{✨Book 1✨} The year is 2162. Four light years from Earth, the first human colony struggles to survive on a planet without breathable air with a limited population. Dylan Brink knew that she didn't get a choice in her partner; she just didn't expect him to be so...different from her. Her days were focused on the colony's need to keep breathing; he memorized poetry. When the two of them accidentally uncover a century old secret, it will test the bounds of their fledging romance and possibly endanger all life on their new planet. Some secrets were meant to stay forgotten. (Highest rank: #19 in science fiction)

Four normal teens are conned into scholarships to a charter school for vampires. Can they escape before being bled and dead? Or sucked into the school's chapter of the Satanic Legion? Sixteen year-old Kathy is on the kill list of a Shoshone vampire who teaches Ethics for Bloodsuckers. Her pal Lionel is terrorized by his music teacher, an 18th century violinist who worked as a Mafia hit man so he could play at his victims' funerals. When Kathy's boyfriend has his heart broken by a sharpened pool cue, she and Lionel are put on trial for murder, in a vampire court, with a kidnapped gymnastics team as the jury. All the kids face the same three choices: escape, die trying, or join the undead. Blue Ink Review called this novel "a wild ride, and the plot twists alternate with big laughs." Kirkus Review said it was "beautifully refined, intelligent and profound." Thank you for sampling and/reading. This is a completed novel presented in 57 chapters, with one chapter posted every Saturday. The novel is available for purchase on Amazon, Kindle, B&N, and via Merrimack Media.com. All of the text and the photo are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced in any format without the author's written permission. The sole exception is for brief excerpts in written reviews. Requests, questions or comments can be submitted to lorenschechter@ gmail.com or on my website: lorenschechterbooks.com.

Donate Body to Science. Check. When seventeen-year-old Kaitlyn checked the box, she never suspected she’d have her life–and her body–stolen from her. She awakens one day in a secret laboratory to discover that her body is now half-robot and is forced to hide her own secret: that she still has human emotions and a human mind. If the scientists who made her find out, they’ll erase what remains of who she was. Kaitlyn finds an unlikely ally in Lucas, a handsome, brilliant scientist who can’t get over the guilt he feels knowing she was once a vibrant, beautiful young woman. He never expected a science project to affect him the way she does. As he tries to help her rediscover her past, he finds himself falling for the brave girl struggling to find her place and acceptance between the human and computer worlds. *For mature teens due to some sexual content.

Seventeen-year-old Gavin Hillstone is resigned to being miserable for the rest of his life. Left alone in the world after his parents died in a fire when he was four, he was placed in foster care, which for him meant ending up in an abusive home with an alcoholic adoptive father. Gavin’s only escape is in taking and creating images. His camera is his refuge from the unending torture and isolation of daily life in his “family.” Until he learns by accident that he isn’t alone in the world after all. His father’s parents are still alive and living in Washington DC. When he takes the plunge and travels 3,000 miles to find his grandparents, he learns that they—and he—are part of something much bigger, and more dangerous, than he could ever have imagined. Something that has always put his family at risk and that will now threaten his own life, while forever changing it. He learns that he is one of the last descendants of a small group of Photo Travelers—people who can travel through time and space through images. But his initial excitement turns to fear, when he soon discovers that he and his grandparents are being pursued by the fierce remnants of a radical European Photo Traveler cult, the Peace Hunters. What Gavin has, they want! His adventure will take him to past eras, like The Great Depression and the Salem Witch Trials. Gavin will have to discover who he really is and must make choices that spell the difference between life and death for himself, for the relatives he now knows and loves, and for the girl he will come to love. For Gavin, life will never be the same.

I still have the newspaper clipping. It's a picture of me the first day of my existence, at least, it's the first day I remember. That was three years ago, when a photographer snapped the photo of me walking weirdly around the scene of a deadly car accident. My pale skin shone brightly against the wreckage as my blonde, almost white, hair hung limply past my shoulders. Unlike the people inside the vehicles, I was uninjured.