The Newbery project continues with Ralph Hubbard’s Queer Person, which begins with a child of about four wandering into a Pikuni camp in the middle of a blizzard. He wanders from tepee to tepee, taken in and then turned away as the inhabitants decide he’s an idiot, until at last he reaches the last tepee in the village, where the irascible old woman recognizes that he’s deaf and dumb and takes him in.

He grows up an outcast, called Queer Person and considered a fool by most of the people in the village, although Granny and a few friends learn to talk to him with their hands (using, I think, an expanded version of the Plains sign language) and recognize his talent for building things. In his teens, a bout of heatstroke causes a couple of hard worm-shaped objects to fall out of his ears, enabling him once again to hear. Granny explains that sometimes fevers plug the ears like this. She suggests that he should hide his new abilities until he’s mastered spoken language.

Meanwhile! We veer into Problem of Tomboys territory! The boys of the camp are riding a yearling buffalo, which came into camp as a pet but has now grown too big for comfort. One of the boys dares the girls that none of them will dare to ride it, at which point the chief’s daughter Singing Moon rides the buffalo across the plains, jumping off just in time before it rejoins the buffalo herd.

Impressed by her bravery, Granny and an older warrior suggest that Singing Moon join the next warrior raid - in disguise, of course, at least at first. After all, Granny did it herself in her youth, and her presence rallied the warriors to great feats of bravery! And so does Singing Moon’s, but the greatest feat of all is her own success in counting coup on an enemy, knocking him off his horse and taking the horse for a trophy.

Singing Moon is of course the love interest, and the next bit of the book involves Queer Person proving that he can match her in bravery - not through the traditional route of going into battle, but by saving Singing Moon’s kidnapped little brother. Queer Person sneaks into the camp of a rival tribe, where he’s captured, but they’re so impressed by his bravery in coming into their camp unarmed that they decide to subject him to tests rather than kill him outright, ending in a test where he has to battle an old warrior who has decided that he’d like to go out gloriously in single combat with this brave outsider.

The old warrior is, of course! Queer Person’s father.

Then Queer Person heads home, returns the kidnapped child to his family, reveals he can talk, sleeps for three days, and then marries Singing Moon.

Ralph Hubbard (also known as “Doc” Hubbard) was a professor who promoted Native American culture, and he clearly put a ton of research into the background of this story. (He also later had an asteroid named after him. And he was the son of Elbert Hubbard, who wrote “A Message to Garcia,” founded an Arts and Crafts community called the Roycroft Shops, and died in the sinking of the Lusitania.)

I just realized it’s been over a month since an update on life at the Hummingbird Cottage. This cannot stand! Surely you are all desperate to hear the latest news!

Still no hummingbird sightings, but there appears to be an entire flock of ducks resident on the pond, although they only come out en masse in moonlight so it’s hard to be sure how many there are. (Ghost ducks?)

The herbs are flourishing, especially the lemon balm which is the chief weed. I’ve been procrastinating on pulling it out, but at last it occurred to me that if I rip out the clump in the front garden, I could replace it with black-eyed susans (a favorite flower) and purple coneflowers (not a favorite, but they look well with black-eyed susans), which are both native wildflowers and also flourishing.

The intentional herbs are also doing well! I just found a recipe for herb scones which I’m looking forward to trying, since as soon as one has a flourishing herb garden one must begin scrambling for recipes that use herbs in order to keep the herbs in check. The chives are especially happy.

The cherry tomatoes in contrast are NOT happy. They both have a few little green tomatoes and look rather wilty, probably a combination of being planted late and not watered enough. Also one of them is beside a twining vine of some variety which began to engulf its tomato cage, so I moved the tomato cage over into the clump of vines which have since completely devoured it (really ought to get an arch or something, these vines are SO ready to go), which left the tomato plant free but also, possibly, a bit traumatized. And I expect the vine is sucking up more than its fair share of water and nutrients from the soil.

In non-garden news, I got a bike! It is a used Elektra Townie step-through bike, cream-colored with teal wheel rims and a capacious basket on the front which is just crying out for a baguette and a bouquet of wildflowers. I rode it to work for the first time today, coasting down the hill with the breeze in my face and a song in my heart… I will of course have to go back up the hill at the end of the day, but such is life.

