Maggie is not going to write a very pretty sentence necessarily. With that in mind I went back to my own stories and applied my own style, which for this book at least, is really short and clipped and to-the-point. I asked ‘what did they do here, what happened next, who talks next, who turns next?’ I literally took them apart to see how they did it. Actually for this book I went in and picked some of my favorite fight scenes from other authors and dissected them, line by line. How did you approach writing fight scenes and keeping tension going? Trail of Lightning has been described as a Mad Max-like action story. And that fry bread she makes is a traditional staple in Native American culture. And also that she makes it for Coyote and Kai is kind of a big deal.

In the book, Maggie, who is not domestically inclined, makes food for somebody, so it’s kind of a big deal. All of these are details of the Native experience. There’s not a ton of food in the book, but when they do eat it’s important, as is who makes the food and what kind of food they’re eating and where they’re eating it. I wanted to get the food right! I thought it was really important. Is there any particular element of Native experience, either lived or mythological, that you found especially important or especially exciting to include? Although my story does deal with a lot of trauma! But hopefully it’s still a fun monster-hunting adventure. They don’t have to always be depressing death marches or stories of alcoholism and trauma. They can tell stories that have to do with our culture and our mythos, and they can be entertaining and exciting and adventurous. So it was really important to me to show that Native Americans are still here, and that we will continue to be here, and that our stories can be sovereign. So we don’t seem to get a lot of play or a lot of interest from science fiction and fantasy period, much less putting us in the future. Even now, in the two movies coming out (they’re not genre movies, but I’m thinking of Hostiles and Woman Walks Ahead) they’re all set in the 1800s. They’re often Plains Indians, and they’re wearing buckskins, they’re riding horses, that sort of thing. It’s the 1800s and the Native Americans are dead or dying, and they’re often very limited in scope.

Most Native American stories that you see put us in the past. Is there anything you want to add about making this a science fiction, post-apocalyptic story? You mentioned particularly “into the future,” and have talked before about Indigenous Futurism. I think it’s important and incredibly powerful to offer that kind of representation, not just to Native readers so that they can see themselves in the story but to non-Natives, too, so that they can expand their own imaginations and their own ideas about what Native people and Native culture are like now and into the future.

Trail of lightning book