Ancilla

The 2025 Author Shout Reader Ready Awards — Top Pick  * An Indies Today 2026 Semifinalist * The Firebird Book Awards (Speak Up! Talk Radio) — Second Place, Literary Fiction, Winter Quarter, 2025; Second Place, Visionary Fiction, Winter Quarter, 2025; Best Unconventional Love Story, Winter Quarter, 2025 * The Pencraft Awards — Winner, Erotica Romance, Spring Quarter 2026; First Place, Erotica Romance, 2026 Annual Awards * The Outstanding Creator Awards Spring 2026 Contest — Third Place, LGBTQ;  Honorable Mention, Romance; Honorable Mention, Best Character, “ancilla”; Honorable Mention, Best Character, “Magister”; Honorable Mention, Hottest Character, “ancilla” * The Literary Titan Book Awards — Gold Award * The International Impact Book Awards — Distinguished Author (Women's Fiction) * A 2026 Hawthorne Prize Finalist * The 2026 Penmasters Global Award for Literary Excellence — Finalist, Magical Realism * The 2026 Passionate Plume Awards — Winner, Erotic Fiction * The 2026 Global Book Awards — Gold Award, Romance (Erotica); Silver Award, Metaphysical/Visionary Fiction * The 2026 NYC Big Book Award — Distinguished Favorite, Erotica * The 2026 Readers' Favorite Awards — Finalist, Visionary Fiction * The 2026 Page Turner Awards — Finalist

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An age gap. A forbidden, slow-burning love affair between a queer girl and her mentor. An occult curriculum. Some educations begin in the body…

The conservative early 1990's in decaying rust-belt Ohio sets the stage.

She had it all — riches, a college honors program scholarship, a girlfriend — until her conservative, hyper-religious parents discovered the sapphistry and forced her to choose between conversion therapy and disownment. That choice marked the end of her academic career and everything she thought she knew.

Three years later, she is starting her life over when she meets a shy public librarian in a bookstore. What unfolds between them feels almost like magic. Given that he is about to become her private tutor in the magickal and erotic arts, perhaps that should come as no surprise.

But at what cost? Her mysterious guide is everything she has ever longed for, yet she may be forced to choose between her developing identity and the most profound love she has ever known.

Ancilla is a study of hunger. It is a dark, philosophical tale exploring forbidden passion, kink, devotion, trauma, sacrifice, and the complicated path toward becoming oneself. Readers of old-school erotic literature who crave the passion and poetry of Lady Chatterley's Lover and The Story of O will enjoy this, as will students of the Kabbalah and Thelemic magick on which the narrative is structured.

Surrender…

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What the Critics Are Saying

“A singular tale, braided with blood, mystery, and intellect, that dares to fuse the sacred and the profane” — The Prairies Book Review

“Uncompromising, dense, and erotically charged” — Bookview Review

“Love is brutal, bloody, and ecstatic in this passionate romance… BDSM aficionados will love it… A richly imagined, lurid love story that's not for the faint of heart.” — Kirkus Reviews

“What makes Drake's work genuinely distinctive is the refusal to separate the erotic from the philosophical… For readers willing to follow a story that refuses to stay inside genre lines and that takes seriously the idea that desire and self-knowledge are the same journey, this book is a rare and genuinely memorable find.”  — Austin McLean, The Book Revue