Buddy and Buffy by Robert H. Cherny - HTML preview

Other Books by Robert H. Cherny

Amazon Author Central Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00538Y09Q

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4497713.Robert_H_Cherny

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robert.cherny.9

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/bob-cherny/10/602/868

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/stagewalker/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobertHCherny

 

Cowgirls and Dragons Amazon B079DCLBLK

 

It seems that Vampire killers get no respect.

One would think that protecting people from a race that would suck them dry and throw the desiccated husks on the street would earn some respect. One would think that converting large mythological beasts from enemies to allies would earn some gratitude. One would think that finding a permanent solution to the problems that forced a race of people to resort to rape to procreate would be appreciated. One would think that healers who use more than medicine along with their medical training could practice without fear of exposure. Such is not the case.

“Cowgirls and Dragons” explores the life of a group of people who do all these things and are forced into hiding because of it.

At 159k words, “Cowgirls and Dragons” is the sequel to “My Three Warlocks”. The team, led by a teenage girl, find ways to make peace and form coalitions with creatures who were enemies both the humans and each other. Allied with powerful ancient wizards, they win over the dragons, shape-shifters, and practitioners of dark magic. The only adversaries they cannot overcome are the vampires, despite many gruesome lop-sided battles, and the evangelicals. This book is suitable for teens and older, but it is not suitable for evangelicals.

Attempting to return to normal life after destroying a human blood farm for vampires, the youngsters hope that the conflict of the past is behind them, but another attack in a place of refuge disabuses them of that notion. Relying on the support of family and friends, the youngsters attempt to heal their psychological wounds, but the healing is difficult.

Even the wisdom and counsel of ancient wizards and a shaman do not prepare them for the conflicts that lie ahead. Left to their own instincts, the youngsters forge on with their lives recruiting friends and learning to use the magic they are only beginning to understand. For the girl leader and her boyfriend, their most trusted and reliable companions are their horses. Noble and intelligent steeds, they carry their friends places no horse could be expected to go.

The healer, in an act of kindness, at the risk of his own life, almost exposes the entire team, but his father’s quick thinking keeps the secret.

Just when life appeared to have returned to normal, the girl, her boyfriend and their horses are transported to a battlefield surrounded by resurrected Roman soldiers. Accompanied by two wizards, the teens rout the soldiers using applications of modern science coupled with ancient magic. Without time to return home, they are transported to a remote outpost where a very special veterinarian services sick dragons. After calling for help, the dragons are herded, like cattle, to a safe place, the site of the vampire blood farm, but not before being attacked by dragon hunters in search of trophies. While transporting the dragons, the fourth dragon sword is located, and the set is now complete endowing their human champions and the dragons much greater powers.

Vampires attack the former blood farm and are routed by the combined forces which now include dragons, humans, and shape-shifters.

Transporting the dragons exposes the team, and the dragons, to the government surveillance nets. The surveillance team, risking their lives and their careers race to warn the of the impending attack. They arrive too late to help but become members of the team. The battle is all but over when the healer, the littlest dragon and two of their friends find themselves trapped in the building that housed the farm with one of the master vampires. Recognizing that the power to heal is also the power to kill, the young healer kills the remaining vampire.

The baby who was the impetus for the actions that resolved the conflict between the shape-shifters and the humans was a handful. At a party, she welcomes into their embrace a vampire who claims to seek a path to peace between the humans and vampires. If this team could find a way to peace with the shape-shifters and the dragons, could not the ancient conflict between the vampires and humans be solved? Her sentiments are not shared by many of her own kind who attack the party.

A part of the defense plan for such an attack was to have the healer mount his horse and transport the youngest children out through the portal to a safe location. Where he arrives was not where he intended to go. The matron of the castle where arrives with the two girls, two horses and a young dragon is sick. Her daughters and their dragon companion have called for help and the healer was summoned. The two dragons quickly become friends. The healer uses the dragons to call for help and soon, help arrives. One of the people who arrives with other members of the team is a construction engineer who resolves himself to repair the castle and pursuit of the matron’s eldest daughter.

Two members of the team, attempting to return home through the portal network are diverted to the home of a practitioner of black magic. This woman has attempted to ensnare the girl leader of the team and her boyfriend, so she can steal their dragon swords to exact revenge on the people that shot her daughter. When the dragons follow their human friends through the portal, all bets are off. One of the group’s most successful strategies has been to turn potential enemies into allies through negotiation and mutual advantage. The shaman, arriving through the same portal as the dragons and the first two members of the team, makes that work. The team devotes its considerable resources to healing the daughter.

