"Ghosts and Ashes" and "Zenith Dreams" - Books 2 and 3 in F.T. Lukens' Gay Teen Science Fiction Series, Broken Moon

"Ghosts and Ashes" by F.T. Lukens

Three months have passed since the events of The Star Host, and Ren is living aboard the Star Stream under the watchful eyes of the Phoenix Corps. Plagued by vivid nightmares that ravage the ship in his sleep, he struggles to prove he isn’t a threat and fears he has traded one captor for another. His relationship with Asher, whose efforts to balance his personal loyalty to Ren with his professional duties to the Corps are failing, fractures.

Adrift without an anchor, Ren must return to his home planet of Erden if he has any chance of reversing his dangerous descent into madness. There, he hopes search for his missing brother and salvage his relationship with Asher. What he finds is knowledge that puts everyone’s allegiance to the test.

"Zenith Dreams"

In the Broken Moon series finale, Ren, a technopathic star host in search of his lost brother, wakes from life-threatening injuries to discover his love, Asher, has returned to his position with the Phoenix Corps. Aboard the private trading ship, the Star Stream, the crew informs Ren the draconian Corps leaders believe he's dead. No longer hunted for his powers, he has an opportunity to disappear, but Ren is determined to fix his mistakes. He convinces the crew to join him for one last dangerous mission: Find Asher, free his brother Liam, and escape the Corps' reach forever. But a war is brewing between two formidable armies, and Ren is drawn into the conflict. With friends by his side, Ren must make a choice, and it will affect the future of his found family--and the whole star cluster--forever.

Add your review of "Ghost and Ashes" and/or "Zenith Dreams" in comments! 

Read about book one in this series, "The Star Host" here.

Ashes to Asheville - Sisters mourn the loss of one of their two moms, and an impulsive road trip helps them rediscover the bonds that make them Family

Ashes to Asheville by Sarah Dooley

After Mama Lacy’s death, Fella (age 12) was forced to move in with her grandmother, Mrs. Madison. The move brought Fella all sorts of comforts she wasn't used to at home, but it also meant saying goodbye to her sister Zoey (a.k.a. Zany, age 16) and her other mother, Mama Shannon. Though Mama Shannon fought hard to keep Fella, it was no use. The marriage act is still a few years away and the courts thought Fella would be better off with a blood relation. Already heartbroken, Fella soon finds herself alone in Mrs. Madison's house, grieving both the death of her mother and the loss of her entire family.

Then one night, Zany shows up at Mrs. Madison’s house determined to fulfill Mama Lacy’s dying wish: to have her ashes spread over the lawn of the last place they were all happy as a family. Of course, this means stealing Mama Lacy’s ashes and driving hundreds of miles in the middle of night to Asheville, North Carolina. Their adventure takes one disastrous turn after another, but their impulsive journey helps them rediscover the bonds that truly make them sisters.

Add your review of "Ashes to Asheville" in comments!

"Jack & Louisa", Acts 1, 2, and 3 - a middle grade series about theater, and boys and girls crushing on boys, and life in and out of the spotlight

Jack & Louisa, Act 1 by Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Kate Wetherhead, illustrated by Ben Kirchner

Twelve-year-old Jack Goodrich was a Broadway star, with two shows under his belt and a third in rehearsals. But when his voice suddenly changes, Jack and his parents leave the spotlight and move far from New York City to Shaker Heights, Ohio. While Jack hopes to leave his Broadway past behind, his new neighbor refuses to let him off the hook. Louisa is a self-proclaimed "musical theater nerd" and can hardly believe when an actor moves to town. What's more, the local theater has announced auditions for her favorite show, Into the Woods. As the audition date looms nearer, the two are faced with difficult choices. Should Jack risk humiliation and return to the stage? Will Louisa have confidence to go it alone? And can friendship survive all those complicated octave leaps?

Jack & Louisa, Act 2

Shaker Heights Middle School is putting on Guys and Dolls and best friends Jack and Lou are hoping to get lead roles. But a mysterious new director soon arrives to town and threatens to meddle with their dreams. Is Shaker Heights big enough for two Broadway legends?

Jack & Louisa, Act 3

Two weeks at Camp Curtain-Up is just what Jack and Louisa need to fuel their passion for theater: Broadway musical sing-alongs, outdoor rehearsals, and tons of new MTNs (musical theater nerds) to meet... maybe even a special someone. It almost feels like fate when the two friends return home to find local auditions for The Sound of Music. But as Louisa fantasizes about frolicking in the Alps, Jack gets tempted by a student-run drama competition that would reunite the two with their camp friends. Will Jack get Louisa to skip an audition? Can Lou handle Jack as her director? And will someone finally get a big, Broadway happy ending?

Add your review of "Jack & Louisa" Act 1, 2 and/or 3 in comments!

