Nellie Wilson

A second chance with a first love and a home town...Kelly Long drove away from Anthracite Springs, West Virginia the day of his high school graduation, leaving everything behind – his accent, his group of friends, and his first love. After fifteen years building a career in California, he’s called back to where he swore he would never return. The reason? His beloved uncle’s farmhouse that Kelly swears he’ll never live in. Just as soon as he can flip it, he’s hightailing it back to a real city where things actually happen. Sam Burns sprinted back home to Anthracite Springs the second she had her college degree, determined to use her big-city education to make her small town better. Sure, the mills are shut down, the coal mines aren’t producing, and most visitors are journalists who write sob stories about poor Appalachians. Sure, she’ll have to work two jobs to do so. But she believes in her town, unlike some people—most notably her high school sweetheart, Kelly, who ditched her and their town the minute he graduated. Kelly’s quick flip turns out to be more complicated when he finds the residents of Anthracite Springs don’t trust him – he’s an outsider now. Sam should hate him, but she’s never been able to resist an underdog. A deal is struck – in exchange for much-needed advice on a downtown redevelopment plan, Sam will help Kelly’s reputation. Through their work, Kelly reconsiders his prejudice towards the town and Sam reconsiders her grudge towards Kelly. As their lives intertwine further, Kelly finds himself falling in love with more than just Anthracite Springs and Sam finds herself falling in love with the idea of a future that involves Kelly. But Kelly made his feelings on staying in Anthracite Springs clear and Sam’s future has to include her town…

EXHIBITED (verb) 1. to have publically displayed in an art gallery or museum 2. to have manifested or deliberately displayed a quality or behavior Jeremy Rinci, exhibit designer, was raised in New York City and educated in Philadelphia, before ending up in Colorado in search of...something. After a few years (and one pandemic) working for a University Museum, Jeremy is looking for a spark. He’s got friends, he has a career, he even has a house, but something is still missing. It's the perfect time to reopen his exhibit consulting business, because what is being in your thirties for if not floundering? Nathaniel Davis (not Nate, just Davis) is a forest ranger, but he prefers to fade into the background, for people to focus on the nature around him instead. Colorado is different from his West Virginia upbringing, but something about the forest in the Rockies makes sense to him in a way not much else has in his life. When tasked with updating the Visitors Center at the National Forest, Davis hires Jeremy to help with the design. Quickly, the two men become unlikely colleagues and even unlikelier friends. Their time together illuminates plenty of surprising common ground, including a shared attraction. Navigating a new relationship is difficult, but navigating a relationship in two cities is harder. On tender dates at art museums, baseball games, and fire watch towers, Jeremy and Davis share their drastically different pasts and perspectives – and different pasts result in differing expectations of what love looks like to each man. Can Jeremy and Davis learn to bridge the gap together and find a way to put their hearts on display?

June Lehrer needs to shut off her brain for a week to make a huge decision. Having taught middle school through a global pandemic, she is reconsidering the career she spent years working towards just in time to accompany 150 students to their annual retreat at Camp Peek-n-See. The last thing she needs is to make out with the new camp director Colin on the first night of camp, but when have the last three years ever gone according to plan? Tucked away in the aspens, June and Colin find a connection that neither of them expected to burn as bright as it does. But camp is just for five days, and the real world is waiting down the mountain... Featuring camp fires, a large grey cat, good coffee, and a healthy bit of steam, this story is about chasing what feels right and figuring out your path, even when it feels inconvenient and overwhelming.

Phoebe Whitford has mostly drifted through life, grateful that without a set plan, she completed graduate school, settled into a career, and become the go-to advice giver for her people. But after first watching her brother and then her best friend fall in love, she’s wondering when - or if - it will ever be her turn. One night, at the bar she’s been frequenting for years, Phoebe asks her favorite bartender a question that changes everything. Declan McFadden loves his bar. It may not have been the dream his family had for him, but he’s built a life he’s proud of, cobbled together like the tattoos on his body. Six years ago, he asked Phoebe out and she responded with silence. Content with being friends, he still gets a buzz every time she visits. When Phoebe proposes an arrangement between them, he agrees, grateful for any time with her can get. Maybe away from the bar, they could become something more. The more time they spend together, the more Phoebe and Dec learn about their individual desires and struggles. How can two independent people rely on each other to help them make their best futures? And does that future include each other? Educated is a story about figuring out what it means to be an adult as a millennial, setting boundaries with careers, friends, and family, and being open to doing it with a partner by your side.

I’m used to people writing me off as a joke, a peppy blonde with a Southern accent who couldn’t possibly know anything. But this is my spring. I’ve got a fully-funded two weeks to chase tornadoes and no one is getting in my way. Everything is organized and perfect until Julian Lehrer shows up as my co-pilot all summer. We’ve bounced in and out of each other’s lives for almost a decade, and if I know two things, it’s that I’m a damn good scientist and he is the second coming of Satan. It doesn’t help that I have a history of both wanting to strangle and kiss him. Violet Franklin is the pink and glittered star of my nightmares. We disagree about everything except the fact that we cannot stand each other. I did not anticipate spending two weeks chasing tornadoes with her. I also didn’t realize we’d end up teaming up against our two idiot funders and that watching her drive an SUV would turn me on so much. It’s harder and harder to remember why we started fighting in the first place, and easier and easier to remember how we’ve ended up half naked with each other in years past. When mistakes and miscommunication begin to pile up, Violet and Julian are drawn closer and closer – anyone can see that a storm is coming.

It's the most wonderful time of the year......to take down a billionaire.Brooklyn Peters has finally landed a spot at her dream company which will allow her to use her boring marketing skills to live her dream of saving the planet. When she catches the attention of the CEO, who happens to be her idol, she gets a close up peek at what is going on behind closed doors. Not only is the corporate wunderkind a creep, but he’s also actively working against everything Brooklyn believes in. Good thing she recently made the acquaintance of Max Matuschansky, a journalist who specializes in corporate reporting. The Christmas season provides a convenient excuse for Max to snoop around…as long as he’s comfortable being Brooklyn’s date to corporate “holiday” events. Which, as a proud Jewish man, he isn’t. But something about this story and Brooklyn makes him reconsider. Between Brooklyn’s crash course in teaching Max about Christmas traditions and late night writing sessions, the attraction between the two gets harder to ignore and maintaining their journalistic ethics is key to keeping them off the naughty list. There’s more at stake than just their hearts, because this season, it’s time to actually make the world a better place.

Emmy Bonaire has built a successful career as a historian by anticipating the worst outcome and avoiding it at all costs. What she couldn’t foresee was her history museum having to combine with the science museum across campus. Even worse, Emmy now has to share an office and design an exhibition with an annoyingly attractive fellow curator, Dr. Ryan Andersson, a paleontologist whose optimism is only topped by Emmy’s skepticism of him. Ryan considers himself a likeable guy. That is, until he meets Emmy. She seems immune to his midwestern charm and attempts at professional collaboration. Not one to let something go, Ryan embarks on a personal campaign for Emmy to like him. For the museum’s sake, of course. Not at all because the gruff historian piques his interest. As Emmy and Ryan evolve from begrudging co-workers to steamy stolen kisses in the archives, their academic work benefits as well. But when their collaborative exhibition becomes critical to both of their successes—while their career goals become further unaligned—extinction seems imminent.