The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina,Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina https://amzn.to/3VxCRbB A man lunges in front of a car. An elderly woman silently drowns herself. A corpse sits up in its coffin and speaks. On this reservation, not all is what it seems, in this new spine-chilling mythological horror from the author of Sisters of the Lost Nation. All Noemi Broussard wanted was a fresh start. With a new boyfriend who actually treats her right and a plan to move from the reservation she grew up on—just like her beloved Uncle Louie before her—things are finally looking up for Noemi. Until the news of her boyfriend’s apparent suicide brings her world crumbling down. But the facts about Roddy’s death just don’t add up, and Noemi isn’t the only one who suspects that something menacing might be lurking within their tribal lands. After over a decade away, Uncle Louie has returned to the reservation, bringing with him a past full of secrets, horror, and what might be the key to determining Roddy’s true cause of death. Together, Noemi and Louie set out to find answers...but as they get closer to the truth, Noemi begins to wonder whether it might be best for some secrets to remain buried.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. There are ladies and gentlemen. That makes it official. Welcome to the show.

We certainly appreciate you guys being here. As always, the Chris Voss Show is a family that loves you, but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your father. The time that he saw you were born, he was completely disappointed. And he never told you he was proud of you. But get on his good side. Refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, 4sayschrisvoss, linkedin.com, 4s says chris voss chris voss won on the tiktokity and all the crazy places on the internet today we have an amazing author on the show this is i believe his second book is coming out april

16th 2024 it's called indian burial ground by nick medina and he's gonna be talking to us about his new novel what's inside of it and all the wonderful things that go on around it. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, and appreciates blues-based music, local folklore, what is going on with me today, and snowy winters. He has degrees in organizational and multicultural communication and has worked as a college instructor he enjoys playing guitar listening to classic rock exploring haunted cemeteries and all sorts of spooky stuff welcome to the show nick how are you doing well thanks for having me there you go that blues based music i don't know just ran me into a hole in the wall

there thanks for coming on the show. Congratulations on the new book. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? You can find me on my website, www.nickmedina.net. It's probably the easiest, just my name. You can find all my social media links there. I'm on Instagram, nickmedinarights, and I'm x at medinanick. There you go.

Give us a 30,000 overview of your new book, Indian Burial Ground. Indian Burial Ground is the follow-up to my previous novel, Sisters of the Lost Nation, and both take place on a fictional Indian reservation, the Dakota Reservation. Indian Burial Ground, though, is not a direct sequel to Sisters of the Lost Nation,

but it does have some things that tie it together, answer some questions that I left unanswered in Sisters of the Lost Nation. But it centers around a woman named Noemi. She's just turned 40 years old. She's kind of at a point in her life where she's a little bit lost. She's not happy with how things have turned out for her, but she does have this new boyfriend and she's thinking things are going to be on the up and up, but her boyfriend ends up dead. And there's some pretty strange circumstances surrounding the death.

They're not sure if it was an accident or suicide. And as this is going on, Noemi's uncle Louis returns to the reservation and he starts to suspect that maybe Noemi's boyfriend's death is tied to some horrible things that happened to him as a child as well. So it's a lot about trauma, about intergenerational

trauma, pain, things that come back to haunt us and I put a different twist on the Indian burial ground trope with it. Ah, there you go. So there might be some murder you say. You never know. There's be some murder, you say. Murder. You never know. There's definitely some creepy things going on.

There you go. And you're into that sort of thing. Tell us about how you grew up, what some of your influences were, and when you became a writer and knew you wanted to write books. Yeah, I think that's an interesting question. Someone asked me that the other day. When do you know you're a writer? When can you officially call yourself a writer?

But that's something I always wanted to do since I was a little kid. I got my first really, really short story published in my school newsletter when I was like seven or eight years old, something like that. But yeah, writing was just something I always wanted to do. It's always been a part of me. I worked for the school newspaper in high school, wrote a lot of short stories throughout college, got a lot of short stories throughout college, got a lot of short stories published in different fiction outlets. But my big goal was always novels. And thankfully, I finally got there last year with my debut novel, Sisters, and I'm hoping to keep it going. There you go. And so it looks like you kind of have a

theme going through your two books now now you like using the indian reservations and things like that is there a reason that you that draws that sort of topic or format draws to you yeah my grandmother was raised on a reservation in louisiana and so i am part native i belong to the tunica biloxi tribe of louis. And I just thought it was a unique setting. It's not a, you know, Louisiana for a reservation isn't very common. When you hear other native stories, a lot of them take place, you know, in South Dakota or Oklahoma or Southwest. So it was just kind of this cool setting, I thought, because Louisiana lends itself to spooky settings anyways with bayous,

