Welcome to Day Eight of our Indie Fantasy Advent Calendar! We’re featuring an underrated indie author every day this holiday season to spread a little festive joy and promote authors we think deserve more love. Read our introduction to find out more.
Let’s see what we’ll find behind door number eight:
Here we find A Magical Imperative, a sweet, fated mates romance, full of warmth and caring.
One binding destroyed her family; could another save it?
At thirty-six-years-old, history professor Aurelie is resigned to a childless existence. It’s not her age – it’s the absence of male Unseen. Her species has been so desperate to hide among humans that it is quietly dying out. Now her family is broken; eager to leave behind a painful past, Aurelie accepts a teaching position in Nara, Japan. But she’s unprepared for the future she finds…
Twenty-two-year-old Kazuki is the favored son of the Hayashi family – a clan of Unseen that has not only survived in Japan, but thrived. Though he knows hundreds of Unseen, he’s unprepared for Aurelie and the overwhelming attraction he feels for her, a biological imperative to mate.
Or perhaps a magical one: as Kazuki and Aurelie grow closer, the reasons for hiding become clear.
And they are hungry.
I picked up A Magical Imperative when it appeared in SPFBO in 2023. I’m not a judge, but I got caught up in the excitement and wanted to check out everything that looked interesting. The cover hooked me, but I stuck around for the sweet, magical romance.
I have no idea how it did in the competition, but I know I enjoyed it.
