Mysterious Ways
By Jason Kurtz
Mysterious Ways is an edge of your seat thrill ride that takes place in fictitious Sawyer County, Colorado, over the weekend of the 2025 summer solstice. This sci-fi, mystery, thriller will be hard to put down as you follow a myriad of characters, some good, some bad, and a whole slew in between, each with their own struggle, as they witness a meteor landing on the shortest night of the year. Perhaps the greatest struggle, is that of the main character and the hero of this story, Ethan Hawks, a 32-year-old Fed Ex driver, whose parents were killed in a tragic amusement park accident when he was ten, and who is in the throes of a nasty divorce. With the custody of their Australian Shepherd, Bronco, on the forefront of his mind, and the excitement of the chase for new love in co-worker, Kelsey Collins, Ethan experiences the meteor up close and personal, and not in a good way. While Ethan is stuck in a place that only stirs up vivid nightmares of his troubled past, his new girl is teamed up with her ex, Justin Thompson, and that isn't even the worst thing that happens that weekend.
There are two antagonists in this story: One is cranky, old rancher, Karl Crawford, who owns the whole northwest quadrant of the county, and also happens to have a terraced marijuana grow and meth lab on his enormous mountain ranch. The other, co-antagonist, if you will, is Jack Wilson, a self-help guru and leader of Goldpath, don’t call it a cult. Jack has come out of hiding after a five-year hiatus which started due to Covid, to host the Solstice Splash in Aurum, Colorado. This had been the kickoff of a summer-long tour across the southwest United States, which accumulated a rag-tag following the whole way, not unlike the Grateful Dead or Phish festivals.
And speaking of Covid, the super-charged cold that suspiciously shut down the world, this virus plays a theme in Mysterious Ways, most likely, because it was during this time that the story came to me. I was a Fed Ex driver myself, during Covid, and I drove from Grand Junction to Moab every day, taking the back way, Route 128 in Utah. During the lockdowns, when only essential workers were allowed on the streets, it was eerie, to say the least, traveling that two-lane highway along the Colorado River with a truck full of toilet paper and other essentials. I half-expected to come up over a hill to see a roadblock of unfriendly types, drooling over my cargo, and that is exactly what happens to Kelsey Collins in this story.
So, prepare your mind and your eyes for this 400-plus page novel, which has 37 chapters and 173 scenes of pure adventure, romance, intrigue, and a whole lot of swear words from the likes of one Karl Crawford, as well as, pert near the entire U.S. Government, including NASA and the FBI, converging on Sawyer County, Colorado, on the longest day of 2025.
As you can see in the screenshot of the Mysterious Ways chapter list, I am very, what's the word? Not the four letter word that starts with 'a', I am very... I'm a Virgo and a Libra, if you believe in that sort of thing. A perfectionist with OCD, ADHD, ACDC, and... and... Who made who? Who made you? Who made who?Ain't nobody told ya? Anyway, I am an equinox baby (September 22), riding the cusp of what, I do not know. But I do know that, I'm the type that washes the dishes as I cook, and I couldn't write a short story, no, I had to write a damn novel. Go big or go home, right? Well, writing a novel is no small task, and so I created a story bible app, basically, out of necessity, including character profile sheets, maps, and a scene-by-scene breakdown of all 173 scenes, to name the main features.
Check out the Mysterious Ways website for a look at the app.
Ethan Hawks
Karl Crawford
Kelsey Collins
All artwork created with ai and Jason Kurtz.
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