Showing results by author "Paula Goodlett" in All Categories

It's January of 1372 and the space-time continuum has been breached. Demons of all kind, evil and benign, spill from the netherworld into the human one. In Paris, a series of grisly murders that couldn't be performed by a human, no matter how depraved, leads the Grand Chatelet to try and raise a demon of his own to combat whatever monster is terrorizing the city. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—the demon who is summoned brings with him a van from the Paris of the twenty-first century. The van is filled with a drama teacher, her son, and eight high school students—along with all ...

Moving Universes This second anthology will concentrate on stories about movement and the development of transport systems. It's not going to be exact. The Monster: Deals with the building of the first passenger plane in the 1632 universe The Arrow: With the construction of a delta wing aircraft The Dog and Pony Show: Russia’s first airship and the politics surrounding it. Backdoor: Takes us to a hard SiFi space opera universe and potentially important aspects of jump points. High Road to Venice: The Jupiters are no in service and air travel can still be an adventure. A Nerd at Sea: Still...

The Pamplona Sector was in trouble. Two hundred years of consolidation wars left a small cadre of corporate elites running the sector. The Drakes and the Cordobas were only interested in maintaining their power. And the great houses within both camps had their knives out. The Federation didn’t start with a shot. It was a man deciding to be decent when his training –even his genetics– insisted that he be a bastard. It was a friendship between people who should have found each other repulsive. It was a young girl asking impertinent questions and insisting that those around her do the ...

Sam Merchantson rode into the Badlands trying to lose a posse. He should have died, but his luck was in, and the sensors were out. Sam lived in a world of cattle-rustling and muzzle-loading pistols. But it hadn’t always been that way. Once it had been a colony world, filled with the fruits of advanced technology . . . then the enemy came. They got most of the colonists and almost all the tech. There will be new things coming into the world when Sam returns. He’ll bring medicines and machines, history and hope, fear and freedom and—like it or not—he’ll be bringing WAR! When he ...

When the Merge happened, the world as people knew it and the world of the WarSpell role playing game got completely tangled up. That opened millions of fantasy worlds to explore, sure—but it didn't do anything for space exploration. There was no spell to take someone to the Moon or Mars in the rule books. And to make things worse, early attempts showed that magic worked differently in space than on the surface of the earth. Disastrously different, as a rule. Still, if someone can figure out how to do it right, the magic of WarSpell has the potential to change space exploration from ...

In the year 1372, the space-time continuum has been breached and demons of all kind, evil and benign, spill from the netherworld into the human one. Pucorl, one of the demons who comes across the rift, accidentally brings with him a van from the Paris of the twenty-first century. The van is filled with a drama teacher, her son, and eight high school students—along with all of their electronic devices. Soon, more demons arrive, many of whom are entranced by the electronics of a future world. Laptops, tablets and cell-phones—not to mention the van’s equipment—become possessed by imps ...

Lady Jane Alexander should be a monster with no control at all over its desires. A blood-sucking corpse, animated by pure evil. But The Merge went both ways. Now Sir William Deforest has the memories of Bill Goldman, a school teacher who played WarSpell with his friends, and those memories tell him that Lady Jane Alexander may still be Lady Jane. Suffering under a terrible curse, but still Lady Jane. Sir William's certainty in the righteousness of his and his friend Alen von Helsing's cause as vampire hunters is challenged by the knowledge The Merge brought, but that's nothing to what it ...

The only thing keeping Jenny Starchild alive is her interface with the Arachne, an artificial brain that keeps Jenny's organs operating and controls a warship. But the situation also makes her powerful, and she knows what she's going to do with her life. She is going to weave a new star nation out of the materials she has at hand: A strand of compassion here, a strand of fierce pride there. The love of community of the alien Parthians woven together with human individuality. The computing and reasoning abilities of artificial brains woven together with the genetically engineered Cybrants. ...

The Merge leaves the memories and abilities of two American soldiers from Fort Benning in the bodies of Don Hernando Francisco de Montoya y Cortez, a conquistador of the Nasine Empire, and Vectoria, a half-orc intercessor of Twir, the goddess of scribes. In a world filled with slavery and human sacrifice, they are determined to let freedom ring. Not everyone is in agreement with their plans. The Count they work for throws them out. The Nasine Royal Governor isn't impressed. When the Church of Noron—for their own reasons—forces him to give Francisco a title, he then does everything in ...

This anthology includes ten stories from four universes. They all deal with selling stuff or the value of stuff, if you stretch a point. And they are all fun reads and you don’t have to stretch a point to see that. “Signs” from the 1632 universe deals with what money is and what it will and won’t buy. It’s one of my favorites in Eric’s 1632 world. A short fun story to get us started. The second story comes first. “The Sewing Circle” is my first professional sale. It’s what got me into writing and what got me interested in economics. It’s a full-fledged novella at over ...

