Blog Tour: JUS BREATHE by B. Lynn Carter

 

Jus Breathe

by B. Lynn Carter

 

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GENRE: Women’s (speculative) commercial fiction

 

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BLURB:

 

Their seesaw love affair started when she was five, even though they didn’t meet until she was eighteen. It started the day she heard Daddy slur, “She ain’t mine. You had the nerve to name her Dawn. Look at her! You shudda named her Midnight!” Then Daddy left . . . for good. And the loving music that had filled Dawn’s life went silent.

           

That was the day that a “Midnight” Duckling invaded the mirror, took up residence in her chest, and controlled her ability to breathe. That was the day she learned to recognize “leaving time” . . . her superpower.

 

Couched in speculation, Jus Breathe is the tale of a young Black woman’s struggle to defy her inner “Duckling” and embrace her true self. Set in New York City during the turbulent sixties, it’s an improbable love story with precarious impulses, secret pasts, and inner demons.

 

Dawn, a survivor, flees her stepfather’s violent home. While struggling to attend college, she perfects sofa-surfing and hones her superpower, her ability to leave a  situation in an instant.

 

But in the mist of the chaotic uprising that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, serendipity spins Dawn into beautiful Danny’s rollercoaster world.

           

Toxically in love, no longer a “leaver,” Dawn realizes that in order to survive, she must break free of Danny’s dominance. But that Duckling, who has allied with Danny, threatens to squeeze the life-breath from her if she dares to leave . . . that ugly, midnight-black Duckling, she has to kill.

 

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Excerpt One:

 

There was pain. It shot up from my jaw to my brain and back down again. Ghostly figures were, moving fast, a blur of white overalls, the smell of wall paint, shuffling feet, a scuffle.

 

That voice was rolling through my brain—one word, an echo from far away.

 

“Attack . . .”

 

It’s summer. It’s always summer when I slip into those childhood days. The boys have hijacked my Spalding ball, again. I chase them. I sic Sigfried on them. She does her most ferocious growl and a playful tug of war on their shoestrings as I yell, “Attack!! Attack!!”

 

“Attack!!”

 

A voice was shrieking that word. It occurred to me that it was my own voice, gradually returning me to the stark reality of the situation; back to ‘moving-in day,’ to what just happened, to the moment that my mother’s new husband’s fist impacted my face; back to Sigfreid lunging at his neck, taking him down, to the painters trying to free him from her grip, trying to get me to call her off.

 

Dazed, I remained in my head, lingered in the fantasy that my big-boned shepherd could take a man down like that, fascinated that she even had it in her. I think I did call her off or maybe she relented of her own accord. That’s when “that thing” took possession of my lungs, again. Gasping for air, I think maybe all of them, the painters . . . my mother’s husband, were franticly yelling.

 

 

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 GUEST POST

Topic:  What elements do you think go into a good women's fiction story?

 

            Of course the most important element of good women’s fiction is a compelling protagonist. You have to show your reader who your protagonist is; what her backstory is and how that backstory shapes who she is.

            In “Jus Breathe,” Dawn, my protagonist is a young, Black woman whose father traumatized her into a “dark-skinned complex.” She was five when she heard him yell at her mother, “She ain’t mine. Look at her! You had the nerve to name her Dawn. You shudda named her Midnight!” Then he was gone. Because of her, Daddy left…for good. Her guilt was profound.

            That one incident had a strong impact on Dawn. That very day an Ugly Midnight Duckling invaded Dawn’s mirror and took up residency in her chest. It ruled her by controlling her ability to breathe. Depending on your basic stance, the mirror creature is a metaphor for Dawn’s feelings of unworthiness, shame, and guilt…or it’s a real nemesis that she has to defeat.

            A protagonist in a women’s book should have some strengths. In my book Dawn’s strength is her ability to pick up and leave, just like Daddy, and never look back. Despite herself, this is her resilience. Fleeing a violent stepfather, Dawn left home at sixteen. She ‘sofa surfed’  for two years. She’d leave one place after another when, as it always did, ‘leaving time’ came around. This is her superpower. At least it was, until she met Danny.

            A protagonist needs to have a goal, something that she desperately wants; something that she thinks will solve her problems and make her whole. Dawn had thought about trying to go to college, but she doubted that a nomad like her belonged in a college. Instead, she decides that her life won’t be complete until she finds, what she thinks of as, ‘the music,’ It’s the harmony that was missing in her discordant, dysfunctional childhood home. Obsessed, she’s convinced that beautiful Danny, no matter how menacing and condescending, is the only one who can bring the music, banish the Midnight Duckling and make her beautiful too.

            But like all protagonist, what Dawn wants is not necessarily what she needs. There are things she needs to change, or change back. If she is to survive, Dawn needs to realize that she is “enough,” that she is worthy and deserving of unconditional love. And yes, she needs to go to college. But Danny mocks that idea. Dawn knows she has to reclaim her superpower and leave Danny. But she fears the Duckling. It threatens to squeeze the life breath from her if she dares to leave. She comes to the conclusion that she must confront that Midnight Duckling in the mirror…alone. Yes, she must kill that creature before it finds a way to kill her.

 

 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Born and raised in the Bronx, NYC, B. Lynn Carter graduated The City College of New York with a degree in creative writing. She’s also studied at the Writing Institute of Sarah Lawrence College.

 

Her short story "One Wild Ride," published in Aaduna magazine, was nominated for the Pushcart Award in 2014. She’s had short stories and poetry published in the Blue Lake Review, Drunk Monkeys, Ascent Aspirations, Enhance Magazine, The Story Shack and the Bronx Memoir Project, among others. Besides “Jus Breathe,” Ms. Carter has written two additional full-length novels. She is also listed in Poets & Writers directory of writers.

 

Social Media:

Website: lynncarterbxwriter.com

Twitter: iLynzee2u 

Tik Tok: iLynzee        

Instagram; ilyncee

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lynn.carter.1004

 

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GIVEAWAY:

 

B. Lynn Carter will be awarding $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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