the alligators, voodoo, all that kind of stuff, so I wanted to tie all that together, and I just have a lot of fun with it, I love the spooky stuff, always been drawn to that, you know, since I was a little kid, started reading things like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz, I was with the Goosebumps Generation as well, so I got all the R.L. Stine books. Yeah, I just always have been interested in that genre. There you go. It is pretty unique, too. We have a lot of authors and novelists on the show,

and I've never heard of anyone using an Indian reservation as a thing. And given your background and your knowledge and history of it, you could probably write about it fairly well. Yeah, and it's been a history of it, you could probably write about it fairly well. Yeah, and it's been a lot of fun, too. To be honest, I never intended for it to go beyond one book, but this little reservation that I've created, you know, mine is a fictional reservation, I should make that clear, but it is inspired by my tribe's reservation. And, you know, there's so many stories that are just popping into my head, coming out of that little world down there. So having a lot of fun with it. I just finished up the follow-up to Indian Burial Ground,

which takes place in the same universe. So I'm excited about that as well. So you got another one in the can ready to come out. Yeah, that one should be out next year. I think they're shooting for September 2025, but nothing's set in stone just yet. Yeah, you got to love the they sit on these books for a while with the publish yeah definitely publish you know publishing moves slowly until

it doesn't you know when you get to the final that final lap then that thing starts to pick up and then it's like everything's on top of you you got a million things to do but yeah so in your spare time you in your bio it says you explore haunted cemeteries and all sorts of spooky stuff. Is this like a really big hobby for you? Yeah, it's something that I like to do, especially when I'm traveling. You know, cemeteries are obviously free. I think of them as outdoor museums. They have a lot of history behind them.

Yeah. I think they're things that people miss out on you know if you go to a cemetery you could see great really great works of art a lot of monuments sculptures things like that there are cemeteries here where i live in the chicago area that have incredible monuments and i actually was at one last last week it has one of the largest indoor crypts mausoleums in the. It's got just incredible stained glass throughout the whole thing. You could get lost in there. There's thousands upon thousands of people interred in there.

It's just something that always caught my interest. I think it's fun to explore. Who doesn't love a good ghost story? Do you ever have a significant other who travels with you and goes, hey man, can we go to the beach? Can we go someplace nice why do we always got to go to cemeteries no that's not all i do but i do try to check things out when i can there you go well there's there's something about the history of it i you know when i when i visited my family's graves

it it's an it's an older cemetery and so there's a lot of stuff from like the 1800s and and stuff because the pioneers came over here to utah and yeah it's interesting to look at the different headstones and try and imagine the people that were behind them and you kind of get a feel for i mean you don't really get a feel for it but you kind of get an imaginative feel of maybe the souls that passed through there. And you're like, these were people at one time. And I don't know, there's maybe a reminder there of some sort of stoic sort of nature of reminding that you're, you know, you're mortal and your time is limited. I forget the Latin term for it.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's something we all got to make peace with, right? It's coming for all of us. And I do find something peaceful about it as well. Yeah. And, you know, you look at the names and you wonder about their families. You know, sometimes you'll see like a really long, you know, date time where they live for maybe 100 years. And then you see the short terms where maybe they live for a week or a month or a shorter time.

And you're like, hmm, what are this it's like you you wonder what the stories are like I wish I could know what these stories were behind some of these things so it definitely is interesting and something to be pension about when you go in those places and and learn but you usually go at night for the haunted part or you just go during the day? No, yeah. Unfortunately, most of them are closed at night. You know, they shut the gates. Unless you want to hang out in there and wait until they close the gates on you.

But, yeah, it's mostly during the day. It might not work out well because you can't get out. You're stuck in there for a while. Do you ever watch any of those different spooky shows that, I don't know, they call them the Ghost Hunters or Ghost Chasers or whatever? Yeah, not too much. I've seen maybe an episode or two of some of those, but yeah, never really got into those. They're kind of interesting. What other sort of spooky stuff do you indulge in? Well, you know, like I said, I love ghost stories. I'm trying to think of one. Do you have a favorite writer that you like? Oh, man, there's so many great writers that I love right now. I'm thinking about the cover of my new book.

Rachel Harrison is on there. She's an incredible horror author. I still feel just so lucky to have her read my work and to provide a blurb for the cover. People like Paul Tremblay, who's also been really great to me. He's on the cover of my previous book. Alma Cod, an incredible horror writer. There are so so many of them i could probably go on and on steven graham jones he's another guy who writes a lot of native horror fiction erica t worth you know i could go on there you go and you i noticed on your instagram you got a visit to the capone i'm assuming it's the capone i can't

play the video yeah last week I was at I went to a couple cemeteries over here Al Capone's buried there and you know of course he had to get syphilis when he died so that might have had an impact on his mental state but they say in his final hours he was calling out saying that he could see one of his supposed victims they're not sure if he had a hand in it but odds are he did and and he was screaming for this this guy named james clark who was a gunman out of a rival gang telling him to stay away from him to get away and he said he could see james clark beckoning him through a window calling him forth and maybe

trying to get his revenge and of course capone passed away within hours of that you know was it his mental state was it a ghost who knows but either way it sounds like the man was haunted by what he'd done in life yeah definitely I mean I think that's where people go you know I that you just reminded me that Capone thing reminded me we one time we were up in Sun Valley we went to Hemingway's grave. And I guess a lot of people go there. And we were standing there at the grave, kind of admiring it and talking about Hemingway and stuff. And at the foot of his grave, someone had put a shotgun shell.