The teenage leader of the team and her boyfriend are blackmailed into assisting a corrupt politician’s fundraising activities by performing as a trick riding team at rodeos, rallies, and sporting events. At the final rally, the group is attacked, yet again, with a much larger force than before. They discover that some of those they thought were friends, were enemies and barely escape with their lives. They disappear, and what happens after that, you will have to read to find out.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079DCLBLK

 

My Three Warlocks:

 

77k Words, Amazon B010WS6APS

 

The television mini-series “Merlin” suggested that Merlin might yet walk among us. If that is so, would he have stopped the Battle of Britain? Obviously, he did not, but could it be that Merlin was occupied elsewhere? Could an ancient enemy have been on the other side? Could Merlin have created the storm that sank the Spanish Armada? Did the creators of the “Merlin” mini-series contemplate such things? Sometimes during the process of developing the plot for a story, strange questions float to the surface. Most get left out of the story, but still, they are part of what makes writing fun.

Further to that, would Superman show up on the radar? Migratory birds show up on the radar. If Superman or Merlin, assuming he could fly, tripped the air defense warning system, what would happen? In my book “Flying with Fairies” I assume that radar would spot such incursions into sovereign airspace and would trigger an adverse reaction. Therefore, the characters go to great lengths to avoid detection. How would an ancient wizard like Merlin react to radar or spy satellites? I suspect that he would rely on the assistance of younger colleagues, but he might rise to the challenge if his arrogance did not get in the way.

There have been several treatments of magical beings that live among the general public, but often these are located in urban or suburban environments. Many of the television shows are placed in small towns where the locale is familiar to the reader. Finding magical beings on a horse ranch in the Deep South might seem a little strange, but there is no reason it could not be so. There are those who would contend that Central Florida is not the Deep South. In some ways it is, but in other ways it is a world apart. Is more like Texas than like Georgia, even as it resembles Iowa. This is where our three young gentlemen and their delightful ladies live. Welcome to their world.

Three Warlocks, brothers, triplets, run a ranch where they train horses for cowboys and cattle ranchers. They use their special powers to keep their ranch solvent and, in spite of the recent death of their adoptive mother, are content with their lives. All that changes when a pre-teen equestrian shows up with her father to buy a horse. On the same day triplet witches, and their mother are directed to the ranch by a mysterious stranger.

The witch’s mother and the girl’s father have a history, and only he knows that none of this is a coincidence. Within two days, the warlocks, the witches, their mother, the girl, her father and some friends and family use their powers to fight a forest fire. They are then recruited by the mysterious stranger, actually an ancient wizard, to protect a rape victim. The woman was raped by a magical being who intends to steal the baby and kill her. This has been going on a long time and the wizard believes he finally has the team to stop it. The wizard quickly loses control of the team and it completes the mission without him.

The team takes on missions without the wizard, relegating him to advisor status. After several missions on their own, the team emerges far more powerful than anything the wizard could have hoped for. Even though he created the team he does not control them and in some ways the “battle group” he created controls him.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B010WS6APS

 

Rookery Island:

 

320k words; Amazon B0139RRDSC

 

The four works of the Stu Greene series have been combined into a single work titled “Rookery Island”.

 

Stu Greene is a high school junior on the cusp of the transition from amateur to professional photographer. Skilled and creative, his photographs are routinely published in newspapers and are proudly displayed in government offices in the area in which he lives.

He accidentally encounters a girl for whom he takes on a project to create a wild bird rookery from a large drainage pond. This is the story of how that chance encounter changes not only their lives, but those of their families and friends as the young man carries them along in his drive to create a lasting monument of his love.

In the second book of the Stu Greene series, Stu is called to rescue his girlfriend’s college roommate’s sister from an abusive relationship. He takes the sisters and his girlfriend to his uncle’s citrus farm to hide. While there, his roommate falls in love his girlfriend’s roommate, his cousin falls in love with the sister, they bust a corrupt FBI agent and Stu performs a rescue at sea.

It’s just another day at the office for a journalism student between his freshman and sophomore years.

In the third book of the series, a successful software executive inherits a run-down zoo and water park when most men his age would be retiring. Even his depth of business experience is not enough to keep his adversaries at bay, so he resorts to tactics not usually associated with legitimate businesses.

The fourth and final volume in the Stu Greene Series chronicles the one-year long voyage that Stu and several of his friends take on a floating video studio that is not exactly what it seems to be.

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0139RRDSC

 

Flying with Fairies:

 

141k words; Amazon B00TCZC19W

 

The entire Flying with Fairies Series has been released as a single work. All four volumes including the three previously published and the one that was previously unpublished are combined in the new release.

