Kelly Milner Halls – From Fossils to Sea Monsters: The Weird World of Children’s Books
In this episode, we’re transported back to the dawn of prehistoric times as we accompany the passionate author, Kelly Milner Halls, on a thrilling adventure. Let’s embark on a journey that uncovers the fascinating discovery of a T-Rex cousin right here in our own backyard.
A Dinosaur for Washington: The True Story of Suciasaurus
Did you know the Suciasaurus is the official Dinosaur of Washington State? Kelly has written a book that details the story of the Suciasaurus dinosaur fossil was found in the unlikely place of Sucia Island here is Washington. During our conversation we discuss the research that goes into writing a children’s book and the process of having a book published.
The Power of Inspiration in Unexpected Places
During our conversation, Kelly shared her writing journey, highlighting the challenges and motivations that drive her. Her tenacity and ability to turn frustration into inspiration are evident. We gain insight into her diverse collection of books on cryptids and other unconventional topics, showcasing her unwavering dedication to her craft.
Navigating Life’s Crossroads
From growing up in Texas to embracing her passion for the weird and wonderful, Kelly’s journey provides a rich tapestry of experiences. Her transition from investigative journalism to writing books for kids signifies a pivotal moment in her life. We learn about her resilience in overcoming setbacks and her relentless pursuit of empowerment, a narrative that resonates deeply.
An Invitation to Embrace Individuality
Kelly’s powerful message about embracing individuality is a call to celebrate our uniqueness. Her unwavering dedication to educating children about critical thinking and research skills leaves a lasting impact. This aspect of her character shines through, sparking inspiration in us all.
Connect With Kelly
Kelly’s website The Wonders of Weird
Kelly Milner Halls Episode Transcript
Hello, friends, and welcome to the Exploring Washington State podcast. My name is Scott Cowan, and I’m the host of the show. Each episode, I have a conversation with an interesting guest who is living in or from Washington State. These are casual conversations with real and interesting people. I think you’re gonna like the show. So let’s jump right in with today’s guest. I’m sitting down today with Kelly Milner Halls. We’ve had a little bit of tech difficulty per normal for Scott.
Scott Cowan [00:00:32]:
And Kelly is the an author of lots of books, but today, we’re talking about our latest book that isn’t even out yet. By the time this is released, it still won’t be out, and it’s called A Dinosaur for Washington. And some I learned something, very early on here, and it’s a psuchasaurus, and that’s as close to pronunciation as I’m gonna get, so we’re just gonna leave it at that. But this is the only dinosaur fossil ever found in Washington state, which I find find fascinating. So, Kelly, welcome.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:01:03]:
Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
Scott Cowan [00:01:05]:
And you say that now, but you might in 15 minutes regret it. Okay. But so we’ll get back to the specific book in a little bit, but what’s your backstory? You’re in Spokane now. You’re an author of I mean, a prolific author, frankly. I mean, a lot of books. I’m on your website. There’s all sorts of I’m gonna call it quirky, and I mean that in the best possible way.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:01:29]:
I tell kids I get paid for being weird. Yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:01:31]:
So let’s unpack that for a second. How did how did being weird as a career come apart? Apart? Did your high school counselor sit down and go, you know, Kelly, you should be weird for a career? I mean, what happened? How did that happen?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:01:44]:
You know, I was born in Texas
Scott Cowan [00:01:47]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:01:48]:
From parents that go way back in Texas. K. I grew up in a place called Friends with Texas, which is a suburb of Houston. I was not a girly girl. I hang out with boys because they had more fun things to do.
Scott Cowan [00:02:02]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:02:03]:
I like to catch frogs and lizards and toads and snakes. And anytime anybody found a poisonous snake, they went and got little Kelly because she knew which ones were poisonous.
Scott Cowan [00:02:12]:
Are you kidding me?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:02:14]:
So I was kind of a weird little kid, and my mother tried really hard to make me not weird. She tried to make me a girl by giving me dolls and hairdressing stations and didn’t stick.
Scott Cowan [00:02:25]:
It didn’t work.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:02:26]:
I was never gonna be a typical girl. I liked weird stuff.
Scott Cowan [00:02:29]:
Okay. All right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:02:31]:
So my dad worked for IBM. He worked at the manned spacecraft center in Houston. He was the IBM liaison to help get the guys on the moon.
Scott Cowan [00:02:40]:
Wow. Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:02:42]:
So he was a science guy, and he was a very conservative science guy. But we would sit down and watch weird documentaries like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. And, there’s one called 21st century, which is like, what will the future be like now we’re in the 21st century?
Scott Cowan [00:02:58]:
Nothing like they told us.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:02:59]:
And I would say, is Bigfoot real? And my dad would say, I guess we need more evidence. Now he coulda shot me down.
Scott Cowan [00:03:06]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:03:07]:
But he didn’t.
Scott Cowan [00:03:08]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:03:09]:
Because science is about asking the questions. K. So I grew up. We moved all over God’s Earth, ended up going to high school in California where I was still weird, but found my footing in high school journalism.
Scott Cowan [00:03:22]:
Okay. Alright.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:03:23]:
Because if you’ve moved around a 1000000 times as a kid and you’re really shy, asking other people questions is a lot easier than focusing on yourself.
Scott Cowan [00:03:32]:
So were you shy as a kid then?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:03:35]:
I was just because I was always the new kid.
Scott Cowan [00:03:37]:
Okay. Alright.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:03:38]:
And you make a couple friends, and then you move again. And my average was 9 months. After I turned 11, we started moving all over the place.
Scott Cowan [00:03:45]:
Oh, wow. Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:03:46]:
And so it was just I was not particularly comfortable being the new kid all the time. But if you’re in journalism, it gives you permission to talk to anybody.
Scott Cowan [00:03:57]:
That’s that’s very true.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:03:58]:
You may not wanna talk about me. But if I say, hey. I wanna write an article about you, Scott. You go, woah. What would you like to know? Right? Even if you’re the cutest football player on the team.
Scott Cowan [00:04:10]:
The, the the podcast is the modern version of that. It’s amazing. I can say, hey. I have a podcast, and people wanna talk to It’s just I know. Isn’t it great? I still scratch my head about that. Okay. So you got into So
Kelly Milner Halls [00:04:22]:
I studied journalism in college.
Scott Cowan [00:04:24]:
Okay. Where’d you go to school at? What what college did you go to?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:04:26]:
I went to, I followed a boyfriend to Brigham Young University. Alright. He dumped me after 6 weeks. Alright. Alright. So I was a direct, but they have great skiing, so it was okay with me. So I went there, studied journalism, thought I was gonna be Woodward and Bernstein. K.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:04:44]:
Got out of school, discovered if you’re an investigative reporter and you write about the bad guys, that the bad guys have kids. And I thought I cannot disrupt their lives. K. It needs to be done, but it wasn’t gonna be me. So for a while, I didn’t write. And then I had kids, and I realized, hey. Somebody writes all this kid stuff.
Scott Cowan [00:05:03]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:05:04]:
And if I write for kids, I never have to be mean spirited.
Scott Cowan [00:05:08]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:05:08]:
And I can write the weirdest stuff possible because kids like it as much as I do. So that’s where I landed. I did, newspapers and magazines first because it was most what I’d studied.
Scott Cowan [00:05:19]:
Uh-huh.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:05:19]:
And then I was challenged. You should really write some books. And I took the challenge, and now I write primarily books. I do occasionally articles, but, and I’ve done about 60 nonfiction books. I love nonfiction. I tried fiction. I’m not good at it. Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:05:36]:
So I love my nonfiction, and it’s the weird stuff.
Scott Cowan [00:05:41]:
But kudos to you to figuring it out. I mean, no matter what our path is in the world, when when people figure out what their path is and they’re on it Absolutely. That’s awesome. I mean, that’s that’s that’s wonderful.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:05:52]:
You know, I’ve never been rich. I never will be rich, but I’m really happy. And there’s something to be said for happy.
