CWB Writing

The Works of Christopher Buecheler

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Books

Most of my writing is longform fiction or, to put it more succinctly: novels. I've written eleven so far. Five are available. All of them are listed here!

Published Work

These novels are available in print and as eBooks on a wide variety of platforms through several booksellers. Please check out the individual book's page for information on purchasing it.

Elixir

Elixir Cover Image

His country is shattered. His city is dying. Clay Foster is fighting a losing battle against the dark tide that threatens to engulf Brooklyn. Science stopped the rising of the ocean waters at seven meters, but it has found no answer for Elixir. The drug has infiltrated every stratum of society.

Terry is dead. At first he believed his wife’s death was an accident, but then he found the hair. The photo. The rearranged office. Who searched his home and hurled his wife from the balcony? What were they looking for, and what happened to her SynchDrive full of data?

To gain answers, he’ll visit the flooded, lawless slum of Red Hook, the dangerous ganglands of Crown Heights, the ruined hellscape of Union City, and the shining walled fortress of Manhattan.

In the process, he’ll stumble into a conspiracy that stretches far beyond the murder of one woman to touch countless millions in New York and beyond. At its end, Terry’s assassin awaits.

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The Broken God Machine

The Broken God Machine Cover Image

The metal thing has kept a grim vigil within its blasted circle of bone for more than ten thousand years, and those who cross the boundaries of that ring can expect only death. Standing as God to a cracked and broken people, it waits for the one who holds within him the key that can unlock the miracles of the land beyond.

Pehr lives with his family in their village by the sea, far removed from the metal thing and its worshipers. He is sixteen, fit and strong, nearly ready to take the Hunter's Test and become a man. All he has ever known exists on this small strip of land, trapped between the churning sea on one side and the deadly jungle on the other.

When the vile creatures known as Lagos descend upon his village, Pehr's world is shattered, his family destroyed, and his life thrown into chaos. What begins as a simple attempt to rescue his cousin becomes instead a journey that will change him forever. Somewhere, past the jungle and through the mountains, a girl with purple eyes stands upon the vast plains of her land. She is searching for him, and when at last they meet, the choices they make will bring the entire human race salvation … or destruction.

High above them both, the metal thing awaits.

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The 2 AM Trilogy

The 2 AM Trilogy Cover Image

The 2 AM Trilogy is a set of action-oriented vampire novels that have received a lot of love from tens of thousands of fans around the world. They can be purchased as individual stories, or as a collected trilogy at a moderate discount. The first book in the series is completely free, in either case.

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It consists of the following three books:

The Blood That Bonds
The Blood That Bonds Cover Image

Two is trapped. She’s hooked on heroin, held as property, forced to sell her body to feed the addiction. Time brings her ever closer to what seems an inevitable death and Two waits, uncaring, longing only for the next fix.

That’s when Theroen arrives, beckoning to his Ferrari and grinning his inscrutable grin. He is handsome. Confident. Eager to help lift her out of the life that’s grinding her down.

The only problem? Theroen is a vampire.

His blood can cure her addiction, grant her powers she has never had, change her forever into something greater than she was. But when he sinks his teeth into her neck, Theroen also thrusts Two into a world of danger, madness and despair. The powerful elder Abraham will use her arrival to shatter the uneasy peace that exists in his mansion, bringing an end to the dark game he has been playing for centuries.

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Blood Hunt
Blood Hunt Cover Image

Spoiler-free description: It's been six months since the events of The Blood That Bonds. As Two Majors and Tori Perrault struggle to adapt to their new realities, they are drawn into a world that neither knew existed. Two must deal with the machinations of the vampire council, while Tori must make a decision that will change not only her life, but the lives of all of the vampires in America, and perhaps the world …

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The Children of the Sun
The Children of the Sun Cover Image

Spoiler-free description: Two and a half years have passed since Blood Hunt, and in that time a fragile peace has been maintained by the American council of vampires and their allies. Two Majors has spent the years focusing on rebuilding the life that was torn away from her. When the Children of the Sun, the militaristic cult of vampire hunters, strike at a trio of vampires visiting Chicago, the peace is shattered …

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Unpublished Work

These novels are not yet available. In some cases, they are "in the trunk" after an unsuccessful attempt to land literary representation. In others, they are in active querying, attempting to land literary representation. In still others, they are still in works in progress but have gotten far enough on the path to be listed here (ie: the first draft is done).

Piety the Knife

Piety the Knife is one of the Seven Servants of the Ageless Queen, a group brutally winnowed from their peers and trained for a singular purpose: to return the Queen to her throne.

Piety dreams of impossible freedom. The Queen’s lands are cursed and inescapable, lurching through time and distance in strange fits and starts. Rumor speaks of a man who drove a sword through the Queen’s throat and now enjoys endless life by the grace of her golden tears. To rescue her, Piety and his companions must fight past this Lord Dràsus and the forces he commands.

But Piety has no interest in serving a Queen he’s never met. He plans to turn from his mission and abandon the others, whom he’s always held at arm’s length, to do as they wish. Why, then, when he finds himself at last freed from his training and set upon the quest, can he not bring himself to leave them? Is it possible he’s begun to care?

