D. M. Rowell (Koyh Mi O Boy Dah) is an enrolled member of the Kiowa Tribe in Oklahoma. Like her protagonist, Mud, she comes from a long line of Kiowa storytellers within a Plains Indian culture that treasures oral traditions. After a thirty-two-year career spinning stories for Silicon Valley start-ups and corporations, with a few escapes creating award-winning independent documentaries, Rowell started a new chapter writing the Mud Sawpole Mysteries featuring a Silicon Valley professional Kiowa woman solving thefts and murders in Kiowa country. The first in the series, Never Name the Dead was a 2023 Finalist for the Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award. The second novel in the series, Silent Are the Dead, will be released November 19, 2024.