Scott Cowan [00:05:59]:
There’s a lot to be said about happy that’s, I think rich and happy would be a nice combo, I guess, but I’ll take happy over being rich too. So, I mean, you know
Kelly Milner Halls [00:06:10]:
Rich would be nice. Yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:06:11]:
I mean, I I think it has its advantage.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:06:13]:
Doesn’t land happy’s Yeah. Fills up the cup. So now I go around schools all over the country and talk to kids and teach them about research skills and critical thinking and let them know that being weird is fun and that it’s okay if you’re that weird kid. You know, I could pick out the kid that was the weird little me, the little bouncy girl that couldn’t sit still. And I think there’s the me and there’s the me and there’s the me. But at the end of every presentation, the little cheerleader or the little class president comes up to me and says, my family’s weird too.
Scott Cowan [00:06:46]:
That’s funny.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:06:47]:
So you’re secretly giving everybody permission just to be whoever they wanna be, which is a great message for kids.
Scott Cowan [00:06:55]:
I’m on your website. This is the way my brain works. Warning. You know, this is I’m looking at the review for your new book, and it’s signed Becky Rasmussen, Illinois, English teacher and crazy cat lady.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:07:09]:
Her choice. I It was her choice.
Scott Cowan [00:07:11]:
Love that. I just love that.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:07:13]:
And who knew it was gonna be so, relevant in the political
Scott Cowan [00:07:17]:
Yeah. So
Kelly Milner Halls [00:07:18]:
system right now.
Scott Cowan [00:07:19]:
So a dinosaur for Washington. Yes. Walk me through how you came about the topic and kind of the research that it took, and we’ll go from there. And then yeah.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:07:34]:
Let’s go back in time a little bit. Remember that little girl in Texas catching lizards?
Scott Cowan [00:07:37]:
Yes.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:07:39]:
Well, my mother said, guess what? We’re gonna go see dinosaurs this weekend. And I said, what’s a dinosaur?
Scott Cowan [00:07:45]:
K.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:07:46]:
So I was about 7 years old. I had no idea what they were. And they had been at the World’s Fair in New York City, the Sinclair dinosaur. Sinclair is an oil company. Right. And they had dinosaurs as their logo.
Scott Cowan [00:07:57]:
Of course.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:07:57]:
So they sponsored this big exhibit at the museum at the, World’s Fair in New York City, and they had life-sized dinosaur models. Mhmm. And after the fair, they toured the dinosaurs all over the country. Right. And they were coming to Houston. Okay. So my parents took me to see the dinosaurs, and I nearly died looking at these gigantic lizards, and I fell in love.
Scott Cowan [00:08:23]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:08:24]:
Now most kids fall out of love eventually. Yeah. But I never did. Okay. So when I was writing all this weird stuff, and I just rushed any hand anytime I had the opportunity to write an article about dinosaurs. So, like, when Godzilla came out, the first re renewal of Godzilla, I interviewed paleontologists who had started by loving Godzilla. So I looked for any opportunity to write about dinosaurs I could, and I wrote 6 dinosaur books.
Scott Cowan [00:08:51]:
Oh, wow.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:08:51]:
You cannot make a living writing about dinosaurs. You have to write about other things. Thankfully, I have lots of weird interests. But I wrote 6 books, and then I was doing a school visit in Seattle, Washington, and the librarian run ran over to me when I got there in the morning, and she said, look. Look. Look at the newspaper. And it was a Seattle Times article about the first dinosaur fossil ever found in Washington state. And I had when I I moved from Colorado to Washington.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:09:22]:
Colorado has tons of dinosaur fossils everywhere. Washington didn’t have any and I was a little bit sad about that. So when I saw that hepline, I said, wait, what? I thought we had no. Because Washington state was under a prehistoric ocean.
Scott Cowan [00:09:36]:
Okay. So
Kelly Milner Halls [00:09:37]:
k. Dinosaurs didn’t live in the ocean. They might have died and fallen in the ocean, but they didn’t live there. Prehistoric marine reptiles lived there.
Scott Cowan [00:09:46]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:09:46]:
But after the ocean receded, after the water’s cleared, we have tons of volcanoes. Mhmm. And the volcanoes covered whatever fossils might have been there with up to 3 miles of basalt. Really? So even if they were there, we weren’t gonna find them.
Scott Cowan [00:10:06]:
Okay. Yeah.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:10:07]:
So I had to resign myself. No. We have, you know, mammoths
Scott Cowan [00:10:13]:
Mhmm.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:10:13]:
And prehistoric horses and all those great ice age crit mammoths. Right. But no dinosaurs. So when she showed me this article, I was like, wait. What? And I was just so excited. And I said, can I have that? And she reluctantly said, yes. And I set it in my idea box. And then I started thinking, I really wanna write this book, but it but it has a such a Washington Pacific Northwestern slant did all the National Geographic, and those people didn’t want it because they wanted something broader.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:10:46]:
So I started writing for a a Seattle publisher called Sasquatch Books.
Scott Cowan [00:10:50]:
Mhmm.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:10:51]:
And their children’s imprint is little Bigfoot. So I said to my editor, listen. I’ve got this great dinosaur story that’s Washington centric.
Scott Cowan [00:11:00]:
Mhmm.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:11:01]:
You wanna see it? And it took me 4 years to convince her. Really? And I finally did. K. And we revised and we revised and we revised, and it came to life. So it was about, these 2 guys who were amateur fossil hunters. Now Susha Island is part of the San Juan Islands. K. And it’s got the only cretaceous, which is the last dinosaur period, the only cretaceous rock beds that we know of in Washington state, and they’re off 40 miles off the coast of Seattle.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:11:34]:
And it’s against the law to collect fossils in Susha Island, but these guys had a permit. Okay. And anything important they found, they turned over to the Burke Museum.
Scott Cowan [00:11:47]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:11:47]:
And that’s how they got around the law. So they went out looking and it was, they went out in May of 2010. 1 of them had a seaplane.
Scott Cowan [00:11:56]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:11:57]:
So the 2 of them, their names are Jim Godard and David Starr. They decided to go foss hunting and they were looking for ammonites. And ammonites are a little bit like nautilus. They’re the little, cephalopod that lives in
Scott Cowan [00:12:11]:
the shell.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:12:13]:
And those they can have. They already had permission from the Burke. They could keep whatever they found. But they found something strange. They found a big piece of bone. He said it was about the size of a softball. K. And he said, I think this is there’s more to this.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:12:30]:
I don’t think this is the whole thing because it looks like it’s broken.
Scott Cowan [00:12:33]:
Right. Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:12:34]:
So they spent the rest of their search looking for the rest of it. Didn’t find it. Went back in April of 2011, a year later, still looking for the rest of it. Didn’t find it. Went back in March of 2012, still looking for it. Voila. They found the other half. And they know this is not an ammonite.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:12:59]:
This is important because whatever it is, it’s significant. It’s a part of a bone. At first, they thought maybe it’s, you know, whale bone because whales came after dinosaurs. But they knew it was important. So they took the GPS location and they contacted the Burke and said, we’re gonna bring home the first half. You guys are gonna need to come and excavate the second half because it was in this big piece of concrete, not man made concrete, concretions that were made by nature.
Scott Cowan [00:13:29]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:13:30]:
So it took about a month, and then they went out and they collected it. So this mysterious bone, which was, how big was it? It was 16 inches long, almost 17. Big Yeah. Bone. What is it? And they didn’t know. They couldn’t know until they sent it to the Burke, and it took 2 years to separate that bone from the rock that surrounded it.
Scott Cowan [00:13:59]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:14:00]:
So you’d have just the fossil Right. And not the rest. So this is going on and on and on until I get the newspaper, and they say, yes. It’s a dinosaur bone, and it’s from a cousin to Tyrannosaurus Rex. And I think, yippee skippy. This is so cool. Now Oregon has one dinosaur fossil. Now they have 2, but they had one when they started the book, and it was a plant eating Iguanodon.
Scott Cowan [00:14:28]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:14:28]:
And they had toe bones.
