We were fortunate to be asked to announce the winners of the 2019 Lesfic Bard Awards. Look for the Gay Scribe Awards in 2021!
Here are the winners, by category:
Action Adventure
Over the Crescent Moon by Karen D. Badger
Makaya Kapule and Spencer Bennet are from vastly different backgrounds…Makaya from Hawaii and Spencer from Vermont. They met and fell in love as members of the National Fencing Team. On hiatus from their grueling training schedule, Makaya and Spencer fly to Hawaii to attend her sister’s traditional Hawai’ian wedding, at which, Spencer meets Makaya’s family for the first time. While there, Makaya’s brother takes them water skiing, and an over-confident Spencer finds herself in danger when she fails to anticipate the raging fury of ocean whitecaps. She wakes up some time later to find herself alone on a deserted beach and with her world about to be turned upside down.
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SWB1GRG
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1945761261
Young Adult
Tank Baby by Iza Moreau
For the first 7 years of her life, Elodie Fontaine was part of an ultra-secret psychology experiment in China. Now, at 17, she is trying to put that behind her and simply be a normal Florida teenager. She plays on her high school tennis team, is a nerd-in-good-standing in the Math and Science Club, and has come to terms with the fact that she is interested in girls rather than boys.
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HZ3FB4W
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1979343330
Drama
Burn it Down by K. Aten
Ash Hayes was failed by the system at the tender age of sixteen and suffered an addiction. As a result she lives her life weighed down by the guilt of her past. To atone for childhood misdeeds, Ash trained as a paramedic after high school and eventually became a firefighter with the Detroit fire department, along with her childhood best friend Derek. Friend, confidant, brother, he has been her light in an otherwise dark life. When tragedy strikes on the job, injury and forced leave from the department are the least of her concerns. Suffering from even more guilt and depression after the loss of her two closest friends Ash is set adrift in a sea of pain.
When Mia Thomas buys the house next door, Ash finds friendship in the most unlikely of places. It’s Mia’s nature to help and to heal. Many would say she has a knack for finding the broken ones and leading them into the light. But Ash’s secret still lives deep inside her. Before the firefighter can even think of a future, she has to amend her past. Like the phoenix of legend, Ash has to burn her fears to the ground before she can be reborn.
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07T99GC8S
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1619294184
Erotica
The Good Girl by Madeleine Taylor
I’m a good girl. I work hard, look like your average girl, do everything in moderation, and I certainly don’t make a habit of going into strangers’ hotel rooms dressed in sexy lingerie and killer heels. That is, until I meet her.
When a mysterious woman buys me a drink at a hotel bar in New York, I never expect her to impact my life the way she does. From the moment she lays eyes on me there’s little point fighting my desires because she seems to know them better than I do…
The Good Girl is the naughty debut novella by Madeleine Taylor, author of lesbian erotica
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YRVB1K6
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1916265308
Fantasy
Duchess Rampant by Alison Naomi Holt
Blending the lyrical and mystical with pulse-pounding action
Epic fantasy featuring strong women characters
Aurelia “Bree” Makena, the Duchess of Danforth, waits on a beach near Port Emnal in front of her three thousand troops. As the waves lap against the hooves of her battle mare, Lioth, Bree watches the enemy ships deploying more warriors against her than she’d ever thought possible.
Victory may prove an insurmountable task.
But wrestling victory from defeat is only the beginning. The real attack is one that if successful will defeat her Anacafrian king more surely than an arrow driven through his heart.
You are invited to enter Ar’rothi, a world as vividly realized as Narnia or Middle Earth, a world where animal spirits guide humans towards enlightenment, and in which an orphaned girl and a warrior duchess must join forces against an evil that threatens everything they have learned to love.
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MYM54Z9
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1092115560
Fiction
Jobyna’s Blues by Jane Alden
Jobyna’s Blues is a multi-generational love story, set in post-WWI American South and flashing forward to the mid-1960’s in New York City and London.
In 1924, Jobyna, the Empress of the Blues, and Lily, a dancer in her chorus line, fall in love as they travel in a custom train car and play to adoring crowds in theaters from Nashville to New Orleans to Mobile. Life is both exciting and dangerous in the young country, only sixty years past the Civil War.
Looking forward to the mid-1960’s, Jobie Greene, a folk singer in Greenwich Village, meets the charismatic English pop star, Deedee. They struggle to manage their long-distance relationship and their careers against a backdrop of social change.
The connections between the love stories and the women’s challenges and triumphs, as they echo through time, keep us surprised and challenged and rooting for their happy endings.
