I'm the one who's honored--thank you!

Online & In person from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Nov. 10 at Elmer L. Anderson Library in Minneapolis! Friends of the Kerlan Collection at U. of Minnesota Libraries is honored to host the 2026 Association for Library Service to Children American Library Association (ALA) Children’s Literature Lecture.

The idea is in my head. I have a couple of books in line ahead of it, but hm......

Thank you! Mvto/wado!

Ah, RAIN Is my debut novel, originally published in '01, if you can believe it. (Baby Cyn writing--yikes!) It is a Hannesburg, KS book. So, is ON A WING AND A TEAR for MG, which is super fun modern folklore and features Big Foot. I really should try my hand at MG horror someday....

Thank you for your close thoughtful read and feedback. It means the world to me. Hughie appears as a secondary character in HEARTS UNBROKEN (which is focused on his big sister), but it's realistic fiction. Herein, I could dive deeper through metaphor.

I’m simply offering the most well-known examples. (In 1983, I launched into my chicken nuggets addiction.) We all make mistakes, and doing better is the work of being human.

NOTE: I am a fan of King’s writing, and MISERY is my fave horror novel. With regard to PET SEMATARY, I don’t think King would make the same writing choices today that he did in 1983. I’m not criticizing him or even punching up.

It’s certainly possible to write engaging Native horror without casting Native humans as horrific. I urge literary citizens to hit pause and interrogate tropes like the Indian Burial Ground, both on the page and in our wider society.

Complications quickly arise: (a) actors in ghostly red face are part of the show (b) the property is actually haunted by a Native college girl who went missing decades earlier. The story, which also includes humor and a cute, first-kiss romance, is structured around a countdown to Oct. 31.

In HARVEST HOUSE, Muscogee Hughie Wolfe volunteers to work at a community fundraiser haunted house. It’s meant to be a fun house to celebrate Halloween.

But the Indian Burial Ground trope persists. It’s frequent fodder on “haunted tours” of various historic sites and cities.

Native people have a heightened sensitivity to our ancestors, those stolen after death, leading to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and those whose lives were stolen, leading to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Girls, Women and Two-Spirit Relatives movement.

The implication, I suppose, is that if living Indigenous people are monstrous, dead ones must be full-blown demonic sources of evil.

Thank you for reading! 🎃