Scott Cowan [00:14:30]:
Alright.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:14:31]:
And I thought, this bone from a T Rex cousin is way more fun than the toe bones, although the toe bones are super great. Mhmm. And I’m glad they found that in Oregon, which means it’s possible there are others. So that’s how this book came up. I loved looking for for example, all the newspaper articles talked about the scientists at the Burke. Nobody had talked about David. The 2 guys that actually found it, Jim and David.
Scott Cowan [00:14:57]:
So on your website
Kelly Milner Halls [00:14:58]:
So my first track was, wait a minute. Who are the volunteers? Oh, they all said, volunteers found it, and the Burke collected it. And then they wrote the paper, and they were, you know, credited with finding this discovery. But I keep saying volunteers, and I keep asking you, who are the volunteers? And nobody knows or nobody says. So then I get the scientific paper at my local library, which you can only get at libraries because otherwise you have to pay a fortune. And way down at the end of the paper, a little teeny print, it says many thanks to Jim Goddard and David Starr, our volunteers. So then I have to find them.
Scott Cowan [00:15:39]:
Were they hard to find?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:15:40]:
Because I have to tell the whole story, not
Scott Cowan [00:15:42]:
the Yeah.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:15:42]:
Short story that’s in the newspaper. So it ended up just being this great mystery story and adventure and perfect for kids. And even though it is a Washington centric book, if you’re any kid who loves dinosaurs and you’re hoping to someday find fossils
Scott Cowan [00:15:58]:
Sure. Sure. No. It
Kelly Milner Halls [00:15:59]:
You’re gonna get excited by this story.
Scott Cowan [00:16:01]:
So on your website, on the page for the book, there’s these 2 guys. Are those the 2 guys that found are those
Kelly Milner Halls [00:16:08]:
No. Those are the guys at
Scott Cowan [00:16:09]:
the Burke. Guys at the Burke. Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:16:10]:
That’s doctor Peacock and doctor Christian Sidor. Christian Sidor is the head of paleontology at the Burke, and Brandon Peacock was a a graduate student. He is now a doctor Peacock. Okay. And he’s at an, museum in Idaho. Okay. So they’re the guys that, you you know, were in all the newspapers.
Scott Cowan [00:16:27]:
Right. Okay. So they’re okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:16:29]:
Great guys.
Scott Cowan [00:16:30]:
Right. So the the 2 guys that actually found it, Jim and David, what do they what do they do for a living?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:16:39]:
They’re retired. 1 was a doctor, and another one was I don’t remember what he did. Okay. But they, you know, have free time, and they love hunting for fossils. One of them loves to collect, prehistoric crabs. That’s just his favorite thing. Who knew you’d wanna collect crabs? Right? But, the other one likes sea mammals, whales, and
Scott Cowan [00:16:59]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:17:00]:
That’s just what they really prefer.
Scott Cowan [00:17:02]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:17:03]:
So, they just retired and, you know, one guy has a seaplane and so the other guy rides along. And if you got a seaplane, why not? Because there’s only so many ways you can get to Susha Island.
Scott Cowan [00:17:14]:
I’ve never even heard
Kelly Milner Halls [00:17:15]:
of a cruise before. To get Yeah. A water taxi. You can take a kayak. So it’s but it takes some doing, and it takes some arranging.
Scott Cowan [00:17:23]:
Is the island inhabited at all?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:17:27]:
It has very few inhabitants. They’re mostly people that come in their boats. Okay. They have boat docks that they take up during the winter months so they don’t get destroyed.
Scott Cowan [00:17:35]:
Okay. Yeah.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:17:36]:
So but you have to really put some planning into going to Susha Island. And Fossil Bay is where the fossils are found, obviously. It’s named after what’s discovered there. Right. So there’s this neat little bay in Fossil Bay, and they just land the seaplane and wade up to shore and spend the day.
Scott Cowan [00:17:55]:
So so you research this, you tracked down the guys, the the, quote, unquote, volunteers. You you tracked them down. You talked to them. You got their stories. You you talked to people at the Burke. You put this all together aimed at kids, and Right. You’re giddy is the word that comes to mind when you realized it’s a it’s a cousin of the T Rex.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:18:20]:
Yes.
Scott Cowan [00:18:24]:
And now the book’s gonna come out. And how does okay. How do I wanna say this? Kids’ books, children’s books. It’s not like, quote, unquote, little Timmy’s looking on Amazon for a new book necessarily. Mom and dad are typically looking at things for little Timmy. Right. So how, as an author, how do you promote and educate the consumer that this book is available?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:18:57]:
It’s challenging. It can be very challenging. Book reviews help. The fact that I’ve been doing it so long, I’ve been writing books for kids for 30 years. So I have lots of librarian friends
Scott Cowan [00:19:09]:
K.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:19:09]:
All over the country. K. So part of it is when when they know I have a new book, most of them will order it.
Scott Cowan [00:19:15]:
So let me
Kelly Milner Halls [00:19:16]:
Just because they trust me to do it right, to make sure that my facts are correct. K. I mean, I’m old school journalist. I’m 3 sources. Now it’s 2 sources. K. And not all the sources are very good.
Scott Cowan [00:19:28]:
Let me ask
Kelly Milner Halls [00:19:28]:
But I’m really careful in what I write for kids because if I’m not, then it’s like lying to a kid and that’s just like Yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:19:35]:
It’s not cool.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:19:35]:
Premium horrible.
Scott Cowan [00:19:36]:
So let me ask you a question. So Let me interrupt you and ask you a question because I was at the the Wenatchee library the other day. I take my mother there once a week to get some books, and I was walking around the library the other day. I was up in the they have a really nice Northwest collection, a lot of old books on the Pacific Northwest. Kind of fun to pick through the the titles, and and my mother’s complaint is that they don’t have a lot of new stuff. So my question to you is when you know librarians, how do you how does a do you can you explain to me? This is just a question for me. How do libraries decide on what books they wanna carry? Is it based on the the audience that they perceive they have? Or is it Partly. Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:20:23]:
Yeah. And they know their audience, the people that generally come in. They also have professional magazines, like Publishers Weekly and Kirkus and where they review new books.
Scott Cowan [00:20:34]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:20:35]:
And librarians have a tendency to go over all those new books to try to decide what they should
Scott Cowan [00:20:42]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:20:42]:
Stock, what they should buy. Mhmm. So reviews are our friends. We want reviews.
Scott Cowan [00:20:48]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:20:49]:
I do not live for reviews because I do not write for reviewers. I write for kids. Mhmm. And, so there’s that.
Scott Cowan [00:20:57]:
So a typical library let’s just say let’s just say the Spokane library. Alright. And I just Spokane probably has multiple branches. How many copies of your book does an average library network pick up?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:21:18]:
Spokane Public Library, I know the children’s buyer there. I think she bought 15 copies.
Scott Cowan [00:21:22]:
Copies. Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:21:24]:
Which is a pretty decent sale. The other thing I can do to promote, I I do contests. Like, I’m giving away a fossil hunting kit.
Scott Cowan [00:21:32]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:21:33]:
When the book I ask people to do early reviews, which is why you got the cat lady on my website. It’s also on Amazon.
Scott Cowan [00:21:40]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:21:40]:
And, and if you did an early review, you you received the dinosaur swag bag
Scott Cowan [00:21:45]:
Okay. Alright.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:21:46]:
Which is a lot of junk that nobody really wants, but it’s fun to get in the mail. So I mean, I can show it
Scott Cowan [00:21:53]:
to you. Fossil the fossil
Kelly Milner Halls [00:21:54]:
anyway, it’s this beautiful dinosaur bag with all kinds of stuff your mother would have thrown away about a week later.
Scott Cowan [00:22:00]:
So the fossil kit that you’re giving away, does it include a seaplane? Are you are you giving away you know?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:22:07]:
Can you say that again?
Scott Cowan [00:22:08]:
Are you I was teasing. Are you giving away a seaplane with each of the fossil finding kits?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:22:13]:
Oh, boy. Wouldn’t that be fun? I wish I could. If I ever did get rich, that’s what I did.
Scott Cowan [00:22:17]:
I wish I could find seaplanes.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:22:19]:
So you can go to Susha Island more easily. Susha Island, are you hearing that over and over again, Susha Island?
