This is not a happy story. Please, don't read it if you're looking to be entertained. I took the original abstract piece that was posted here and turned it into a fully fleshed out essay for a college class; I made my classmates weep. I'm updating the post in the hopes that the additional details, anecdotes, and reflections could help someone who needs to know they are not alone.

It was pity that first made Dannie speak to him. She had known Ryan since she was a kid, but he had always been the popular Golden Boy, and she had always been the tomboy that didn’t mind not having any friends. It was odd, she had thought, that all the popular kids who had once kissed the ground he walked on, didn’t so much spared him a glance anymore, and it was this that made her sit with him that one faithful day and begin something that would only end up causing her pain.

Droughts. Love. Happiness. Pain. What else can be brought on with a Late Summer Rain?

Iron & Wine is a Paranormal Romance set in a world full of hidden magical places and secret societies cloaked by modern day. In the first instalment of the Iron World Series, young artist Avery Quinn reluctantly leaves behind her quiet and comfortable home in the country and moves to the city with her best friend Julie Ryan. With the expectation that college will be the most exciting part of her life, Avery hopes that her little world remains quiet and simple. But after a troublesome blue sprite comes looking for help, her boss turns out to be a three-hundred-year old vampire, and her best friend accidentally reveals herself as an orphaned pixie, school quickly becomes the least of her worries. Every aspect of Avery's life explodes with mythical beings and legendary creatures who all play a very important role in her existence. Some are friends, some are guardians, while others quickly become deadly enemies. Avery must learn to juggle living in both her world and theirs. But in this magical tale of strange love, strong bonds and scary beings; what once was nothing more than mere fairy tales told to her by her Aunt Tess are now a scary reality and Avery has somehow landed deep in the middle with no way out except death or worse...the loss of her humanity

As a child, Ashne swore two oaths. With her adopted sister Zsaran she made a pact: one would never die without the other. To their mistress, the queen, who plucked them both out of the inhospitable marshlands, she vowed eternal loyalty. When a tiger spirit from a rival kingdom kidnaps the queen's only daughter, Ashne, now a trusted bodyguard, follows in pursuit despite knowing that her sword will be of little use against the ancient magic steadily reawakening across the land. But it is her human adversaries who prove more dangerous as she navigates the shifting political landscape in a kingdom still recovering from a decades-long war: a foreign sorcerer, an eccentric apothecary, an ambitious bandit chief — perhaps even Zsaran, who has long awaited a chance to achieve freedom for both herself and Ashne. Soon Ashne can no longer reconcile her love for her sister and her devotion to the women they have both served since childhood. Yet she must bring back the princess regardless. If not for love and duty, for her people's continued survival against the encroachment of powerful foreign conquerors, before whose ravenous ambitions the squabbles of two tribal kingdoms amount to dust.