting that not only for me, but for all the creatives who call this alt-weekly home.

Teague Bohlen's Escaping Denver hits shelves on August 5. At 6 p.m. Monday, August 11, he'll be reading and signing copies at the Tattered Cover at 2526 East Colfax Avenue; he'll be at the Boulder Bookstore on September 30. For more information, see his website.