Recent Promotional Upgrades

I finally got my act together and consolidated some useless single book pages I had created on Facebook long ago into one author page. You can like it at Joan H. Young, Author.

And, amazingly enough, I also managed to put together a video about Dead Mule Swamp, in which I also read chapter one of News from Dead Mule Swamp. Enjoy!



The flurry of accomplishment is spurred by the fact that I'm doing an author takeover for an hour at 8 pm in the Facebook Group "Cozy Mystery Friends." Free to join if you are interested.

Play MYNCT Bingo and Win Books

There are SO many wonderful places on the North Country Trail!

Play MYNCT Bingo and WIN A BOOK. Send me pictures that complete any row of 5, and your name will go in a drawing. 1 copy of North Country Quest, and 1 copy of North Country Cache will be awarded. You do NOT have to have visited these places or taken the pictures personally. You can hunt up pictures on line. However, if you can make a line of places you have actually been to you will get two entries for that card. (Just be sure to tell me.)

Enter as often as you want, as long as you complete a different line (that makes 12 possible entries per person, upped to 24 if you've really been to all those places!) Send entries to jhyshark@gmail.com. Label the pics somehow with the card location. For example T-1 is the Crown Point Bridge, and I might enter this picture for that square. But now you can't steal this one for your own entry- that would be too easy! Deadline for entries April 30, 2020. #myNCTbingo

space T-1, Crown Point Bridge (photo by jhy)

North Country Cache and North Country Quest together tell the stories of my end-to-end hike of the North Country National Scenic Trail. I was the first woman to complete the 4600-mile trail on foot.

Secret Cellar Interior Illustrations Redone

I decided that the interior illustrations for the Dubois Files children's mysteries need to be done over in ink rather than remain as pencil sketches. The actual result of the printed pencil sketches is that they are pale and muddy. This decision was made before I published The Bigg Boss, so those were done in ink on the first time around.

Here are the new pictures for The Secret Cellar. They will also be larger. I decided that the horizontal ones would be turned so you have to turn the book sideways to see them. This isn't my favorite plan, but in a 5.25 x 8" book the pictures have to be very small if you don't do this. I'd rather have the pictures larger.

I've left them full size here so you can click on the picture and see them better.

Picture #1- Laszlo's father drives the truck over a railroad bridge, but a train is coming! Jimmie and Laszlo hadn't planned on that much excitement.



Picture #2- Jimmie and Cora dig up a treasure in the crawlspace under Jimmie's house.



Picture #3- Laszlo uses the post-hole digger to make a foundation hole for their clubhouse.


Picture #4- The secret cellar- but it doesn't seem to be the hiding place for the papers the kids are trying to find. I made a major change to this picture by adding Ruby, who is tired and discouraged. She sits down in the corner to rest.



There are currently four books in the series, and I'm working on the fifth. Age range 8-11; chapter books. All are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or directly from me. Ebook formats also on Smashwords, Kobo and iBooks.

Visit Books Leaving Footprints for synopses and samples.

original pencil illustrations

North Country Quest - Cover

After almost 9 years of working on North Country Quest, it's ready to go to the printer! The writing was sporadic for about 7 years, as I branched off into fiction. In 2018 I began to get more serious. In 2019, it's essentially all I've done. Even so, I didn't manage to finish until 2020. But here we are.

This book is even better than North Country Cache. The writing is better. There are more pictures. Hopefully, the printing quality of the cover will be better (long unhappy story that I have to relive every time I look at a copy of NCC).


Today, I'm sharing the cover of the new volume. The design is the same as for the first one, but with pictures that go with these stories.

The image above is the front and spine. Here is the back cover with recommendations by Frida Waara, Polar Adventurer, and Jennifer Pharr Davis, National Geographic Adventurer of the Year.

The book will be first available, publicly, at the Quiet Adventure Symposium in East Lansing, MI, on February 29.




See Too Fast at Car Speed for a sample of the first chapter.