A beautiful pregnant fairy princess abducts a recent med school graduate who possesses paranormal healing powers and conscripts him to save her people from a mysterious affliction. Recognizing that his only way out is through helping the princess’ people, the fledgling doctor applies his skills and powers to the task. Forced to confront enemies who attempt to kill him, he relies on his intelligence and his new-found allies in mortal hand-to-hand combat.

As he heals the fallen and shows the leaders the path they must take, he realizes that something missing from his life has only been an arm's length away. He returns home intent on forgetting his adventure. However, a chance encounter with a woman he once loved, and the arrival of one of his comrades in arms, ensures that his life can never be as it once was. It is a tale of combat and resolution, but most of all it is about awakening love in an uncertain world.

Returning from his foray to the other side of a parallel universe to the woman he loves, a recent med school graduate with magical healing powers attempts to return to an approximation of a normal life, or at least as normal as it can be given his new found magical friends.

Before he has a chance to settle in, the fledgling doctor is again conscripted to aid the fairies’ allies who have been felled by a disease agent as revenge for their assistance in the defense of the fairy castle. He must save and redirect lives on both sides of the parallel divide putting not only his own life on the line, but the life of the woman he comes to love and the lives of several of their friends.

Drawn by the ongoing conflicts between magical races, he and his friends join together to fight the forces that would destroy them all. They return home and open a secret school for students with magical talents. The enemy has been set back but not defeated and brings the war to them. The enemy kidnaps their three-year-old daughter only to discover that her magical power is the greatest of all.

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TCZC19W

 

Second Tango:

 

63k Words; Amazon B00JBQZNU6

 

Second Tango explores the idea that a jerk can be a visionary, can do nice things for people and can make a positive difference even as wolves nip at his heels.

It features a retired arts center manager who risks his life savings to open a dance theater to avoid an early death from boredom. It is the story of a visionary who would deny his importance and the people who believe in his vision even more than he does. His goal is not to change the world, but to make his self-centered world slightly less lonely.

Drew Barnett has a history of abusing employees, taking advantage of friends and not getting along with his family. As he faces the prospect of a sedentary retirement, in an impulse, he decides to reclaim an abandoned movie theater in a run-down shopping mall and turn it into a dance theater and night club catering to middle aged women. He recruits and mentors his staff from the out-of-work friends he has met at the fitness center. He leans on his professional associates for guidance and assistance as he powers through the construction and opening of the project.

As Drew travels the long road toward opening, he pulls along a host of people, lifting them onto the rushing tempest he has become. Still, he has not done this for them. It is his storm and they are riding it. They can come as long as they work.

Drew’s juggernaut runs afoul of a corrupt politician who threatens the project. Drew is a jerk and he knows it. Using the tools he knows well, he rolls over the politician and drives toward the venue’s grand opening when, at the moment of his success, the politician reaches up to drag Drew down.

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1499343353

 

Solomon Family Warriors:

 

500k words;

B0068BWHWY

ISBN 9781520943657

Originally written as an eight-book series, the entire work has been consolidated into a single publication. It follows seven generations of a space traveling warrior family as they attempt to wrest peace from the grasp of war.

The Space Force essentially gave a band of people with recognized psychopathic homicidal tendencies a license to kill and the weapons with which to do it. The Force did not have high expectations of the pilots’ survival rate. Still, two of these killers, only slightly more ethical than the pirates they hunted, took their warships and went into hiding to raise a family. When their enemies found them, they discovered defenses built by the most brilliant students ever to disgrace the Space Force Academy. Successive generations of this family carried the teachings with them as they battled religious zealots, slave traders, corporate raiders and many of the same pirates their parents had faced.

This is the story of five generations of a space traveling family who would prefer to be left alone.

Electronic Version http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0068BWHWY

 

Paperback Version https://www.amazon.com/dp/1520943652

 

 

Our Last Summer Musical

 

70k words, Amazon B00D7TX5N0

 

An amateur community theater summer music provides the vehicle that brings three teens closer to being adults and forces their parents to reveal and own up to their darkest secrets as the Rubinstein family rallies to the aid of a summer theater program gone badly astray.

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D7TX5N0

 

Stagehands Walk

 

250k words Amazon B00D7W5WTC

 

Set against the backdrop of the arcane world behind the scenes in the live entertainment industry, "Stagehands Walk" is an action story about two men and the people they care for as they deal with threats both to their lives and their livelihoods. Unlike the typical young action hero acting in relative isolation, these men are approaching retirement age and must make accommodations that would not inhibit younger men. The environment in which these men live gives the story more depth than the typical action story.