Scott Cowan [00:22:24]:
Still not getting my my mouth will still not
Kelly Milner Halls [00:22:26]:
You did great. The first time you did sushashore,
Scott Cowan [00:22:28]:
you did great. It’s just it’s like my
Kelly Milner Halls [00:22:31]:
It’s a lot of shit.
Scott Cowan [00:22:32]:
Yeah. It’s like my tongue swells up when I when I’m getting ready to say the word.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:22:35]:
It sounds like you’re trying to be naughty.
Scott Cowan [00:22:36]:
Yeah. I just anyway. So this is kind of interesting to me. So the the how long did this process take you? Now you you pitched the book, but it took you a while to get it approved.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:22:49]:
It probably took about 6 years.
Scott Cowan [00:22:50]:
6 years of work.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:22:52]:
4 years to convince her and then 2 years to
Scott Cowan [00:22:54]:
Cheers.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:22:55]:
Write and revise and revise and Okay. Finish the illustrations and layouts and all that stuff. So it’s it’s for a book that I had paid $4,000 for, 6 years is not enough to make a living.
Scott Cowan [00:23:07]:
No. That’s no. That’s bad math. That’s, yeah, that’s not good. But
Kelly Milner Halls [00:23:12]:
You can see why why I’ll never be ready. No. But but But, you know, I do school visits.
Scott Cowan [00:23:17]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:23:18]:
Librarians all over the country say, come and visit our school, and I do presentations, and that helps supplement the
Scott Cowan [00:23:24]:
income. Compensated. The schools pay you to come and do?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:23:27]:
Yes. Okay. They pay me to come.
Scott Cowan [00:23:28]:
Alright.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:23:29]:
Now if they can’t afford it, I’ll do it for free or I’ll I’ll do Zooms or something. Sure. I never leave anybody out because they don’t have money. Right. But it does help, and you’d be astonished by how much authors charge for school visits.
Scott Cowan [00:23:43]:
Well, you have to if you’re making
Kelly Milner Halls [00:23:44]:
it if
Scott Cowan [00:23:44]:
you’re only making 4 grand to do a book, you gotta make it up some I’m kidding. But
Kelly Milner Halls [00:23:48]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I’m so grateful. That’s why I have such a network of librarians and teachers because I’ve been to schools all over the country.
Scott Cowan [00:23:56]:
K.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:23:57]:
I think there’s only 4 states they haven’t visited.
Scott Cowan [00:23:59]:
Oh, wow. Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:24:01]:
So and I even went I even got to go to Beijing, China for 2 weeks once
Scott Cowan [00:24:06]:
Wow.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:24:07]:
Which was pretty great. But, I know they’re communist, but they’re really nice people. I go figure. But, I know. Who knew? But it’s that’s that’s supplement’s income, and that’s for for my 30 years career. That’s what has kept me alive.
Scott Cowan [00:24:26]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:24:26]:
And now because I’m so old, I’m 66 years old, I have Social Security. And I filed nice and early because I wanted to have a little less pressure to travel quite so much. But I still have to travel, and I still do, and I love it. I love school visits. If I could teleport to New York State or Houston or
Scott Cowan [00:24:46]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:24:46]:
Any of those places that have me quite frequently, I would love it because I love the kids. That’s the best part of the job. They’re just so great.
Scott Cowan [00:24:54]:
So how
Kelly Milner Halls [00:24:54]:
But, you know, the travel airports are not sexy anymore.
Scott Cowan [00:24:57]:
No. Air travel is no fun. How many visits do you think you did in 2023?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:25:05]:
Well, you know, COVID came in and knocked it way out of Right. Everything. Yeah. And it you know, for the years of COVID, we didn’t do school visits because it just and then they’re just now starting to recover. So last year, I think I did, I don’t know, 15.
Scott Cowan [00:25:22]:
That’s that seems like a lot actually to me. That’s But
Kelly Milner Halls [00:25:25]:
I I’ve done way more Okay. Than that. I’ve done I was gone probably 7 months of a year
Scott Cowan [00:25:32]:
Wow. Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:25:33]:
Doing school visits.
Scott Cowan [00:25:35]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:25:36]:
So, in that way, I could vary the what I would charge for what they could afford and everything. So now I have fewer Mhmm. Because COVID really slowed everything down, but I don’t need quite as much income now as I used to. Thank you, Social Security. So
Scott Cowan [00:26:00]:
at the time that we’re recording this, which is in August of 2024, the book’s due out in September. So this this episode will go live a little bit before the book is released. So we’re gonna snap our fingers and we’re gonna say that the release was a smash and that you’re happy and the and your your sales are where you want them to be, and you’re starting to get some book tours because of it. What’s next? You got another book idea cooking around in there?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:26:31]:
I have 2 more books finished.
Scott Cowan [00:26:32]:
You have 2 more books finished. K.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:26:35]:
Finished and sold and scheduled.
Scott Cowan [00:26:37]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:26:38]:
So the next book is called sea monsters, a field guide. Because I did cryptid creatures, a field guide. Cryptozoology is the study of mysterious animals.
Scott Cowan [00:26:49]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:26:49]:
Bigfoot Loch Ness Monster right back to that weird circle. Right. And it did so well that Sasquatch said, hey. Do you have another cryptid book? And I said, I always wanted to do a sea monster book. And they said, done. So Sea Monsters A Field Guide is a sequel to Cryptid Creatures A Field Guide. Cryptid Creatures had all kinds, you know, on land, on air, everywhere. K.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:27:13]:
And this is just sea monsters. Fifty different sea monsters, eyewitness accounts. Some of them are the old faithfuls like Loch Ness, but some of them are very strange. Okay. Some of them, I’m pretty sure, are not real.
Scott Cowan [00:27:28]:
K.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:27:29]:
But I give the eyewitness reports, and then I give the facts that it’s leaning towards probably someone’s imagination because we have a rating system from 1 to 5. Okay. And 1 is not real, and 5 is real, and everything else falls somewhere in the middle. So there’s that. My illustrator, his name is Rick Spears. He’s brilliant. He’s doing 3 drawings for each of the 50 cryptos. An adult, a baby, and a skeletal feature, which you did for the other book too.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:28:00]:
The other book that’s coming out the year, later that one’s in 2025. In 2026 is cryptid babies.
Scott Cowan [00:28:08]:
Alright. Let me look at that.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:28:09]:
And that is a board book for very little cryptid fans.
Scott Cowan [00:28:12]:
Oh my gosh.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:28:13]:
So if you have a little boy who loves cryptozoology, and you have a brand new son who’s 2 or 3 years old, and he wants to be a part of the game, he can have cryptid babies, and there’s nothing scary about it. It’s just cuddling.
Scott Cowan [00:28:25]:
No. They’re, yeah, they’re they’re they’re cute. They’re really cute. Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:28:33]:
They are really cute. And I wanna do the babies because encrypted creatures, the babies are the most popular by far.
Scott Cowan [00:28:39]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:28:40]:
I mean, I thought they’d appeal mostly to the girls, but, no, the boys, the girls, everyone loves those babies.
Scott Cowan [00:28:47]:
Interesting.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:28:48]:
And I’d always wanted to write a book about baby cryptid, so my daughter and I got together. We wrote it. And when she said, do you have any more cryptids, I said, yes. I have sea monsters, and I have this baby cryptid story. And she said, great. Let’s buy them. So that’s 2025 and 2026. I’ve also written a book about an animal called axolotl.
Scott Cowan [00:29:10]:
Axolotl.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:29:11]:
Is a salamander that can regenerate its body parts. So I followed its discovery, which was in Mexico by the Aztecs, and then how it’s gone forward to near extinction, and now the people in Mexico are trying to save it now. So kids love axolotl. And then another one I’ve finished but not sold is on tardigrades which are the toughest plant animals on the planet Earth, and they’re microscopic. The biggest one is the size of a poppy seed. But they can live up to 200 years without water. They live in watery spaces. But if you take away their water, they pull all their legs and their head inside their body, and they go into what’s called a ton state.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:29:54]:
And they form this sugar barrier, this armor, and they just wait until water comes back. And they said, wow. These guys are really tough. They can go without water. They can what what would they do in space? There’s no water, no air, extreme heat, extreme cold, ultraviolet rays. They were sure sending tardigrades to space would kill them. Nope. They brought the capsule back down.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:30:20]:
Tardigrades say, hi. How you doing? We’re fine.