Yeah. And it didn't occur to us right away. And I went, I was doing video, and I was like, wait, on video. I'm like, is that a shotgun shell that's at the base of his grave someone put? And yeah, it was there. And we just kind of got chills. Like, wow, that's some macabre shit. Yeah, people leave stuff at Capone's grave too.

People bring him beers, cigars, stuff like that. Really? Yeah. That's crazy. Any other tease outs you we can do with your new book indian burial ground i know we can't talk about the middle and the ending of course in novels but anything else you want to tease out on it that we should yeah incorporate native mythology i use a lot of native mythology in my my first two books here and i use

it in a way to of course educate a little bit about the values and traditions and history a lot of native cultures but also use it to help solve the mysteries of what's going on within the books i mentioned that in indian burial ground there are two two key characters noemi who is 40 years old and then her uncle uncle louis and i have dual timelines in the book louis timeline takes place in the 80s when he was a teenager noemi's timeline takes place in the present and she's 40 years old louis returns in the present timeline so he's in his 50s now he's only about 13 years older than his niece and you know the things that he went through as a kid involved three mysterious deaths, things that really, really spooked him,

and which he has to figure out what's going on. And that's where a lot of the mythology comes in. But there are also real-life traumas. He's the son of an alcoholic mother. He's the brother of a teenage mom. And I really wanted to address a lot of issues that impact Native and Indigenous cultures. And two of those issues that are really big right now are alcoholism and suicide. And the numbers or the statistics with suicides in the last four or five years

revolving around Native American communities has been pretty devastating. Native and indigenous people suffer suicide at a higher rate than any other ethnic or cultural group in the United States. Also, the number of gun-related suicides for Native Americans has gone up 66% in the last four years. That's according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So it is a massive problem, and it's something that does need attention. It's something that is difficult to deal with for a lot of tribes because a lot of tribes are underfunded.

They don't have the resources, and they need help from outside sources. They need funding from outside sources. It's been something that's having a really terrible effect on a lot of native and indigenous communities. And unfortunately, the systems right now that are in place to help people with suicide don't always help natives because they don't have the same value system and they don't always trust healthcare the same way that other cultural groups do. So it's something that's pretty difficult and I'm not sure what the have the same value system and they don't always trust healthcare the same way that other cultural groups do.

So it's, it's something that's pretty difficult and I'm not sure what the exact answer is, but hopefully we'll see some changes. It's hard to, it's hard to trust a system that's been betraying you for generations of time. Yeah. And it's sad that, you know, there's still suffrage of what we, of what, you know, as America, we created so we created so many, well, a couple hundred years ago. Yeah, it's definitely unfortunate that the fallout from that thing is still continuing. So it's good that you're bringing light to it, and you're educating people

and letting people know the plight of what's going on there and some of the different challenges. I know we had a, when I was young, we had an Indian boy from the reservations come stay with us for a summer with the Mormon church. They were doing that with a lot of people. And I remember him talking about the alcoholism on the, on the reservations and drug issues and things like that. It's definitely some challenges. Well, it gives light to hopefully in the darkness and helps more people maybe and talk about stuff and be aware of stuff. Give us your final thoughts as we go out on the book. Tell people where to pick it up, your website, all that good stuff.

Yeah, you can find links on my website, nickmedina.net. You can preorder right now. As you mentioned, Indian Burial Ground comes out April 16th. We'll also be doing some events coming up, doing a virtual event with Barnes & Noble that'll be on April 18th, along with Rachel Harrison, who I mentioned earlier. So really excited to be in conversation with her. Also, if you are interested or if you haven't checked it out yet, my previous book, Sisters of the Lost Nations, been out since last April. Like I said, they do tie together these two books.

The stories stand on their own, so if you read them individually, that's cool too. But if you want the full experience and to see how everything links up and how some questions get answered in both of these books, check out Sisters of the Lost Nations as well. Of course, it's on my website also. And I think it just came out in paperback, right? Yeah, it did. Actually, yesterday it came out in paperback. Really excited about that.

It's been doing great so far. Really excited about it. Check it out. Well, thank you very much. We really appreciate you coming on the show, Nick. Thank you. Appreciate it as well. And come back for your future books. We'd love to have you as well. Yeah, I'd love to. Thank you, Chris. There you go. Thanks to Honest for tuning in.

Order of the book. You can pre-order wherever fine books are sold indian burial ground april 16 2024 be the first in your book club or block to read it thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time