HIS DARK MAGIC: Book Quote Wednesday word : Break

His Dark Magic: book quote Wednesday word is: ate/eat

K. Bird Lincoln: A discussion of Urban Fantasy, race, and politics #ownvoice

Let’s begin with a discussion about race. Yep, I’m inviting that elephant into the room straight away. Although it isn’t so much an invisible elephant in the room, at least in the USA, as a constant issue people bring up most times in social media either to call attention to injustice or to reinforce stereotypes or gaslight people.

Why would an Urban Fantasy writer want to bring up race? Hi, I’m a white woman married to a Tokyo Boywith biracial kids living on the wind-razed plains of southern Minnesota.  I write in Japanese locations using Japanese myth-based creatures all the time.

My college advisor told me during as senior seminar at the tale end of my Japanese Studies major at Earlham College “You are the expert now. Japan is filtered through you to America. However, you present it, however you see it, whatever you may need to call out, that’s what you are, like it or not.”

At the time, I thought he was whackadoodle. Now, in the face of an up rise in U.S. hate crimes for the third straight year, and Neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, I feel those long-ago words echoing around my brain. It’s so very easy to picture my own daughters’ faces on those children behind the barbed wire of FDR’s Japanese Concentration camps here in the USA.  

So, I get political. Last Dream of Her Mortal Soul is the final installment of The Portland Hafu trilogy. The heroine, Koi Pierce, comes home to Portland to find someone targeting the myth-based, magical Kind in her hometown. She uncovers an ugly, hate-based targeting of her new-found family. Much of the portrayal of the bad guys in this book is based on actual hate groups I researched through websites like the Southern Poverty Law Hate groups map.

Fantasy is excellent for highlighting human fallacies and challenging our status quo. From the first time I saw Uhura on the bridge of the Star Trek Enterprise to the first time I read one of Alyssa Cole’s historical romances featuring African Americans, I never realized the uneven ratio of races portrayed in the media I loved to consume until it literally stared me in the face. And it wasn’t until I had my daughters, and wanted them to see their own faces reflected back at them, that I knew it wasn’t enough just to write what I knew. 

Luckily, SFF has always been a bit ahead of Romance in the diversity area. When I started writing The Portland Hafu ten years ago, there was no Heroine Complex or Trail of Lightning or Want. There’s quite a lot more out there now.

 Even Scientific American knows that reading literary fiction improves empathy. I challenge you, no matter who you are or what genre of fiction you may like to read, to take March and April and seek out an #ownvoice or a book from a culture you are unfamiliar with. Let fantasy sweep you away and provide escapist joy while also helping you understand the hearts of others. I promise, it won’t disappoint you.

K. Bird Lincoln is an ESL professional and writer living on the windswept Minnesota Prairie with family and a huge addition to froufrou coffee. Also dark chocolate--without which, the world is a howling void. Originally from Cleveland, she has spent as many years living on the edges of the Pacific Ocean as in the Midwest. Her speculative short stories are published in various online & paper publications such as Strange Horizons. Her medieval Japanese fantasy series, Tiger Lily is available from Amazon. World Weaver Press released Dream Easter, the first novel in an exciting multi-cultural Urban Fantasy trilogy set in Portland and Japan, in 2017. She also writes tasty speculative fiction reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Check her out on  Facebook, or join her newsletter for chocolate and free stories. 

Things She's Seen, Northern Circle Coven #2

Editorial notes and copy edits for THINGS SHE'S SEEN have arrived. I'm so excited to be working the final polish of this novel. This is Em's Northern Circle Coven story. I can't wait until it's out in the wild! You can learn more HERE

A Conversation: Alexandra Ivy & Pat Esden

Head over to @alovesotrue for this very special interview! 

 http://bit.ly/2I5yel5 

Book Quote Word: Secret

Free Prequel to The Portland Hafu Trilogy: Last Dream of Her Mortal Souls!

Stunning conclusion to The Portland Hafu Trilogy: 

Last Dream of Her Mortal Soul

DESCRIPTION

Even a dream eater can’t escape the final sleep…

After her trip to Japan, the Head of Portland Kind calls Koi home to help solve a murder. The body of a powerful magical being was found in the witch’s hut in Forest Park, along with a strange, haunting quotation about dreams and death written in blood. Can Koi discover who seems to be calling out a Baku before others from her new-found family die?

EXCERPT

We arrived at the bottom of the moss-covered staircase leading up the side of the structure. Kwaskwi took each step one at a time as if he were burdened with some heavy load.

“Are you all right?”

He beckoned me up the stairs. “I’ve kept up a circle of protection around this area for 48 hours. I’m about to drop. If you would just hustle that Yankee girl ass then I can rest.”

And there’s the Kwaskwi I know and love. I jogged up the rest of the stairs, too tired to drum up a clever comeback. And then, faced with the understanding of why Kwaskwi wasn’t completely his usual self, I stopped dead at the top of the stairs.

Spread eagled on the cold stone floor was a familiar figure. Dzunukwa, the Ice Hag. She’d first accosted me in Pioneer Square three weeks ago, blowing her ice wind through me when Ken and I were trying to reach Kwaskwi’s designated meeting space on time or risk losing Dad to him. She’d terrified me then. All red, red lips, tangled bird’s nest of hair, and a multicolored gypsy skirt inlaid with polished children’s teeth that flashed like mirrors. Even more terrifying, I’d used my Baku dream eating as a weapon for the first time on her—a living, waking being. Reveling in the power, repulsed by my own hunger, I’d almost drained her dry.

Now she lay here, her hair fanned out around her head like a dark starburst. Dead. Her lips were pursed as if about to send a stream of heart-stopping cold, but her black eyes were open, staring, and lifeless. Someone had carefully arranged her skirt so it spread wide, and placed her arms across her middle in a terrible mimicry of a ballerina’s first position. My mind yawned wide, a formless void. There was no comprehending what my eyes beheld. She was here, murdered. And above her on the stone wall was the rest of the Shakespeare quote someone had painted in maple syrup on my bed. Only here it was traced in something dark-red, crumbling, and smelling of sour melon and pennies.

What dreams may come?

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Bringer of Death

free download! 

Enter the magical world of the Kind-- 

the beings from world myths and legends that live amongst us.

Japan Lost World War ll, but the Tokyo Council still rules the magical Kind with an iron will. When the Council's enforcer, Bringer-of-Death, receives orders to go after a veteran who happens to be Baku--a dream eater--he is caught between the threat of punishment and his desire to help the Baku escape. Can Bringer-of-Death find a way to both protect his family and the Baku? Or will be be trapped as the Council's slave forever? 

Download this novelette, Bringer-of-Death, to experience Fujiwara Ken's very first meeting with the Baku Herai Akihito--way before he encounters Akihito's daughter Koi Pierce, at the start of Dream Eater, the first book of K. Bird. Lincoln's multi-cultural Portland Hafu Urban Fantasy Trilogy. 

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/e8sz5gwlfq