DISCO
You will believe a dog can fly.
Disco: A Coming of Age Novel Paperback – December 12, 2025
by Mike Baron (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (19)
You Will Believe a Dog Can Fly.
For fourteen-year-old Donnie Waits, life in Gunderson, Wisconsin, is just another stop on his mom’s endless tour of “fresh starts.” His only friend is old Nate, the crusty fisherman who runs the bait shop by the river. But everything changes the day Donnie sees someone toss a sack into the water—and rescues the scrappy, soaking-wet pup inside.
He names her Disco.
When Disco snatches a flying disc out of the air like it’s the most natural thing in the world, Donnie’s ordinary summer explodes into something extraordinary. With the help of Keely Van Metre—the fearless girl who believes in him even when he doesn’t believe in himself—Donnie and Disco set their sights on the World Disc Dog Championships.
But before they can soar, they’ll have to face small-town bullies, a dark secret from the river, and the man who tried to drown Disco in the first place.
Heartfelt, funny, and full of unstoppable spirit, Disco is a story about friendship, courage, and the moments that teach you how to fly.
Join Donnie and Disco on an unforgettable journey of friendship, courage, and finding your wings. Order your copy today!
Liberty Island published Disco in 2018. Liberty Island gave up the ghost and returned all rights to me, including the four Biker novels they published. I took them to WolfPack, a leading publisher of Westerns and Men’s Adventure Novels. Recently, they added Disco to their Wise Wolf line, for young adults.
Why the Guy Who Created Nexus Wrote a Book About a Frisbee-Catching Dog
If you know my work, you probably don’t expect a story about a boy and his dog.
Fair enough. I’ve spent most of my career writing about violence, crime, vengeance, and the darker corners of human nature. Nexus, The Badger, my Josh Pratt novels, those aren’t exactly bedtime stories for middle schoolers. My wife Ann wouldn’t read those.
I wrote this book for her, and for dog lovers, and for young people.
It’s called Disco. It might be the most honest thing I’ve done.
I didn’t sit down and decide to “write a YA novel.” That’s not how it works for me.
This one came from a simpler place.
I like dogs. Always have. Dogs don’t lie, they don’t posture, and they don’t pretend to be something they’re not. That alone puts them ahead of most human characters I’ve written.
And like most people who’ve been around a while, I started thinking more about the next generation—kids, grandkids, the ones who are still figuring out who they are and what kind of world they’ve landed in.
Disco started as a simple image: a kid, not quite fitting in, and a dog who shouldn’t have survived—but did.
Everything else grew out of that.
On the surface, this looks like a sharp turn from what I usually write.
No vigilantes. No body count. No bleak punchlines.
But I don’t see it as a departure so much as a change in angle.
The same things matter: character, pressure, choice, consequence.
In my darker work, I tend to explore what breaks people.
In Disco, I wanted to explore what builds them.
It turns out those are just two sides of the same coin.
Disco follows Donnie Waits, a fourteen-year-old kid who’s used to being the new guy, the outsider, the one who doesn’t quite belong anywhere.
Then he pulls a half-drowned puppy out of a river—one somebody tried to get rid of. At the park, the new pup takes off after a flying disc thrown by a stranger. Snags it out of the air. Donnie names her “Disco.”
Disco catches flying discs like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Donnie’s life shifts. Not magically, not easily but enough to give him something to hold onto.
With the help of a girl who sees more in him than he sees in himself, Donnie takes a shot at something bigger: the World Disc Dog Championships.
Of course, nothing stays simple. There are bullies. There’s a past that doesn’t stay buried. And there’s the fact that someone, somewhere, wanted that dog dead.
This is a book for kids who feel like outsiders.
It’s for parents and grandparents who want to hand a kid a story that isn’t cynical or hollow.
It’s for anyone who remembers what it felt like to be fourteen and not quite know where you fit—or if you did at all.
And yeah, it’s for dog people.
Especially dog people.
There’s no shortage of dark stories out there. I’ve contributed to that genre many times.
But not every story has to strip things down to the bone.
Sometimes you want a story that builds something instead. Something about trust, about sticking with it, about finding one good thing and refusing to let go.
For Donnie, that thing just happens to be a dog with a talent for catching a disc out of midair.
For me, it was the chance to write something that doesn’t look away from hardship—but doesn’t wallow in it either.
If you’ve been reading me for years, this one might surprise you.
Nobody’s getting their head blown off.
There are no assassins, no hit jobs, no elaborate revenge plots.
But the stakes are real. The kid has to decide who he is. The dog has to survive. And not everything—or everyone—comes out clean on the other side.
The tools are the same. I’m just using them to build something different.
Disco is available now, and it’s an easy entry point if you’re curious what this side of my writing looks like.
You can read it free on Kindle Unlimited. And if it works for you, pass it along, to your kids, your grandkids, or the local school librarian who’s always looking for something that actually connects.
Here’s the link: https://amzn.to/3OMEukZ
I have a signed copy. Great book.