To the house itself, I don’t think there have been any major alterations. The wicker cart I mentioned in my previous entry has been spray-painted white, and currently hosts two pothos plants (birthday presents!), although I intend to move them to higher ground so they can show off their trailing abilities. First I need to get a step stool, though, in order to water the pothos at its higher home.

Long term plans: a four-poster bed with soft white curtains. A built-in bookcase with a ladder in the living room. Presumably living room seating of some kind? (The living room is currently empty except for (1) a cat tree, (2) the wicker cart with the pothos, and (3) a box spring which came at a discount with the guest room twin mattress, which is for one of my friends, who needs to come retrieve it.) I feel the rest of the living room will fall into place once I get the bookcase sorted.

Onward in the Aikening! This time littlerhymes and I read Midnight is a Place, which is very loosely related to the Wolves series in that it also features an industrial city named Blastburn. There are no crossover characters, no wolves, no reigning Tudor-Stuarts, and the town has completely different industries. Aiken may have just liked the name Blastburn.

However, I’m glad that it is described as related to the Wolves books, as otherwise we wouldn’t have read it and this book is PEAK gothic. Start with Midnight Court, an old house which is falling into ruin because the crabbed and miserly owner has been selling off the furniture and firing all the servants! Add a lonely orphan boy and his Mysterious Tutor! Throw in a Dickensian carpet factory where the carpet-making process ends with a press that can and will squash children on a regular basis! Stir in one more lonely orphan, this one a small and furious girl from France, and you have yourself a rich and savory gothic stew.

This is merely the set-up. Other gothic elements arrive in due course. For instance: the current owner of Midnight Court won it in a midnight bet at the Hellfire Club! (Not actually called the Hellfire Club, but the same idea.) The lonely orphan boy must make his living by descending into the sewers to find treasure. (The sewers are inhabited by savage rats and thirty to forty feral hogs, because Aiken loves a wild animal attack.) The child-squashing press on the mantelpiece does of course go off.

Overall a delight. The only flaw is that the last chapter is pretty rushed, and introduces a completely random plot thread for two pages which is then summarily dropped. ( Spoilers for the random plot thread ) But you can just kind of ignore that bit and savor all the gothic everything that precedes it.

As always on my birthday, I am having my annual birthday sale. This year, since I’m planning to raise prices post-sale ($3.99 for a novella, $5.99 for a novel), I decided to put everything on sale for one big final blow-out. So currently all my novellas are $0.99, and all my novels are $2.99.

Do you like Cold War spies falling in love on an American road trip, even though they're from opposite sides of the Iron Curtain? Then give Honeytrap a try!

If a Civil War soldier woke up from an enchanted sleep in 1965, how long would it take for him to cotton on that men are no longer allowed to touch? Find out in The Sleeping Soldier!

Are you interested in an m/m World War II retelling of Beauty and the Beast? Then Briarley may be for you!

How about a couple of boys riding the rails and falling in love during the Great Depression? Tramps and Vagabonds has your back.

Do you like watching post-World War I woobies suffer beautifully by the seaside? The Larks Still Bravely Singing may be warbling your name.

More Cold War spies, but this time CHRISTMAS! Deck the Halls with Secret Agents is a holly jolly short return to a favorite theme.

Do you like throuples and World War II and retellings of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? Then A Garter as a Lesser Gift may be coming to a Green Chapel near you.

Do you like throuples and pining and strawberry shortcake in post-Civil War America? Then give The Threefold Tie a try.

Do you want Cold War spies (again!), but this time they're the leads in the fandom that our two heroines are obsessed with? And kind of role-play as while trying out the joys of "your interpretation of this character is so incorrect" hatesex? Enemies to Lovers is calling your name.

You know it is when there's this new girl in school that you're sooo obsessed with because you both love art, and then you have an obsessive friendship ending in a terrible falling out, and then meet again years later in Florence? Have a gelato with Ashlin and Olivia.

And finally, a couple of oddballs. A retelling of Little Red Riding Hood in pre-Revolutionary Russia! Kind of f/f if you want to be! The Wolf and the Girl features forays both into the Russian forest and the nascent French silent film industry.

Last but not least, if your inner eleven-year-old yearns for a magical timeslip story, there's The Time Traveling Popcorn Ball