It's important that LGBTQ+ kids be surrounded by peers, role models, allies, and stories that include them, because only then will they have the confidence to demand respect in a world that is still under many circumstances hostile and stifling. An isolated queer youth, cut off from other kids like them, cut off from adults like them to look up to, with no straight people valuing them for their full selves and no characters like them to reassure them that they have a right to exist and have adventures -- this is a child in danger. This is one of the reasons I told my mother that the true villain of my queer feminist fantasy novel The Second Mango isn't any one human being -- it's 'life being unfair', or 'the difficulties of life'.

This all begins to change when she becomes less isolated--when she meets her new bodyguard, Rivka, a woman who despite being straight believes her without question when she talks about her feelings for women and her other problems that hardly anybody else in her life took seriously. Rivka is willing to take her around the country on the back of her dragon in search for other queer women, and even a potential partner, so things quickly begin to look less hopeless.

This is what Shulamit learns as she goes on her journey with Rivka into the wilds of her own kingdom. She comes home transformed, ready to lead--ready to become the "face on the coin" in her father's place.
Shira Glassman is the author of The Second Mango, which is available on Amazon from Prizm Books in Kindle and paperback:
http://www.amazon.com/The- Second-Mango-ebook/dp/ B00EOSCJCQ/ref=cm_pdp_rev_itm_ img_1Check out plenty of character artwork at the author's blog
http://shiraglassman. wordpress.com/About
http://shiraglassman.
Pretty artwork by Jane Dominguez and Erika Hammerschmidt
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Thanks for taking time to read this!
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Nina xxx