WORDCRAFTER PRESS 2026 / A NOVEL
A dark
horse.A rock poet.
In the 1970s, Charli Erickson arrives in Boulder hoping to write rock poetry and find love. A blue-eyed black stallion keeps appearing along the way.
The title has five meanings
WORDCRAFTER PRESS · 2026
A single title. Five possible subjects.
Who is
the dark horse?
In her tour essay, Lindsey considers five unlikely candidates—each capable of changing the way the title reads.
- 01
The stallion.
An elusive black horse with blue eyes, glimpsed by Charli and perhaps imagined. Its appearances open a question about the world beyond the ordinary.
- 02
Boulder.
The late-1970s city itself: from a turbulent college town toward a place of possibility. Lindsey wonders whether Boulder is the unlikely winner.
- 03
The Horse.
Not a horse at all, but the three-story bar and entertainment center where the characters gather, especially Ched.
- 04
Ched.
Charli leaves Boulder before he does. Could the man who remains be the dark horse waiting there?
- 05
Charli.
She begins by thinking of herself as a failed wife. What if the eventual long shot—the one who wins—is Charli?
From Lindsey’s essay on the title, May 2026.
Find the novelBefore the poem,
a song.
A reader’s review notes that every chapter begins with song lyrics.
The poems are part of Charli's life and voice, including lines about the horse she sees.
Lindsey has described poetry as her way of singing. Her books give that impulse several very different forms.
A face in the landscape.
Jim in the poems.
The painting on the cover of Cashing Checks with Jim Morrison turns a face and a ridge-like silhouette into one image. That meeting of the recognizable and the strange feels at home in Lindsey's surreal poetry.
CASHING CHECKS / REDBAT BOOKSWhat happens when
money becomes
an abstraction?
TANKA · FRENZIES
What began as a meditation on disappearing cash expanded when new Jim Morrison poems continued arriving. The collection joins that voice with tanka and Lindsey's surreal “frenzies.”
Explore the poetry collectionREADERS WHO KNOW POETRY
“Alive with wit, evocative imagery, insight.”
“Fantasy and fact merge.”
Before the novel,
there was Boulder.
Like Charli, Lindsey moved to Boulder after leaving a marriage. She hiked near the Flatirons, learned to ski, rode motorcycles as a passenger, and carried memories of the city long after she left.
Years later, while in graduate school, she completed the original 350-page draft in thirty days. The memory had been waiting longer.
30 DAYSTO COMPLETE THE ORIGINAL 350-PAGE DRAFT
Lindsey Martin-Bowen
Poet, novelist, former reporter and editor, and retired professor. She has taught writing and literature as well as Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and American Court Systems. She holds an MA in English/creative writing and a Juris Doctor.
Her poetry has appeared in New Letters, I-70 Review and other literary journals. Where Water Meets the Rock was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Read Lindsey's Boulder accountA writing life
in many volumes.
Fiction SELECTED BOOKS
- 2026The Dark Horse Waits in Boulder
- 2014Rapture Redux: A Comedy
- 2009Hamburger Haven
- 1992Cicada Grove
Poetry COLLECTIONS & COLLABORATIONS
- 2024About Those Losses with Sarah Worrel and James Benger
- 2023Cashing Checks with Jim Morrison
- 2022The BOOK of FRENZIES
- 2017Where Water Meets the Rock
- 2016Crossing Kansas with Jim Morrison
- 2013Inside Virgil's Garage
- 2008Standing on the Edge of the World
- 1990Second Touch