The book opens as a long forgotten foe threatens Quentin Xavier O'Donnell and forces him to take on a risky task. The task is interrupted and O'Donnell finds himself in the middle of a conflict over possession of nuclear secrets. Enlisting the aid of two of his colleagues, he attempts to accomplish his original mission only to discover that his mission is much more complicated than he thought. Determining that the task he was assigned is not appropriate, using his talent and skills learned "back stage", he delivers those who threatened him to justice at considerable personal risk.

Teddy Premberton joins the story on his final day at work before being asked to resign. He is then thrust into the secretive world behind the scenes in the entertainment industry where O'Donnell has worked for most of his career. Teddy and O'Donnell's paths cross several times until Teddy provides vital information O'Donnell uses to thwart an assassination attempt at a religious rally.

O'Donnell recruits Teddy to work a two-week long spring break event. At spring break, Teddy helps provide evidence assisting in the arrest of a sexual predator and some drug sellers. The arrest of the drug sellers leads to the arrest of a dishonest cop who has been harassing O'Donnell for years.

On the way home from spring break, the two stumble into a drugs for weapons transfer. Accused of murder, they call for help from the law enforcement people O'Donnell worked with earlier. Threatened at home, the men split up and flee. Teddy returns home and leads the police to intercept another transfer. One of the lead smugglers escapes the trap. Teddy flees again further away this time. The smuggler tracks O'Donnell to his hiding place where O'Donnell traps him and deliver him to the police.

While "hiding in plain sight", Teddy is recruited by some local civic leaders to assist with the management of a festival organized by the city to raise awareness of the city and its emerging industries. Desperate to rescue the city from dire poverty in the midst of wealthy neighbors, the city has invested tremendous resources in this festival which appears about to fail. Teddy enlists O'Donnell in the endeavor and with the help of Teddy's daughter, O'Donnell's granddaughter, the television crew from spring break, several of O'Donnell's colleagues and a racist parading on horseback in a Klan outfit carrying a Confederate flag, they succeed in rescuing the festival.

Underlying the action plot are the themes which are the real motivation for the story. Not only does the story deal with the simple battle between good and evil, it further asks how one knows the difference. It explores the question of how much one can expect friends to be of help in a crisis. It touches on the issue of endemic racism, but mostly it is about two men who did not realize they were lost finding meaning in their lives.

The story reads quickly and would be suitable for high school students as well as adults.

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D7W5WTC

 

The Adventures of Doogie Stone:

 

75k Words Second Edition 2016

 

The Adventures of Doogie Stone is an alternate history as America might have been if the eleventh and twelfth century Scandinavian and Irish explorers had settled as far south as Cape Cod and then abandoned their colony for two hundred years. It is the coming of age story of the youngest son of a war lord who faces the attempted invasion by the British. It follows him as he discovers his place in society and wins the heart of the woman he loves.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ISKJTC

 

A Father’s Ghost:

 

29k Words Second Edition 2016

 

A geeky young owner of a small Boston electronics store has his life turned upside down when he visits a woman's apartment down the hall in search of food for a stray kitten he has just picked up. The woman's sister embroils him in a vendetta against her father's hate crime murderer and drafts him into her small task force using social networking, the Internet, legal and "extra-legal" assistance to track and trap a serial rapist who targets single mothers with small children. Some things are what they seem and some aren't.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HYRL2LM

 

Seeds of Anger:

 

41k Words Second Edition 2016

 

A renegade botanist hunted by eco-terrorists takes a brilliant high school junior to be his protégé. The boy’s police officer father has been killed in the line of duty and his mother is dying of cancer. The property that the botanist has taken over had been in the boy’s family for three generations before recently being split up for development.

On the hunt for new herbal medicines, the botanist moves in across the street from the boy and uses the large open property to cultivate the plants he needs for his research. The boy and his friends work as his assistants and learn to be scientists. The team of teenagers is carefully mentored and pushed to grow beyond what they would have expected of themselves.

However, when the botanist’s past indiscretions catch up with him, everything changes and the boy must decide if he is to take charge and face the danger or walk away and leave the research data for others for finish.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GR4SN7Y

 

Swamp Witch:

 

34k words Second Edition 2106

 

A young woman survives an attempt by her father to kill her by feeding her to alligators in the swamp a few days before her eighteenth birthday. The alligators turn on the father and she is rescued by a mysterious middle-aged woman who has taken refuge in the swamp.

The story is about the relationship between the two women and the growth that follows the younger one's return to her farm and her eventual rescue of the older woman and her sister who are threatened by people who are threatened by their special abilities.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004NBZDB8