A Boy Named Queen - a 5th grade gender non-conforming boy, and the friend he helps to embrace her own creativity

A Boy Named Queen by Sara Cassidy

Evelyn is both aghast and fascinated when a new boy comes to grade five and tells everyone his name is Queen. Queen wears shiny gym shorts and wants to organize a chess/environment club. His father plays weird loud music and has tattoos.

How will the class react? How will Evelyn?

Evelyn is an only child with a strict routine and an even stricter mother. And yet in her quiet way she notices things. She takes particular notice of this boy named Queen. The way the bullies don't seem to faze him. The way he seems to live by his own rules. When it turns out that they take the same route home from school, Evelyn and Queen become friends, almost against Evelyn's better judgment. She even finds Queen irritating at times. Why doesn't he just shut up and stop attracting so much attention to himself?

Yet he is the most interesting person she has ever met. So when she receives a last-minute invitation to his birthday party, she knows she must somehow persuade her mother to let her go, even if it means ignoring the No Gifts request and shopping for what her mother considers to be an appropriate gift, appropriately wrapped with "boy" wrapping paper.

Her visit to Queen's house opens Evelyn's eyes to a whole new world, including an unconventional goody bag (leftover potato latkes wrapped in waxed paper and a pair of barely used red sneakers). And when it comes time for her to take something to school for Hype and Share, Evelyn suddenly looks at her chosen offering -- her mother's antique cream jug -- and sees new and marvelous possibilities.

Add your review of "A Boy Named Queen" in comments!

Star-Crossed - a middle school play of "Romeo and Juliet" has Maddie playing Romeo opposite her crush, Gemma!

Star-Crossed by Barbara Dee

Twelve-year-old Mattie is thrilled when she learns the eighth grade play will be Romeo and Juliet. In particular, she can’t wait to share the stage with Gemma Braithwaite, who has been cast as Juliet. Gemma is brilliant, pretty—and British!—and Mattie starts to see her as more than just a friend. But Mattie has also had an on/off crush on her classmate Elijah since, well, forever. Is it possible to have a crush on both boys AND girls?

If that wasn’t enough to deal with, things offstage are beginning to resemble their own Shakespearean drama: the cast is fighting, and the boy playing Romeo may not be up to the challenge of the role. And due to a last-minute emergency, Mattie is asked to step up and take over the leading role—opposite Gemma’s Juliet—just as Mattie’s secret crush starts to become not-so-secret in her group of friends.

Add your review of "Star-Crossed" in comments!

Harriet Gets Carried Away - A Sweet Picture Book About a Girl with a Terrific Imagination... and Two Dads, That I Wish Had Been Read To Me When I Was a Little Kid

Harriet Gets Carried Away by Jessie Sima

Sweet, whimsical, and not about having two dads, Harriet Gets Carried Away is lovely, and absolutely a book I wish had been read to me when I was a little kid!

Here are some images from the interior, so you can see how Harriet's dads are integrated into this very child-centered story.

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Hurray for Harriet (and her dads!)

Thanks, Jessie.

Add your review of "Harriet Gets Carried Away" in comments!

Girls of Paper and Fire - An Asian-Influenced Teen Fantasy with a Forbidden Lesbian Love

Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan

Lei is a member of the Paper caste, the lowest and most persecuted class of people in Ikhara. She lives in a remote village with her father, where the decade-old trauma of watching her mother snatched by royal guards for an unknown fate still haunts her. Now, the guards are back and this time it's Lei they're after -- the girl with the golden eyes whose rumored beauty has piqued the king's interest.

Over weeks of training in the opulent but oppressive palace, Lei and eight other girls learns the skills and charm that befit a king's consort. There, she does the unthinkable -- she falls in love. Her forbidden romance becomes enmeshed with an explosive plot that threatens her world's entire way of life. Lei, still the wide-eyed country girl at heart, must decide how far she's willing to go for justice and revenge.

Read a great interview with the author in Publishers Weekly here.

Add your review of "Girls of Paper and Fire" in comments!

Pulp - Two Teenage Girls, 62 years apart, and the Lesbian Pulp Novels That Change Everything For Them

Pulp by Robin Talley

In 1955, eighteen-year-old Janet Jones keeps the love she shares with her best friend Marie a secret. It’s not easy being gay in Washington, D.C. in the age of McCarthyism, but when she discovers a series of books about women falling in love with other women, it awakens something in Janet. As she juggles a romance she must keep hidden and a newfound ambition to write and publish her own story, she risks exposing herself―and Marie―to a danger all too real.

62 years later, Abby Zimet can’t stop thinking about her senior project and its subject―classic 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Between the pages of her favorite book, the stresses of Abby’s own life are lost to the fictional hopes, desires, and tragedies of the characters she’s reading about. She feels especially connected to one author, a woman who wrote under the pseudonym “Marian Love,” and becomes determined to track her down and discover her true identity.