As Piety comes to value his friends, both those who’ve fallen and those who remain, he'll fight along with them against Dràsus’s soldiers, a pair of twin witches, giant monsters, terrible deathless warriors, and many other dangers. They’ll pass through frozen plains and dilapidated villages, endless swamps that once devoured a thriving kingdom overnight, hidden underpasses, and at last into the Queen’s city. At last, Piety will have his chance to walk away, only to find that the freedom he’s always craved requires a sacrifice that may prove too great to make.

Sequel to Piety the Knife

Describing this book (or giving away its title) would involve a fairly significant spoiler for Piety the Knife, so for now I'm keeping it under wraps!

Possessed

Some girls go to college after high school. Amber Pérez joined a cult. After the car crash, after she lost her brother, nothing seemed to matter anymore. So when the only friend she had left said, you wanna hang out in some parks, smoke some weed, maybe spray-paint some anarchy signs? Amber said, sure. Why not? None of it was, like, for real.

That was before Matthias took over. Before he found The Book. Before the ritual.

All it took was one accidental step on the pentagram and, whoops, the demon Matthias meant for himself bonded with her instead. Jayuul’s a jerk who loves projectile vomiting on command and hurting people, but she can’t get rid of him. Worse, Matthias will literally set her on fire if he finds out, and she can’t even tell her friends, because Shannon’s banging him (ugh), and Dylan’s his second in command. She wants out of the whole thing, but where would she go? She lives on Shannon’s couch!

When Amber witnesses another crash, it feels like losing her brother all over again, until she learns she can heal people just as easily as hurt them. The demon’s always had these powers; he’s just never had a host who wanted to use them. No one’s more surprised than him to find out he actually likes doing so.

Helping people not die is a serious motivator, so Amber and Jayuul hatch a plan to keep Matthias from terrorizing Miami with black magic and chemical bombs. She just has to juggle her friends’ suspicion, Matthias’s growing madness, the flirtations of local celebrity and kidnapping victim “Kitty Kim” Alexander, the police, the church, and a betrayal she never would’ve expected. No problem, right?

Divergence Point

Humanity picked a fight with the first alien species it encountered, and those aliens kicked humanity’s ass. That was twenty-five years ago. Things have been difficult since.

Askana Liáng has never known anything but the life shaped for her by the Ymmr. They’ve made her into a weapon and pointed her at their enemies. For years she’s struck without considering anything other than their desires. Now, something has unlocked within her mind, and a compulsion she can’t resist bids her return to the human race. Two words have been seared into her brain: “Come Home.”

David Ashe spent twenty years in the resistance before he was finally captured. Now he’s trapped, slaving away in an asteroid mine until his body finally fails him and brings about his execution. Fortunately, he possesses a nearly singular talent: the ability to work with low-level Ymmrii code. That makes him valuable … and someone wants him.

Martin Trujo was born after the war. For him, a city full of Ymmr, Zhaksarai, Shenj-tzu, and Hjarad is merely the status quo. It’s the AI grafted to his brain that’s unusual. Not that he has any way of investigating it; poverty and isolation on humanity’s most distant colony make anything beyond the scrabble for survival nearly impossible. Plus, now he’s got this whole murder accusation thing to deal with.

The assassin, the terrorist, and the hacker, recruited by a government that doesn’t technically exist and tasked with a mission that few believe can be accomplished. Together they must make their way to a distant system, board an Ymmrii ark, and break through its security. Once in, they must charm its AI, steal the ship, and deliver its precious technology for study.

If only they liked each other.

Pulse

While Raine Doubek slept face-down on the marble floor of the Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia, the world went to hell. Now she’s awake and caught in a brutal new reality in which hordes of crazed and homicidal half-humans roam the city, pausing in their madness only to raise their voices as one and sing to the heavens. As if the Singers weren’t enough, there are also the Hunters, murderous men and women who’ve been waiting their entire lives for the apocalypse.

Yet all of this pales in comparison to the thing in the sky. Stretching out to every point on the horizon, the crisscrossing bands of orange light throb gently, orbs of blue fire racing along them on some unknown errand. From time to time this grid flares white, and with these pulses come searing headaches for Raine and that heavenly singing from the monsters that pursue her.

Faced with danger at every turn and relying on the help of other survivors she’s only just met, Raine must navigate the perilous streets of Philadelphia, travel to a small town on the outskirts of Washington DC, and join forces with a mysterious group that calls itself the Keepers. She’ll travel to a newly unearthed control center with her companions and find she’s developed strange powers that allow her to interface with its advanced technology. At last, she’ll learn of a larger facility under the waters of Lake Michigan and go there in a desperate attempt to stop an event some believe will be mankind’s salvation, but she knows means the end of the world.

The Werewolf at the Window

When the werewolf broke down her front door and killed her parents, thirteen year-old Morgan Skylark was supposed to die, too. Instead, she found within herself an inexplicable ability to focus to the point that time seems to slow. Now, the werewolf lies at her feet, a smoking silver letter opener punched through its throat, and behind her stands a man who will invite her to be trained as he has: to find the monsters that prowl the world, to study them and, when necessary, to hunt them down. Morgan embarks upon a new life as a monster hunter, but there is a problem: Morgan Skylark was supposed to die, and someone out there knows it.