Scott Cowan [00:30:23]:
Wow.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:30:23]:
We had babies, babies in space. So kids love tardigrades too. So that’s the next 2 that are not sold, but will be sold because I won’t give up till they are.
Scott Cowan [00:30:34]:
That’s amazing to me.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:30:37]:
I like weird stuff.
Scott Cowan [00:30:38]:
Yeah. You do. And but you make it approachable. You know? It’s Well,
Kelly Milner Halls [00:30:44]:
the thing is is it may be weird. Like, I’ve I’ve got 2 books that I haven’t finished to really one is, 2 stories about poop
Scott Cowan [00:30:53]:
Oh, okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:30:54]:
Which every little boy in the planet won. Yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:30:56]:
Probably.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:30:59]:
And it’s odd as I started I started on a joke first. I just started collecting poop stories because they were funny. And then I thought, I’m learning stuff from these poop stories. I mean, I didn’t know that when a whale poops, it feeds the whole ecosystem.
Scott Cowan [00:31:14]:
Did
Kelly Milner Halls [00:31:15]:
Did you know that?
Scott Cowan [00:31:15]:
I did not.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:31:17]:
I did not know there were certain animals that have square poops. How is that possible? So I’m looking at all these weird poop stories, and I’m learning poop fact tastic. It’s just who knew? So that’s a little beyond the normal weird for me, so I’m gonna have to really finesse that one. And there’s another one. I I wanna do 2 stories about death because there are so many weird death rituals.
Scott Cowan [00:31:45]:
So have you talked to your illustrator about the poop book that, you know, you’ve got some
Kelly Milner Halls [00:31:50]:
I think he would be game. He doesn’t like drawing people as much. Okay. Okay. And there are people associated with so, like, there was apparently a 2 sided toilet so you could sit next to your best friend while he pooped back in medieval times, which, you know
Scott Cowan [00:32:07]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:32:07]:
He probably won’t wanna illustrate that one.
Scott Cowan [00:32:09]:
Okay. True story. I I I’m I’m a real estate broker to keep the lights on. K?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:32:19]:
Yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:32:20]:
I showed a house, and the primary bathroom’s suite, you know, big bathroom. Yeah. 2 2 toilets in it, wall between the 2 toilets, except for the wall didn’t go all the way to the wall. Who? So you could be using the toilet and holding each other’s hands. There was, like, an 18 inch gap.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:32:49]:
It was That’s pretty weird.
Scott Cowan [00:32:51]:
So weird.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:32:52]:
Did you ask about it?
Scott Cowan [00:32:53]:
No. No. I didn’t.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:32:56]:
Because you wanna get other listings.
Scott Cowan [00:32:57]:
No. Well, it was the the buyer that was looking at it. They liked the house, and then they saw that, and that was one of those unrecoverable deal breakers, and so we didn’t This
Kelly Milner Halls [00:33:07]:
is strange.
Scott Cowan [00:33:08]:
I know. It’s really weird. And so when you say there’s
Kelly Milner Halls [00:33:10]:
Really weird.
Scott Cowan [00:33:11]:
2 two sided toilet, and I’m like, oh, geez.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:33:14]:
Maybe it’s surpassing toilet paper.
Scott Cowan [00:33:16]:
I don’t know. The paper maybe? I don’t know. Anyway okay. I let’s
Kelly Milner Halls [00:33:22]:
But see, that would that would haunt me. I would be I would be sleeping and dreaming. I would have to do research.
Scott Cowan [00:33:32]:
Okay. Yeah. We’ll just we’ll just let that one go right now.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:33:36]:
Mhmm. Definitely.
Scott Cowan [00:33:37]:
So no. It was just but anyway. So you’ve got you’re kind of prolific then in your, the ideas and the the output. Yeah. That’s, that’s fascinating to me because, some authors I’ve I’ve had the the pleasure to talk to. It’s it’s very interesting to me to to talk to, authors. Some are super prolific. Some are like squeezing, you know, blood out of a turnip.
Scott Cowan [00:34:10]:
They they each word was, you know, painstakingly birthed, and they never wanna go through the process again. You you sound like you’re just this this this font of ideas. And
Kelly Milner Halls [00:34:22]:
Well, here’s one reason why if you’re wondering why.
Scott Cowan [00:34:25]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:34:27]:
If you write one book every 5, 6 years, you have a spouse who’s paying the bills.
Scott Cowan [00:34:33]:
Okay. Fair.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:34:35]:
I do not. K. And I had 2 daughters to raise on my own, so it was sink or swim.
Scott Cowan [00:34:41]:
Like to eat. It’s funny.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:34:43]:
They do.
Scott Cowan [00:34:43]:
To eat.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:34:44]:
Something other than top ramen whenever possible. So it was hustle. Mhmm. And, you know, when I first started writing books after that challenge, I was so frustrated because there was this neat book series called, Grossology. Alright. And they were just gross things. Right. And I said, I wish I’d written Grossology.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:35:04]:
I wish I’d written this one. And I was just so depressed that I hadn’t written all these other people’s books. And then I thought, well, what do you wanna write?
Scott Cowan [00:35:14]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:35:15]:
And that’s when I said, well, I like that weird stuff, so let’s give it a go. And dinosaurs are weird if you don’t love them. And then I wrote a book called mystery of the mummy kids. Mystery. It’s all about mummified people who were mummified before they were 18.
Scott Cowan [00:35:30]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:35:31]:
So it’s basically a book about dead kids. Mhmm. But I discovered if you talk about the dead kids, you draw the kids in.
Scott Cowan [00:35:38]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:35:38]:
They wanna read it. But then when you explain what their lives were like, what led to them being mummified, then the kids are tricked into learning a whole lot more about, you know, sociology and and, archaeology and all these neat things that go along with mummies. So you can use this candy
Scott Cowan [00:35:57]:
Mhmm.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:35:58]:
To help kids eat their meat and potatoes.
Scott Cowan [00:36:01]:
So let me ask you a question. Out of all your books, is there one that’s sold noticeably more than the others? Do you have a
Kelly Milner Halls [00:36:12]:
You know, tales of the cryptids, that was the first cryptozoology book that I did.
Scott Cowan [00:36:15]:
Mhmm.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:36:16]:
And that’s probably sold well, it’s been in print 18 years
Scott Cowan [00:36:21]:
Wow.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:36:22]:
Which is unheard of in kids and nonfiction.
Scott Cowan [00:36:25]:
That’s that’s yeah.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:36:26]:
I mean, your average book if you’re 10 years if you’re lucky.
Scott Cowan [00:36:29]:
Okay. Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:36:31]:
So that one’s been around forever, and they’re taking it out of hardcover, but they’re gonna leave it in paperback. Okay. Which is perfect because there are a lot of kids that can’t afford hardback. And if I go to school visits, if I have a good paperback, I can sell. That’s always great because it’s an equalizer.
Scott Cowan [00:36:46]:
Right. Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:36:48]:
But that one’s done really well, and it was I thought it was gonna be my best book forever. I thought that was gonna I’m never gonna see that again. And then cryptic creatures of field guide just took off. For some reason, it’s got it’s got, like, 900 Amazon reviews.
Scott Cowan [00:37:02]:
Wow.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:37:02]:
And crypt Tales of the Cryptids has, I think, 70?
Scott Cowan [00:37:07]:
K. And I
Kelly Milner Halls [00:37:09]:
was like, that’s why they wanted more cryptid stuff because they’re going, holy cow. Right. Who knew there was a niche for this? Well, I knew. Rick and I have been trying to write a sequel to Tales of the Cryptids forever. K. And that’s basically what cryptic creatures was. The kids said we want more. We want more meat.