When Pucorl, the puck who’d possessed a 21st century Mercedes van, turned the demon Beslizoswian into roadkill on a battlefield outside Paris in the year 1372, he didn't know what he was getting into. How could he? No puck had ever slain a Demon Lord before. But Themis the goddess of proper behavior has determined that Pucorl is now the proper lord of Beslizoswian's Caverns of Torment. And what's a puck-enchanted van with a crush on his mechanic supposed to do with Caverns of Torment? In this third book of the Demon Rift series we get a look at how things work on the demon side of the ...

Welcome to the world, Metis, titan of wisdom and sagacity. Actually, you’re a new built artificial brain, part of a dispersed architecture neural net system designed to run a wing-ship. A jump capable starship operating in the Pamplona Sector. But the Pamplona Sector is caught up in a revolution. The Battered Birdie, the ship you’re installed in, is a pirate ship and its captain is a crook and casual killer. That’s the situation Metis finds herself in. Doctor Schmitz did build a moral center into her, but like all A.I.s, she’s designed to serve, not to rule. That means taking orders...

First an apology, this is a space opera not a romance though there are Romance elements in it. The reason for the cursive script on the cover is that I goofed. But it’s a good book either way. Charleen Dreesen is stranded on Casa Verde station without the proper ticket to ship out on an interstellar spaceship. With no berths in the offing, she's looking for any way she can find to make a credit. Then she meets Joey, his sister Darleen, his father Mike and his pet rat Mister Rodent—who are all worse off than she is. Mike's behind in his kickbacks to the local crime boss, and neither he ...

Anoria's teacher and adoptive mother Cordelia Cooper wasn't always the powerful and dangerous wizard we met in Anoria. She started out as a poor village girl who didn't understand her gift of magic. She was given to a half trained charlatan of a book wizard. Rojer Cartwright had no intention of teaching Cordelia any more magic than he had to to get her to make and charge magical items for him. Cordelia found herself Rojer's prisoner as they took ship for the Orclands. On the ship she met and befriended the Brooks family. Using a hidden spellbook, Cordelia tried to learn not just magic but ...

With two years left to go at the College of Wizardry in the University of Kronisburg, Cordelia Cooper is called back to Pango Island. The people she left in charge of her case have proved less than trustworthy and the sea elves and the lizardmen were not being treated fairly. Interrupting her studies to go around the world to get back to Pango Island wasn't something she wanted to do but she didn’t have a lot of choice. She had an obligation to the sea elves and the lizardmen. To make things worse, the arrogant and self-righteous Intercessor of Noron, Miguel Cordoba, has decided that it's...

A Princess has no choice. She is a commodity an asset of the royal family to be married, at her family’s choice, to her family’s choice. Princess Angelina the daughter of Prince Philip the Nasine ruler of the Orclands has spent her life being trained in rulership. Not so that she might rule, but in order to prepare her to influence whoever her father married her to. Now the world has changed. The new Count Southland has the memories of another world and that knowledge is rapidly changing the world using a new kind of magic called technique knowledge. That knowledge has let Count ...

This is the other side of the Jerry Garman merge from Space Race. It takes place in a rough analog of 14th Century England. Freedric the Incompetent—now with the memories of Jerry Garman an aeronautical engineer—want's to build an airplane. I almost named this "Life is what happens while your designing your airplane, because a bunch of other stuff keeps effecting the building of the airplane. Three of the other players in the game also Merged Alvin the Bard, Pip the thief, and Yahg the half orc. Each of the Merged characters brings something to the table. Yagh and Pip bring financial ...

Miroslava Holmes, the one and only licensed private detective in the United Sovereign States of Russia, has a new case. She's been called in on a locked room murder—and to make things worse, it's the locked room of an agent of the Embassy Bureau, a 17th century Russian James Bond. This is a political case, and the Embassy Bureau isn't talking to anyone. Solving the case is going to leave Miroslava at the crossroads where law and justice part ways. But not everything is murders and spies. No, sometimes it's the theft of a piece of costume jewelry from a girl at the Happy Bottom Club. And ...

Anoria is an orphan from the Gent Foundling Home, with few prospects and little hope for a better life. But Anoria's future may well change. For though she wasn't born with a talent for Natural Magic she is a bright girl who likes to read and loves to solve puzzles—and she discovers there are other kinds of magic in the world. It will take some luck and a lot of work. But with the help of her new friend Joanna Cooper, Anoria might have a chance to learn magic, because Joanna's aunt Cordial is a powerful wizard. Powerful wizards are prickly and easy to offend, however. And even if Anoria ...

Ufa is going crazy. The new capital of the legitimate government of Russia, once a trading post in the far east, is now a fast-growing boom town. Into this maelstrom come peddlers and exotic dancers, criminals and craftsmen, nobles and assassins. Crime is running rampant and the city guards that passes for policemen don't have a clue how to handle it—and wouldn’t know a clue if they stumbled right over it. They can manage to walk a beat, at least in broad daylight. But solve a crime? Not a chance. And Czar Michael Romanov and his officials aren’t any help, since they’re pre-occupied...