WATTYS 2022 SHORTLIST EDITOR'S CHOICE -- SEPTEMBER 2021 EXCLUSIVE CHAPTERS AND WRITER'S REVEAL CONTENT AVAILABLE - NOT A PAID STORY Appearances can be deceiving. What if the Bad Boy wasn't so bad and the good girl wasn't quite so good? Kelly Wankum has an unfortunate last name and even worse luck. By the tender age of twenty-three, she's broken her tailbone, thumb, her nose, hip, and now her rib. It wouldn't be so bad if she could say something funny like, "I broke myself on a stripper pole" or "I was mugged in a Walmart parking lot." That would actually be believable, right? Instead, she breaks her rib reaching for a ball of yarn. Even worse, everyone knows she's so accident prone, she could sneeze and lose a tooth. They'd probably bet on her swallowing it in a pancake. Oh wait, she's done that too. Another trip to the Urgent Care has the doctors shaking their heads, offering to pray for her health while new, sexy Doctor Blake Cole immediately gets off on the wrong foot. Months after their first encounter, Blake and Kelly meet again by chance. After inadvertantly humiliating her, Blake tries to set things straight and make it up to her. The problem is, Blake's lifestyle is painfully different, and Kelly can't help imagining him like every bad boy she's ever read about online. Can Blake convince her to give him a chance and prove he's actually a good guy? **This story is set in the present and the pandemic is part of the narrative.** --Cover by AnnieRosebud-- ©2020, 2022

Melissa Crawford thinks she's just a regular teenage girl. She goes to school. She has friends, boy problems, homework...you know, the typical teenage angst. But she couldn't be more wrong, for Melissa Crawford is not a mortal. Her adoptive mortal mother refused to give her up and hired a witch to erase the enchanting Faery child's memory, not realizing that things aren't that simple. You see, when she was a little girl, Melissa promised herself forever to her Leannan Sidhe (mate), a Fae Prince, and a promise to Fae is sacred. When the Fae Prince comes back to claim what's his, nothing will get in his way. "Mortals are so arrogant. So utterly narcissistic to think that they are the only intelligence in this world, to believe their realm is the only realm, their way is the only way. "Many of you believe us fairies only exist in little kids' fairy tales. We are so much more than that. We exist, living in the Realm just a blink away from yours. A few wrong turns in the park or the forest and you're there. We sometimes walk among you, and you're not even aware of it. Believe me, we exist. Across the globe, your kind calls us and our realm by different names...but as William Shakespeare once said- a rose by any other name..."