Windy Corners

Once upon a time in a dark forest:

Oh, golly, it gets complicated right away. Everybody thinks two little kids are lost and there's a hungry bear in the woods looking for lunch. But these kids know they're not lost because they're on a quest to find the fairies who grant wishes. The wish is to straighten up their mom, who gets an F-minus in parenting; otherwise, they're headed for a foster home.

Tania runs a fun summer camp deep in the mountains of southern British Columbia for disadvantaged city kids, including the two who crept into that foreboding forest.

Ethan has been her neighbor since childhood, and they've been battling the whole time. However, he owns most of the land around here and knows the forest well, so she's forced to call on him for help. They manage to bury the hatchet long enough to search desperately for the kids before the bear finds any of them. All while a new battle begins: confronting the attraction they've tried to ignore.

Roger, the village eccentric, tells everyone the fairies will look after the kids. Fairies are nice that way. Yes, but who will look after the two hostile adults after Roger does a sneaky switcheroo, forcing them to share a single small tent when darkness makes it impossible to keep searching? Fairies! Get over here right now!

Do the kids get their wish? Do the adults? Oh drat, one proposal too many puts the kibosh on anybody getting out of this mess with heart intact. Sometimes more than magic is needed. Sometimes, a little luck and a lot of determination are the way to win in love.

Dip your nose into this sweet, small-town enemies-to-lovers romp, the first in the contemporary stand-alone Windy Corners series.

Poor Roger. The village oddball is in trouble again when his inattention causes a car crash. Luckily for him, his good friend, Frank Ward, is right behind the accident scene and rushes the victim to the hospital.

Frank thinks Anya Sloane, the uppity blonde crash victim from the big city, has only one redeeming grace: her worry about Freckle, the little beagle, who escapes during the crash. Of course, Frank would think that because he's a veterinarian. Oh, and she's his ex-lover. Just when he thought they could have a life together, she dumped him. Ouch.

While Frank is with Anya at the hospital emergency ward, Roger wants to redeem himself by finding the dog. He organizes the townsfolk of Windy Corners into a search party that needs a map just to find its way to the end of the block.

When the beagle is spotted up at Sacred Lake, Frank, Anya, and Roger head into the mountains on horses. After she and Freckle have a dangerous ordeal at the lake, she starts to have weird visions about people in the village. Even those who see mythical creatures in the hills and rely on ancient rituals to grant their wishes are surprised when the stranger in their midst reluctantly rewrites the direction of their lives.

Frank admits he's never stopped loving Anya and tries to win her back. She isn't impressed, even though her heart knows it's missing something. Something the country heartthrob is offering. Something she doesn't trust. Something she refuses to see despite her new ability, even when Frank's life is in danger.

Will an escaped puppy, the village oddball, and excellent peach pie give the mismatched city executive and the small-town veterinarian a second chance at love? Even tarot cards can't predict if true love is in the future for them in this funny, sweet tale of hijinks and hope.

Can mud be magic? Yes! It cured the nasty rash on Roger's bum, didn't it?

No! Laurel Green says the mud on her family's farm in tiny Windy Corners isn't special. It has no medicinal value. But then she tangles with Trent Ash from the big research corporation. He disagrees and tries to grab every acre. So does a sneaky guy who lies about everything and stakes a claim on the land.

No matter which of the two men forces her off the big herb and flower farm, he's going to plow it under searching for Roger's miraculous mud.

It's up to spunky Laurel to save the home and livelihood of her parents and her cantankerous, shotgun-toting grandmother. She knows she's being hustled when Trent lays on the charm, claiming he wants her more than the property. Does he think she's a country hick he can manipulate into making a bad deal? His sizzling kiss hasn't rendered her brainless.

With the help of Roger, her unconventional friend, she launches a couple of tricks to defeat the men lusting after her family's heritage, not her. It's an all-out rollicking battle involving the whole village.

What gets splashed around is a whole lot of love and laughter. And mud.

Just how dirty will everyone get to hold onto what they most want in this small-town enemies-to-lovers romp?

When a searing drought threatens tiny Windy Corners, Caleb Lander scoffs at the suggestion to bring in a water witch. The village eccentric, Roger, reckons Misty, his sister, can help. Caleb, chairman of the water board, wants science, not woo-woo nonsense.

But crops are failing, so he's forced to work with her as a last resort despite not respecting her abilities. While Misty scours the parched environment looking for underground water, Caleb reluctantly succumbs to her mysterious enchantment.

Roger, not to be left out of the quest for water, lures the townsfolk into celebrating goofy ancient rain-making rituals he finds in an old book. Being stripped down to a fig leaf in an occult spell doesn't bother Roger. Nor does nearly setting the village on fire. But when somebody with a secret agenda almost kills Misty, he's brought to his knees.

Caleb and Roger must face the fury driving the person who wants the crops to fail. The search for water becomes a hunt for the potential killer. Can a flood of love find its way through the deserts of three troubled hearts?

Fed up with a toxic workplace and bored with her work, Veronica "Ronnie" Hart quit her job in order to head off into the void by way of settling the estate of her recently deceased mother, a noted fruit preserver and amateur alchemist, who had spent the latter half of her life in some little Hamlet called Windy Corners.

Among her mother's possessions she found a detailed recipe for Love Potion as well as all of the ingredients. The only ingredient missing was a specific wine from a local winery.

So Ronnie brewed it up and bought the wine. Finding it to her taste she poured herself a splash of the wine while she contemplated that historically women have probably been too concerned about the consequences of toying with people's hearts and it's about time women got more liberal about compelling people to love them. What's wrong with love?!

She put a few drops of the potion into a wine glass, sipped her wine and sat back to look at it. When she topped up her glass she also spontaneously added a tiny bit of wine to the tiny bit of potion already in the other glass, expecting to throw it out afterwards, but wanting to contemplate its famous alleged power for a while. She set down her wine glass to look at the recipe.

It was a list, not in her mother's handwriting, of very specifically measured amounts of many local plants including several old yellowed botanical pencil sketches. The list included pitted Lapin cherries, Achillean Lace, Goldenbane and even a few berries of the poisonous Bride's Pearl.

Could there be any money in selling even a fake love potion? she wondered. Absorbed in these thoughts she sipped her wine and suddenly realized - That sharp aftertaste isn't my wine!

A knock came at the door.

Before her, in the open doorway, stood Tim Tallow; the village idiot.

Work in progress: Potions are mercurial and essencially change.