Mystery solved @Telluride's Wilkinson Public Library Tuesday, 12/7

06 Dec Mystery solved @Telluride's Wilkinson Public Library Tuesday, 12/7

[click “Play” to hear R.J. Rubadeau’s conversation with Susan]

Telluride local Bob Rubadeau is familiar with launches. He is, after all, a major league ocean sailor, a Cape Horn veteran. But Rubadeau is also an author of both fiction and non-fiction works of contemporary literature. This time we are talking books – or book – not boats.

On Tuesday, December 7,  6 p.m., in the Program Room of the five-star Wilkinson Public Library, Bob finally shows his hand, revealing the final chapters in his protagonist Wit Thorpe’s trials to find the real killer in his latest novel: Gatsby’s Last Resort: A Telluride Murder Mystery. Seems Wit, a Telluride native and the local Peeping Tom for hire, has been charged with 1st degree murder of a quick succession of victims, all linked as major shareholders in an attempt to acquire the Valley Floor. And despite what the local Sheriff may think – he describes Wit as “our own Ted Bundy” –  Wit admits that he “probably didn’t do it.”

Rubadeau’s readers across the country have tracked Wit closely over a nine-month publishing odyssey in part on Telluride Inside… and Out, a key partner in the author’s premier Community Publishing 101 project. Other partners include the Wilkinson Library, Between the Covers Bookstore, The Telluride Writers Guild, and Beacon Hill Publishers. The latest addition to this stellar lineup is artist Roger Mason, who donated the cover art.

It really does take a village.

December 7 marks of the culmination of the effort put forth by Rubadeau and Community Publishing 101 project that began with a finished manuscript and a vague outline of the publishing process, and finally winds up in the marketplace with an award-winning, world-class product available at all major Internet distributors and on bookshelves across the country. En route, an unlikely troupe of Telluride writers, artists, book lovers, designers, word professionals, and revolutionaries challenged the status quo of the book industry, working hard to preserve diversity, regional identity, and local opportunities for creative artists right here in Telluride. While the last nine months of Community Publishing 101 have dealt primarily with the business and logistical nuances of publishing, Rubadeau plans to use this final segment in his five-part hands-on series of free seminars to discuss the writing of the novel. And he reads from the manuscript for the very first time.

Rubadeau describes Gatsby’s Last Resort as, “New Age detective fiction loaded with glitz, guns, sex, mysterious red heads, dead writers, cows, and a spoiled Rocky Mountain community full of edgy characters we love, and those we love to hate.”

“I love Wit Thorpe, a private eye and peeping-tom working for the reality challenged residents that walk the high Rocky Mountain streets of my Telluride. Wit and his pre-teen daughter are a detecting duo created in literary heaven. This book is laugh out loud funny and as tightly crafted as the great classics of the murder mystery genre,” said local celebrity, actress Susan Saint James.

To learn more about the project, click the “play” button and listen to Rubadeau’s interview.