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TSYSLNG
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1948327384
Historical
Over the Crescent Moon by Karen D. Badger
Makaya Kapule and Spencer Bennet are from vastly different backgrounds…Makaya from Hawaii and Spencer from Vermont. They met and fell in love as members of the National Fencing Team. On hiatus from their grueling training schedule, Makaya and Spencer fly to Hawaii to attend her sister’s traditional Hawai’ian wedding, at which, Spencer meets Makaya’s family for the first time. While there, Makaya’s brother takes them water skiing, and an over-confident Spencer finds herself in danger when she fails to anticipate the raging fury of ocean whitecaps. She wakes up some time later to find herself alone on a deserted beach and with her world about to be turned upside down.
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SWB1GRG
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1945761261
Mystery
Steel City Confidential by Anne Hagan
Clients hide things from their lawyers all the time. Pam Wilson makes it an art form.
Pam’s been on the run from the law for years and she was getting away with it. The statute of limitations ran out on most of her crimes. For her spouse Charlotte? Not so much. Though they were aging, they looked forward to enjoying their golden years and, hopefully, forgetting about the past.
Life got complicated when Charlotte became gravely ill, their daughter got pregnant with the child of a married man…a married man someone took shots at from a rare motorcycle Pam happens to own. When the man was shot again and killed in his office at Pitt a couple of weeks later, the police found all signs pointing to Pam.
Rochelle ‘Ro’ Rabinowitz, a second-generation Pittsburgh lawyer, and her little firm take on Pam’s case pro-bono. Ro thinks it’s a slam dunk for the defense and hands the case off to her new associate and – she hopes – her future partner in the firm, Dominique, to get her feet wet in a courtroom. Clients are never completely honest with their lawyers and Ro and Dominque soon learn this one is no exception.
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TH8SB54
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1950828042
New Author
Moving Violations by McGee Mathews
When interim police chief Molly Gorman pulls Amy over, more than the antics on the motorcycle catch her eye. She discovers Amy Gilbert spends her days repairing cars in her family garage and is intrigued. The only holdup? Amy occupies her nights playing softball and drinking with her wild best friend, who offers incredibly bad advice about love. After several run-ins with a certain drunken mechanic, Molly wonders if Amy is really worth the trouble. When Amy disappears, she has to put her mixed emotions aside to work the case.
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Q4173WF
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1090797427
Romance
A Window to Love by Annette Mori
Two life events, two paths colliding, two souls destined to meet.Mandie Carter lives an uninspired life. No passion, no romance, and just when she thought things couldn’t get worse, life throws her a curve ball. Desperate to shake things up, she stumbles on an ad for skydiving in the newspaper. Could diving out of a plane be what it takes to jumpstart her life?Gail Forrester is barely hanging on. Buried under mountains of debt, only her much in demand architectural designs keep her afloat. Working around the clock to satisfy her hungry clients, she can’t seem to catch up. That is, until she is brought to a painful halt by a bus. Now, they must find a way forward together through what life and destiny has in store for them. Only then can they hope to step into that window to love.
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SKMKGQP
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1988588138
Science Fiction
Black Flag: Safe Passage by Rachel Ford
Kay Ellis designed the perfect bank for an intergalactic crime syndicate, the Conglomerate. Now the
Conglomerate has a bounty on her head. Privateer Captain Maggie Landon is planning a hit on the Conglomerate’s
high security bank. But the system is unbeatable – to everyone but its designer.
In order to escape a Conglomerate hitman, Kay needs someone with a ship, and willing to go toe-to-toe with the
Conglomerate. To get her gold, Maggie needs Kay, and her knowledge of the bank.
Kay agrees to assist for a share of the loot, and passage to Union territory. Along the way, she and Maggie find
their attraction to one another complicates their straightforward business relationship.
They successfully pull off the heist. But when a crewmember betrays them for a larger share of the loot, they
almost lose everything – and discover that the real treasure was what they had all the time in each other, and in
their crew.
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NQL5XX9
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/109921839X
Cover
Lost & Found: A Mystic Meteor Tale by Elle Hyden
Two lost souls are on a collision course. One searching for a life partner while the other mourns the loss of hers.
Selina is at a crossroads. No job, no home to call her own, and no partner. She has to turn her life around, but in which direction? Returning to her Native American roots, she seeks mystical aid from the spirit world, to find the life she hungers for.
Rea has been able to find a measure of solace after her wife’s death but longs for the crack in her heart to heal. Sighting a falling star, she sends her wish out into the universe, where it’s heard by the most unlikely allies.
Selina and Rea’s paths crossed many times in the past, but they’d never connected. Now they are being inescapably drawn together by fate, desire, and a touch of the mystical. Will love and trust prevail over loss and fear, so they can have their shot at being found forever?
Join them on their souls’ journey through the Lost & Found.
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZMDFTWV
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1080194355