Scott Cowan [00:37:26]:
Right. I I
Kelly Milner Halls [00:37:28]:
always And now they’ve got seamonsters.
Scott Cowan [00:37:29]:
I always ask the opposite of that. Was there a book that you wrote that you thought would do better that didn’t?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:37:36]:
Yeah. I wrote a book called Wild Horses. And when I was a kid, I had a horse. Okay. I saved up $60, and I bought a wild mustang.
Scott Cowan [00:37:43]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:37:44]:
And I had to teach her everything. So I fell in love with horses, and I got this opportunity to write this wonderful book called Wild Horses, and it was all the indigenous horses for different continents. And then my editor got sick. And they hired this woman who didn’t apparently know how to make children’s books because I had all this cool archaeology that supported what we know about these horses.
Scott Cowan [00:38:11]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:38:12]:
And she said, I’m gonna pull all the archeology out because this is a book about horses, not archeology. And I said, yeah. But we know about the horses because of the archeology, like like the cave paintings in France, for example.
Scott Cowan [00:38:26]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:38:28]:
So we ended up this is before we had cell phones proper. Mhmm.
Scott Cowan [00:38:34]:
We
Kelly Milner Halls [00:38:34]:
ended up on the phone for 6 days, 7 hours each, going over page by page by page. It was the worst experience.
Scott Cowan [00:38:49]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:38:50]:
And, she, apparently went into another field, which is good for us both. But it would have been this cool horse book. My goal was make a horse book that boys and girls would love. Mhmm. Because most girls love horse books.
Scott Cowan [00:39:05]:
Right. I mean, they
Kelly Milner Halls [00:39:06]:
But all that archaeology would pull a boy in.
Scott Cowan [00:39:09]:
Mhmm.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:39:10]:
I I mean, there was one story that got cut. There were these reliefs, these 3 d not 3 d, but raised sculptures carved into the rock of a cave. And when they were trying to put in a new walkway so people could go and look at these, they noticed the walkway. They had wooden walkways, and they noticed that it was kinda wiggling. And they pulled the wooden walkway up trying to level it. And when they leveled it, they found an ancient body, just the skeletal remains, of someone who had been buried in the cave 1000 of years ago.
Scott Cowan [00:39:46]:
Oh.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:39:47]:
And it was a little girl. So was this a little girl that loved horses? Was her father the sculptor? I mean, it was just this amazing mystery about this body that was found in turn with these beautiful horses. Cut it. Nope. That’s archaeology. That’s not about a horse, except it is. Yeah. So that was that was unfortunate.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:40:13]:
Maybe someday I’ll get to write the book I had in mind.
Scott Cowan [00:40:16]:
K. So when you’re researching so you’re in Spokane. Yeah. A lot of the stuff that you’re talking you’re writing about is around the world. Yeah. How do you how do you conduct your research?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:40:33]:
Well, when I start my research, it begins with, Google News. I look for articles on my topic.
Scott Cowan [00:40:40]:
K.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:40:41]:
And I’ve always done this for articles for, you know, newspapers and magazines. That’s where you start. You start on what’s already been written. And you read and you read and you read, and you end up seeing certain names keep coming
Scott Cowan [00:40:53]:
up. Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:40:54]:
So you say, okay, that’s who I need to talk to. So then you search for that expert. And if they’re good experts, they’re usually affiliated with the university or museum or something like that. So I contact the expert. If I do my job right, they say, yes. I’d love to speak with you. And then that’s how I do it. And then I call them.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:41:17]:
I I depend heavily on the telephone
Scott Cowan [00:41:20]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:41:21]:
For, interviews. And I interview them, and they say, yes. You can use my interview. And then I have to do photo research to make sure they’re images to go with these. Because most of my books have photographs for illustrations. Some of them have Rick Spears, who’s my favorite illustrator. But it’s a long process. You have to learn a whole lot
Scott Cowan [00:41:45]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:41:46]:
Before you even get started on formatting the book and knowing what you wanna include and what you wanna cut. Like, I wrote a book called Alien Investigation. Mhmm. Because after I figured out Bigfoot might be real, and I think he might be, I thought, what else have they told us is not real? And I thought area 51.
Scott Cowan [00:42:03]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:42:04]:
Because we always say, oh, kids. There’s nothing there. Nothing ever happened there. So I go looking into area 51, and I discover there are a whole lot of military experts still living who say, no. Something did happen there.
Scott Cowan [00:42:17]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:42:19]:
And so I get to say, wait a minute. Maybe I mean, it’s not there now. Here’s how the story goes. Supposedly, UFO crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, cattle rancher’s ranch. Guy runs a cattle ranch. He’s upset because there’s a mess on his land. He doesn’t wanna have to clean it up. So he calls the sheriff, and he brings in somebody to bring, and he goes, who’s responsible for this? Because I’m not cleaning it up.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:42:45]:
And then the sheriff says, oh, this looks military. Let’s call the Army Air Force Base. At the time, it was one service, which was area 51, Groom Lake. So they called a guy named, Major, Marcel. And Major Marcel comes to the sheriff’s office and says, this is weird. Where did you find this? Show me. So they go back to the site where the crash is. Marcel calls a flatbed truck from Area 51 and all the troops he needs to gather all the debris.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:43:13]:
They gather it all up. The big pieces go on the flatbed. Little pieces go in cardboard boxes. Most of the boxes around the flatbed go right to Area 51. Marcel takes one home because he wants to show his kid. Because his kid is 12, Jesse Junior. And he says, I wanna show my kid this weird stuff. So he takes it home, wakes his kid up, dumps it on the floor, says, see if any of the pieces fit.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:43:39]:
This is all the book that Jesse Marcel junior wrote
Scott Cowan [00:43:42]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:43:43]:
With his father because he had to swear not to say anything until he was near his deathbed, and then they wrote this book. They look at all this stuff. Jesse’s looking at his 12. He’s pretty big you know, you’re pretty grown up at 12. Right. And he’s going, dad, there’s symbols on this one. He called them hieroglyphics because they were studying Egypt in school. And he noticed if he tilted this little bar in the light of the kitchen that it would turn purple.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:44:11]:
All things a 12 year old would remember.
Scott Cowan [00:44:13]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:44:14]:
And then dad says, okay. Put everything back in the box. I better get it turned in. But you be good for your mom. I’ll see you in a few days. And Jesse Junior says, yes, sir. And he brings the box in, and everything gets turned in. Everything was at Area 51 briefly, but then it all went to a base in Texas, and then it finally landed, according to the experts, at Wright Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:44:38]:
And it is supposedly all still stored there, whatever it was.
Scott Cowan [00:44:42]:
Interesting.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:44:43]:
Now Jesse Marcel sent out a press release senior at the dad saying, yep. We found a flying saucer. They didn’t make it up. That was from the army air force, and it was in all the newspapers. Remember all the headlines? Yeah. Saucer found in Roswell. And then the Amerifrost got a little upset and said, Marcel, you gotta fix this because you’re gonna cause a panic. So Marcel has to go back and say, you know what? I made a mistake.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:45:11]:
I’m an expert on all aviation, but I mistook a weather balloon for a flying saucer. And he had to do it. It was an order. Wow. So his career was tanked. And he stays quiet and he stays quiet and he stays quiet, and finally, he decides to write this book. He’s on the edge of life, writes this book, passes away. And that’s where Jesse junior comes in.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:45:38]:
Now you say, hey. Can we trust Jesse junior? Did he curl up to be a drug dealer who was Jesse Junior? He grew up to be a medical doctor.
Scott Cowan [00:45:45]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:45:46]:
Pretty reliable science guy, and he served in the military. He flew the helicopters to evacuate the wounded, and then he patched them up.
Scott Cowan [00:45:55]:
K.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:45:55]:
And he says, what I saw in my kitchen was not part of a weather balloon. What I saw in my kitchen was not of this world.
