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Stories by: PeteDur
7 stories
The Ordinaries
Earth 2350. Following the 21st Century's rapid climate change and nuclear wars, mankind has tamed nature to work in its favour. Enjoying an artistic and innovative Renaissance, humans have taken their next evolutionary step. They now evolve at puberty to match and control their surroundings. But not twins Adi and Sami. They haven't got gills, natural sun-blocking skin or other desirable changes. Dubbed The Ordinaries by society, they're destined to be sterilised and sent to labour camps. But when their historian father goes missing before their 18th birthday, they reject their bleak adult lives and pre-determined fates and rebel, making their own way in the world to find him and show what an Ordinary can really do. With the authorities tracking them down, they discover his obsession, an ancient prophecy, is really true; that Earth is not in harmony but enslaved. They learn the true face of humanity and what mankind did to those who proceeded it. What has happened to their father? What is an Ordinary's true place in the world? Is this world and system something to fight for or against?
#Blessed
Student Freddie Abbott is living his best life. Popular, healthy, smart, going places. So when he takes his own life, his family want to know why. Was his death simply a tragic consequence of the pressures of modern life, or was something more sinister at work? Freddie's uncle Ben, a recent divorcee and journalist, sets out into the unfamiliar digital world of another generation to find out. Following his only lead, a card that directs him to a new AI life coach app called #Blessed, Ben begins to live Freddie's life, dropped head first into a world of social media obsession, digital overexposure, torrid romance and a possible government conspiracy. Will #Blessed lead him to Freddie's truth? Or is Ben's new perfect digital life just one more dangerous lie?
The Great Dane
What do an ambitious aspiring politician, a kick-ass female police detective and an ex-investigative-journalist-turned-professional wrestler have in common? A dead man, whose cold case has just warmed right up. Set against a backdrop of the raw and sometimes seedy independent wrestling scene and a big generation-defining election, we follow the protagonists as they try to uncover the truth about Charlie Haywood's tragic demise and learn more about one another than they'd bargained for.
The Selfless Gene
Trapped in a dank cave with only his bestial inner voice for company, Thame has a choice: deny the creature inside and fester forever in darkness, or embrace his shadowy alter ego Ormr once and for all. But what then? Thame has to break free of his stone prison to seek out and defeat a bloodline that threatens to corrupt the world with the deepest evil. Yet what if the real danger lies outside his own genetics? And what if that peril involves his ex-lover, whose new boyfriend seems suspiciously familiar...Thame's journey to reclaim his place in the Order and save those he cares for takes him from his Mediterranean imprisonment, deep into the stories of Ormr's shadowy past, to Florida Keys and finally back to Britain.Here he must face his biggest ordeal yet: the culmination of an ancient vendetta that just got personal.The Selfless Gene is the sequel and concluding part of Wattys 2018 Longlisted, The Illumination.
The Illumination
*WATTYS2018 Longlisted* He saw a pair of eyes, his eyes. But they were elongated, angled and a deep, angry red...Thame is, on the surface, an average guy. Suffocated by the politics of his city job and his increasingly complicated love life, he seeks refuge in his weekend football and the hope that there is, somewhere, something more for him. He has always felt that underneath he is special; destined for greatness. As his world becomes darker and his frustrations grow, this sense of difference grows more powerful. Daydreams are no longer idle fantasy but visions of a dark history; his reflection in the bathroom mirror is no longer quite... human. What beast lurks beneath the man? Why is he being watched? And what terrible consequences accompany the fulfilment of his ancient destiny?
Floodlights
Stuck in a rut and weighed down by a disastrous huge moment in his past, frustrated writer Matthew must confront his demons and take control of his repetitive nightmares to save his hometown football team, win the game and the girl.
