At the rest stop off Interstate 70’s Exit 90 — near the banks of the Colorado River, just before you enter the sleepy town of Rifle — a legendary drug-cartel enforcer known as Chopo drew his last breath, felled by a bullet in the neck.  “Over there is where Chopo…

Stephen Graham Jones is hungry. It’s early afternoon on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder. Jones, in black boots and a black ponytail, sits in his cramped but cozy office, digging into a bag of fast-food burgers. The office has the rich, dusty smell of a used bookstore, which…

It’s no surprise that author Carrie Vaughn, who’ll be appearing at Broadway Book Mall Sunday, holds a deep love for the nooks, crannies, and quiet hominess of local bookstores. She used to work in one. In the late ’90s, the Longmont-based scribe had yet to launch her New York Timesbestselling…

From such veterans as Connie Willis and Ed Bryant to newcomers Molly Tanzer and Rob Ziegler to Carrie Vaughn and Warren Hammond, the focus of Westword’s current cover story, Colorado’s science-fiction/fantasy writers are as wide-ranging as the genres themselves. The books that this state’s authors have produced over the decades…