Thoughts on Urban Fantasy and My free story of the month

Do you like urban Fantasy?

I began voraciously reading science fiction and fantasy as a teenager, while my public school insisted I had a reading problems. My guess is they would have assumed I was dyslexic. I wasn’t. But I did like reading some words backwards that were words if you read them backwards.

I guess you could say I appreciated exploring the world a bit differently then most. That led me to tales that had ghosts, magic, and spaceships. At some point, maybe I was fifteen, I found reading books wasn’t enough, so I started writing my own stories, too.

Becoming a good writer means reading a lot of books and learning from history, literature, great stories, a details in life that become part of an author’s toolox. Among the stories I gravitated too were urban fantasies. Tales of magic in our world, elves among us, and even superheroes in comic books.

That led me to write stories in the world of my Bred in Captivity series. It’s our world, but there are people in our world hiding their true gifts. I also thought about the implications of those who had powers to varying degrees and the idea of what if wizards were once real but had gone on to hide themselves and…. Boom, I thought about the downside of such a world and what terrible things might happen to those with lesser gifts. It’s a world were magic might not be thought of as magic and where someone might hide so well they were looking for a chance to escape their destiny. If only there gift wasn't truly a lesser power.

So I came up with the idea of people with a gift, a lesser gift—even kids working together to help each other escape their grim fates. There’s a lot going on in that world, so I began writing some stories..

My novella, Grounding a Mockingbird, is set in that urban fantasy world of my Bred in Captivity novels, Lessers Not Losers and Children of a Lesser Dragon. Grounding a Mockingbird is featured this month in the promo, Scifi Fantasy, where you can find a lot more free stories to help enjoy the summer!

Dare 2 Believe,

D.H.