Showing results by author "Tony Bertauski" in All Categories

Hiro’s parents rearrange the furniture every December. They make space in the corner for something tall. They plug in string lights and leave them on the floor. Sometimes, they cut down a tree but don’t know what to do with it. It’s not just Hiro’s parents. Everyone does it. Come January, they all straighten up their living rooms and everything goes back to normal. They do this every year. No one knows why. Something’s missing, and they all feel it, but they never wonder what it is. And every year that passes, the world becomes colder and grayer. Until Hiro has a dream.

The Drayton Chronicles is a collection of novellas chronicling the evolution of a vampire. In "Drayton, The Taker:" Blake Barnes commits suicide by freezing on Mt. Hood. As his life fades, he assumes Death has come to him in the form of a young man. In his last moments, he asks Death to find his family, to tell them he's sorry. Drayton honors this last request as he absorbs Blake Barnes' waning essence. He travels to the Lowcountry of South Carolina to find his family. But saying sorry is not always as easy as the words imply.

Sunny Grimm finds a strap around her son's head with an embossed symbol between his eyes. This is the mark of awareness leaping, where players launch into alternate realities and anything goes. Investors make millions. Critics, however, refuse to call it a game. They argue that reality confusion will end humanity. Labels aside, there are many who play. And many who lose. Sunny Grimm goes on a mad search for her son and the people responsible for allowing him to play. The only way she will find him is to not lose herself in the search. The Maze is more than a game.

There is no escape. There never was. Freddy Bills is retired. Back in the day, he was fishing people out of unreality tanks and pulling needles from their heads. That was when it was against the law. Now everyone is doing it, including him...His plans were to fade into retirement, just him and his dog. That was before someone from his past appeared. There’s no escaping his past or future. He was destined to solve the Maze. He just has to figure out why.

Jamie wants to be a halfskin. Her life has become dull and pointless. If she had more biomites, the synthetic stems cells that promise hope and healing, she could take control of her life. But Jamie's body is already 49.9% biomites. The rest is clay-her God-given organic cells. Anymore biomites and she becomes a halfskin. And halfskins are shutdown. But there is a way. Black market biomites, called nixes, can't be detected by the government.

Drayton can’t leave the Lowcountry. He once believed he was a vampire when he terrorized villages and slaughtered for blood. Now he absorbs essence from the dying’s final breath and rarely stays in one place. He has been in the Lowcountry far too long. Everything is about to change. After witnessing an elderly man’s death, Drayton vows to protect his wife. He assumes the job of her gardener in Charleston’s historic district. But when a young woman named Amber enters the garden, he soon questions who he is protecting. And from whom.

Biomites are artificial stem cells that can replace any cell in your body. No more kidney failure, severed spines, blood disease or cancer. Pharmaceuticals become obsolete. With each dose of biomites, we become stronger, we become smarter, prettier... and better. At what point are we no longer human? Nix Richards nearly died in a car accident when he was young. Biomites saved his life. Ten years later, he's not so lucky. The Halfskin Laws decree a human composed of 50% biomites is no longer human.

Reed dreams of a girl that tells him to resist Foreverland. He doesn't remember her name, but knows he once loved her. He'll have to endure great suffering and trust his dream. And trust he's not insane. Danny Boy, the new arrival, meets Reed's dream girl inside Foreverland. She's stuck in the fantasy land that no kid can resist. Where every heart's desire is satisfied. Why should anyone care how Foreverland works?

A name was tattooed on his finger. Marcus woke in a cell. No memory of how he got there or what his name was. Just a tattoo. There were others like him. They called this place unreality. They told him this was where someone was hiding him. Clues lead him on a journey in search of who he is, who he was, and why someone did this to him. Each time he finds someone connected to a mysterious symbol, something inconceivable happens. Something even the people who live in unreality can't explain.

Fabbers, slabbers, and fakies were dehumanizing slurs for fabricated humans. Bricks, however, was the People's favorite. The Sentience Laws were created to protect the rights of Bricks, but the laws didn't last long. Banished to a remote gulag called the Settlement, Paul and Raine are sentenced to live the rest of their lives in the wilderness. Escape and freedom will depend on Marcus Anderson, the man responsible for all the suffering that's been endured since the invention of biomites - the synthetic stem cells used to fabricate halfskins and Bricks.

Tyler Ballard was in prison when his son created a dreamworld called Foreverland, a place so boundless and spellbinding that no one ever wanted to leave. Or did. Now his son is dead, his wife is comatose, and Tyler is still imprisoned. But he planned it that way. The final piece of his vision falls into place when Alessandra Diosa investigates the crimes of Foreverland.

Six teenage girls wake with no memories. One of them is in a brick mansion, her blonde hair as shiny as her shoes. The others are in a cabin, their names tagged to the inside of their pants. Their heads, shaved. Slashes mark the cabin wall like someone has been counting. Hundreds of them. There's wilderness all around and one dead adult. The girls discover her body rotting somewhere in the trees. As the weeks pass, they band together to survive the cold, wondering where they are and how they got there.