Scott Cowan [00:46:04]:
Wow.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:46:04]:
So that’s a pretty convincing witness. Now do I know for sure he’s telling the truth? No. But I know he’s a reliable witness, and I can put his account in along with the other accounts that say, no. It’s not real. And then the kids get to decide, and they get the critical thinking skills because you cannot believe everything you read or everything you see on the Internet.
Scott Cowan [00:46:24]:
What?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:46:26]:
That’s how we get little girls stabbing their friends to live with Slender Man. Yeah. Nobody knows where to ask a question. Because usually a kid says, hey. Mom is Slender Man, which is this creepy character that came from a fictional story, turned into a video game and all kinds of other nonsense. Supposedly, if you killed somebody for him, you could live in his mansion with him forever. That’s the fiction. Mhmm.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:46:49]:
But these little girls thought it was real. And for, like, 8 years, kids are saying, you’re weird. Is Slenderman real? They can ask me because I’m safe. Mhmm. You ask your parents, and they go, that’s stupid. Don’t bother me with that.
Scott Cowan [00:47:01]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:47:02]:
And then those 2 little girls think it’s real. I’m gonna kill my friend. They stab this girl in the woods. She lives. But they go to jail Yeah. Because they had no one to ask, is this real? So if we let kids weave in and out of this truth and not truth land, then we can be the people they can trust. Let’s look it up.
Scott Cowan [00:47:24]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:47:24]:
Let’s see. Let’s look it up ourselves.
Scott Cowan [00:47:27]:
K. When you’re not researching, when you’re not doing school visits, when you’re not talking on a podcast, what do you like to do? You moved to Spokane. What do you like about Spokane?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:47:42]:
You know, I lived in Colorado, and I like the weather then because I was young and I didn’t mind shoveling snow. And I wanted a climate like Colorado, and Spokane is I mean, it could be Colorado. Everything about Spokane is a lot like Colorado, but it was a lot cheaper. And I wanted a place where my money would go further.
Scott Cowan [00:48:02]:
K.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:48:03]:
And it you know, my daughter was a gothy girl at the time, my oldest. She, loved Marilyn Manson, and it turned out he was gonna come in concert. Yeehaw.
Scott Cowan [00:48:12]:
Woo hoo.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:48:13]:
And, but it made her feel more secure about Spokane, which is fine. And then my little one was 8. She was as long as we’re all there, the 3 of us, she’s fine. K. And Spokane turned out to be great. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. It’s a great place to to raise a family. K.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:48:29]:
But that’s why I picked Spokane. I I had my parents lived in the Austin area, Austin, Texas. I’m a pretty liberal girl, so Austin and I Austin’s fine, but Texas is a little outside my league.
Scott Cowan [00:48:41]:
Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:48:44]:
Cleveland. I love Cleveland, but it’s cloudy so much of the year. Santa Fe, I love too expensive. So Spokane, and it it was a winner. I tried to get assignments in all those places Okay. So that I could visit for free. Okay. So
Scott Cowan [00:49:01]:
We went back to Cleveland this summer, for a few days. And,
Kelly Milner Halls [00:49:05]:
Well, the hall of fame, the rock and roll hall of fame is there with you.
Scott Cowan [00:49:08]:
Well, we went and saw the Rolling Stones there. And, then we went to the the hall of fame the next day, and and it was Cleveland’s, there’s a lot of the humidity. And the
Kelly Milner Halls [00:49:19]:
people are nice. It’s a great place, but it’s, like, 8 months a year, it’s cloudy.
Scott Cowan [00:49:24]:
Alright. Questions
Kelly Milner Halls [00:49:27]:
Oh, I play video games. I used to have a dog that I walked. I had a great day, and you have to walk them. Right. I have, like, one cat now, which is the fewest pets I’ve ever had. I used to have a 5 foot rock iguana
Scott Cowan [00:49:38]:
Oh, jeez. Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:49:40]:
Who I would play with, oddly enough.
Scott Cowan [00:49:42]:
Alright.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:49:44]:
So So
Scott Cowan [00:49:45]:
I I don’t know if you can hear. Unfortunately, my dog is in the yard right now. He’s he’s found something to bark at, so he may be bursting in here any moment to say hello to the show. So I always ask my guests a couple of questions about their town. So here’s here’s 2 questions for you about your town. Number 1, I’m a coffee fan. I love coffee. So where’s a good coffee shop in Spokane?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:50:07]:
My favorite coffee shop in Spokane is one called Rocket. It’s Rocket Bakery and Coffee. Okay. It’s on Cedar
Scott Cowan [00:50:16]:
Alright.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:50:18]:
Which is kinda just in the heart of downtown, right, by KHQ, the TV station. They have great coffee. They have great scones. They have great bagels. They have, you know, yummy coffee stuff and giant cookies if you’re into that. Right. But I also like the coffee at Frank’s, which is a diner in Spokane.
Scott Cowan [00:50:34]:
Is it is
Kelly Milner Halls [00:50:34]:
Does this have good coffee?
Scott Cowan [00:50:36]:
The am I am I confusing is that the one that’s in the railcar? Yeah. Okay. You know what? Yeah. You know what? I’ve been in there before. You’re right. It’s Dieter coffee, which I am not a coffee. I love coffee. I, I love good coffee, but I also will drink, you know, I’ll I’ll I’ll drink coffee at Denny’s type thing.
Scott Cowan [00:50:56]:
You know? And Frank’s had really solid diner coffee. I have not been to Rocket. So what’s your when you go to Rocket, what what do you what do you order? What’s your coffee drink?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:51:06]:
You know, I just get drip coffee. I like drip coffee with a little cream and Okay. No. Diet sweetener.
Scott Cowan [00:51:12]:
That’s I
Kelly Milner Halls [00:51:13]:
I like that pure coffee, but people always say you want a little coffee with your cream because I like it to be pretty Okay. Tan. So
Scott Cowan [00:51:20]:
I drink drip or, you know, pour over just straight black coffee. And I, you know, I mean, I’ll certainly have another coffee beverage, but some people get sick.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:51:29]:
But I have 2 coffee snob daughters, and they were, like, they’ll have that latte double shot. Yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:51:35]:
Okay. Blah blah blah. You
Kelly Milner Halls [00:51:36]:
know? Alright. And it’s, like, that coffee.
Scott Cowan [00:51:39]:
Alright. So follow-up to that question. I’m gonna get to Spokane. In fact, I’m going to Spokane on we’re recording this on a Monday. I’ll be in Spokane on Friday. Okay. So I’ll be in Spokane on Friday, and I’ll probably be getting there about lunchtime. So this this you could really help me out here.
Scott Cowan [00:51:55]:
Where’s a where’s a place I should check out for lunch?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:52:00]:
Well, you’ve already been to Frank’s. You wanna do that again? Because Frank’s is my go to.
Scott Cowan [00:52:04]:
Well, let’s give me something else besides Frank, because and I may end up at Frank’s, but let’s let’s let’s something else.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:52:08]:
Right.
Scott Cowan [00:52:09]:
Put you on the spot.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:52:11]:
There’s another little diner on the north side. K. It’s called the Wall Street Diner.
Scott Cowan [00:52:16]:
Wall Street Diner.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:52:18]:
It’s smaller. It’s very little known. Mhmm. But it’s cute as it can be, and they have really good food. K. I did not have coffee because I had lunch there. Okay. But it’s got great feel.
Scott Cowan [00:52:32]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:52:32]:
And it’s on the north side, and people ignore the north side a lot.
Scott Cowan [00:52:35]:
Interesting.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:52:35]:
But you could also go there’s another diner on on Garland in the north side that was in Vision Quest.
Scott Cowan [00:52:42]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:52:43]:
The Matthew Modine movie
Scott Cowan [00:52:45]:
Oh my god.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:52:45]:
Ferguson’s.
Scott Cowan [00:52:46]:
Okay. So the wall And that might
Kelly Milner Halls [00:52:48]:
be So
Scott Cowan [00:52:48]:
the Wall Street Diner
Kelly Milner Halls [00:52:49]:
super worth your while.
Scott Cowan [00:52:50]:
Wall Street Diner, what would you be ordering there?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:52:53]:
I ordered the time I had their last, I ordered their a bagel sandwich
Scott Cowan [00:52:57]:
Alright.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:52:59]:
With avocado and bacon and eggs and all kinds of goodness.