Add your review of "Pulp" in comments!

The Transgender Story of Coy Mathis is Edited Out of the Russian edition of "Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls"

This was reported last week in Huffington Post's Queer Voices by Daria Litvinova, LGBTQ People Erased From Books In Russia Under ‘Gay Propaganda’ Law: A story written by trans activist Coy Mathis is missing from the Russian edition of a new children’s book.

Image from this beautiful post about the original "Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls" on MommyShorts

According to the article,

Liza Lazerson, a feminist blogger who owns a copy, said she was surprised to see that while the cover promised 100 stories the book contained only 99 and one blank page - supposedly for the reader to add their own.

“But then a follower sent me a photo of Coy Mathis’s story from the French edition,” Lazerson, who is based in Moscow, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in written comments.

Mathis, an 11-year-old transgender girl from the United States, won a landmark victory in a 2013 case against her school allowing her to use the girl’s bathroom.

Bombora, which printed the book in Russia, did not immediately respond to requests for comment....

Francesca Cavallo, one of the authors of “Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls,” said she was “deeply saddened that Coy’s story has been left out.”

It's sad and frustrating that children and their families in Russia won't have access to this empowering story of a young girl who was born with a boy's body, and how her parents (and ultimately, a judge) were so supportive of her being allowed to use whatever bathroom she felt most comfortable using at school.

In these times where governments create darkness, every bit of light becomes more important, and more powerful. 

The light in me recognizes and acknowledges the light in you,
Lee

Drum Roll, Please - A Middle Grade Novel Where A Girl Finds Her Voice (and Romance With Another Girl) Playing The Drums at Summer Camp

Drum Roll, Please by Lisa Jenn Bigelow

Melly only joined the school band because her best friend, Olivia, begged her to. But to her surprise, quiet Melly loves playing the drums. It’s the only time she doesn’t feel like a mouse. Now she and Olivia are about to spend the next two weeks at Camp Rockaway, jamming under the stars in the Michigan woods.

But this summer brings a lot of big changes for Melly: her parents split up, her best friend ditches her, and Melly finds herself unexpectedly falling for another girl at camp. To top it all off, Melly’s not sure she has what it takes to be a real rock n’ roll drummer. Will she be able to make music from all the noise in her heart?

Add your review of "Drum Roll, Please" in comments!

Palm Springs Peeps! I'm speaking tonight (6:30pm Wednesday November 7, 2018) at the Palm Springs Public Library!

If you're in Palm Springs, California, I hope you can join me and our community for this "Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill" book event! We start at 6:30pm, and you can find all the details here.

It's also exciting to see how the word has gotten out in Palm Springs, with write-ups in The Uken Report,

Poets and Writers,

Gay Desert Guide,

and Palm Springs Life!

My thanks to Julie Warren, Library Services and Public Relations Manager of the Palm Springs Public Library for inviting me out to Palm Springs to speak about my debut teen novel, and to QTrading, who will be onsite for book sales following the presentation.

I hope to see you there!

The light in me recognizes and acknowledges the light in you,
Lee

Tomorrow, We VOTE!

For the past 98 days on twitter, facebook, and instagram I've been counting down my motivations for voting in tomorrow's midterm elections here in the United States.

Tomorrow, Tuesday November 6, 2018, we vote.

Do your part. If you can vote, do so. If you can't, do what you can to encourage and empower others to vote.

And let's stop Trump and his Republican enablers from moving even one more step on their hateful, selfish, terrible agenda.

The light in me recognizes and celebrates the light in you, and in times of darkness like right now, that's when light matters even more!

Lee

In Philadelphia This Sunday November 4, 2018? Join me at the Woodmere Art Museum for an Author Talk and Book Signing!

from the Woodmere website!

Philadelphia is my hometown, and the Woodmere Art Museum, in celebrating the art and artists from Philadelphia, is the perfect place to celebrate the publication of "Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill"!

You can RSVP for this FREE event here!

CAN A SECRET FROM HISTORY CHANGE THE WORLD?

Join Author Lee Wind as he discusses his debut teen novel, Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill, that explores that very question. To fix his life, bullied and closeted fifteen-year-old Wyatt goes public with historical evidence that Abraham Lincoln was in love with another guy—triggering a backlash and media firestorm that might destroy everything he cares about.
This free event will include a talk, reading, Q&A, and book signing. Copies of the novel will be available to purchase and/or donate to LGBTQ and Allied teens.

DATE AND TIME
Sun, November 4, 2018
4:30 PM – 6:30 PM EST

LOCATION
Woodmere Art Museum
9201 Germantown Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19118

RSVP here for this FREE event in Philadelphia, PA!

Hope to see you there!

The light in me recognizes and acknowledges the light in you,

Lee