Scott Cowan [00:53:03]:
God. Kinda that’s hard.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:53:04]:
But at Ferguson’s, you can get a great patty melt
Scott Cowan [00:53:06]:
Oh, okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:53:08]:
Which is one of my go tos.
Scott Cowan [00:53:10]:
Okay. Alright.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:53:11]:
On good old fashioned rye. You can get it with the fried onions. You can get it without the onions. Okay. Alright. Ferguson’s is is a it’s and it’s cute.
Scott Cowan [00:53:20]:
Okay. Alright. Alright. Couple last questions for you. Number 1, what didn’t I ask you that I should have? Do we get do we cover the book? We kinda covered your your career in in in all of that, but is there anything that we could have talked about that we didn’t get to?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:53:40]:
You know, sometimes people say, what accomplishment are you the proudest of? And I’m proud of my career. K. I’ve managed somehow to pay off a mortgage
Scott Cowan [00:53:50]:
There you go.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:53:51]:
Which on what I make seems just incredible. But the thing I’m most proud of is being a mom.
Scott Cowan [00:53:56]:
Alright.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:53:57]:
Because these two little people landed in my world, and they taught me everything. I mean, you think you know everything when you have a kid, and it turns out you don’t. And you’re learning as you go.
Scott Cowan [00:54:10]:
Alright. Right.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:54:11]:
And these incredible little creatures who teach you to see life through a different vision.
Scott Cowan [00:54:17]:
Yeah.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:54:18]:
And they’re the ones that kept me fresh.
Scott Cowan [00:54:20]:
K.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:54:21]:
And stuff I wrote for kids.
Scott Cowan [00:54:23]:
What do you
Kelly Milner Halls [00:54:24]:
because I had kids right there, and I could say, what do you think about this? Like, my eldest daughter loved the mummy book. She loved creepy things. My youngest would say, close those mummy books. I’m coming into the room to eat. And they’re so different and so individual and so great. And so if I had to be proud of one thing, it’d be my it’d be my 2 little people who are not little anymore.
Scott Cowan [00:54:45]:
Little anymore. Alright. And that’s something that we as parents, you know, there are a lot of work. There’s moments where you go, what was I thinking? And there’s moments where, you know, you couldn’t change a thing. My my 2 kids are great. And,
Kelly Milner Halls [00:55:02]:
But, you know, that’s why I’m good writing for kids. Yeah. Because even though I’m old and they look at me when I first walk into a school, they go, oh, She’s old. And so the first thing I say is, did you notice I’m old? Let’s get it off the table. Let’s just say it out that front, and they go, yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:55:18]:
That’s funny. That’s great.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:55:20]:
Who knew? Who
Scott Cowan [00:55:21]:
That’s
Kelly Milner Halls [00:55:21]:
It’s surprising. I can still walk, isn’t it? And they go, yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:55:24]:
Yeah. It’s
Kelly Milner Halls [00:55:25]:
because to them, I’m a 1000000 years old. Awesome. And then we get past it. And then by the end of it, they’re all saying, oh, I wish you were my grandma because you’re so weird. So the weird kid in me gets to connect with the weird kid in them.
Scott Cowan [00:55:38]:
That’s,
Kelly Milner Halls [00:55:39]:
And that’s by way of my kids
Scott Cowan [00:55:40]:
I love that.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:55:41]:
Who fortunately grew up as weird as their mother.
Scott Cowan [00:55:43]:
I love that. Yay. Alright. Two things. Number 1, where can people find out more about you? Where do you want them to go online? And we’ll put it in the show notes too. So just just
Kelly Milner Halls [00:55:53]:
They can go to my website, which, remember, I keep saying I’m weird because I am. It’s true. You can go to wonders of weird
Scott Cowan [00:56:01]:
wonders of weird.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:56:02]:
Dotcom.
Scott Cowan [00:56:02]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:56:03]:
So think, wow. That’s wonders of weird
Scott Cowan [00:56:06]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:56:06]:
Dotcom. And if you just do weird and Kelly, you’ll probably find me. If you find something r rated, forgive me. I’m not guiding you to that. But, if you did Kelly writer weird.
Scott Cowan [00:56:19]:
Kelly writer weird, but wonders of weird. Alright. We’ll put that in the show notes.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:56:22]:
Wonders of weird.com.
Scott Cowan [00:56:23]:
Alright. So here’s our here’s my last my last question of you. Now you have to answer this question. You can’t you can’t take a pass and you have to explain your reasoning. K? K. This is hard hitting journalism. You ready?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:56:39]:
Ready.
Scott Cowan [00:56:39]:
Cake or pie, and why?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:56:45]:
You know, I’m gonna have to go with pie, cherry, or peach.
Scott Cowan [00:56:51]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:56:52]:
When I was pregnant with my first daughter, all I could eat were avocados and cherry pie.
Scott Cowan [00:56:58]:
That’s that’s an odd combo.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:57:00]:
It is very odd.
Scott Cowan [00:57:01]:
Odd combo.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:57:03]:
It is very strange, but cherry pie was like heaven. And I I still love cherry pie. K. But I also love peach pie. They’re they’re tied for for
Scott Cowan [00:57:11]:
some reason. Alright. Let’s Hi. See, some people, it’s easy. Some people pick which one of your kids, you know, left left her I know. I do like cake too. I mean, who doesn’t
Kelly Milner Halls [00:57:20]:
like cake? My daughter doesn’t like cake. Yeah. For birthdays, we had to bring cups of macaroni
Scott Cowan [00:57:24]:
and cheese.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:57:29]:
Strange.
Scott Cowan [00:57:30]:
Oh my gosh.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:57:31]:
Go figure. Alright.
Scott Cowan [00:57:32]:
Well, Kelly, thank you for sitting down, today.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:57:35]:
Thanks, Scott. It was fun. Yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:57:36]:
I appreciate and I’m I’m I’m gonna check the book out when it when it when it’s, released. I only to practice saying the word, which we’re not gonna get me to say it again because I just I’m never gonna get it pronounced right. That’s just but I really think it’s fascinating, and I had no idea why we had no dinosaur fossils. And it’s glaringly obvious when you say that this was covered in prehistoric water, you know, back
Kelly Milner Halls [00:58:04]:
Here’s the here’s what’s also in the book. There’s Cretaceous rock on Sucia Island, but there may be Cretaceous rock in Methow Valley. So we may find more. We’ll see.
Scott Cowan [00:58:18]:
That’s okay. Wow. Where in the meadow?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:58:21]:
Thanks for having me. It was great fun.
Scott Cowan [00:58:23]:
Where in the meadow?
Kelly Milner Halls [00:58:26]:
Just Meadow Valley rock formations up there. The reason we don’t find them so far remember when you think of the badlands in South Dakota, how there’s no greenery? Mhmm. Well, the greenery is what protects stone, so it erodes like crazy in the badlands. That’s why they find the dinosaur fossils. In Methode Valley, it’s covered in greenery.
Scott Cowan [00:58:47]:
Got it.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:58:47]:
So that’s holding the rock together.
Scott Cowan [00:58:49]:
Okay.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:58:49]:
So they’re not washing out for us to find. But the rock formations, according to some scientists, are cretaceous. So there could be, if you wanted to cut through all the plants.
Scott Cowan [00:59:01]:
I don’t think we’re gonna allow we’ll be allowed to do that, but that’s actually very fascinating.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:59:07]:
It is fascinating. Who knows?
Scott Cowan [00:59:09]:
Well, again, thank you so much for sitting down with me.
Kelly Milner Halls [00:59:13]:
Thanks for having me.
The Exploring Washington State Podcast is your go-to source for discovering the diverse wonders of the Evergreen State. Whether you’re seeking inspiration for your next adventure, looking to savor local cuisine, or eager to learn about the businesses and artists that call Washington home, this podcast has something for everyone. Join us as we showcase the splendor of Washington State, reminding you that “there is always more to explore!”
