Showing results by author "D.J. Bodden" in All Categories

Illusionist and novice spy Alan Campbell just got out of one relationship only to have another woman walk into his life: the Lady Camilla Favonius of the Imperial Inquisition. He's close to broke and left without orders. She wears plate armor in the field and around her heart. Is the lady just what the Plague Doctor ordered, or will his efforts to get a job and woo her only leave him jaded...or dead?

Recently deceased and squishy as hell, Alan, a newly minted Illusionist, is forced to flee for his life. He needs time to deal with his loss, both in-game and IRL, but first he'll have to escape his crazy ex, the treacherous Firebrand, Thalia Daceran. On his way to safety and revenge, he'll team up with Titus, the Imperial spymaster, as well as a crew of pirates, commandos, and even a shapeshifting Mimic with a taste for blood. His path leads to Wyrdtide, a gaslit city hidden in mists and governed by dark demigods. But even with Alan dead, the world marches on.

Alan Campbell thought he'd gotten his dream job working on a revolutionary VRMMORPG with Osmark Technologies, until the project was canceled. He has one weekend to dive into an untested world full of intrigue, violence, and corruption to prove that Viridian Gate Online works, but the AIs running the game have their own plans for his soul. Set a year before the events of Viridian Gate Online: Cataclysm, Viridian Gate Online: Nomad Soul takes you back to when VGO was just a game, or so it seemed.

The End is Coming. An extinction-level asteroid is cannonballing toward Earth. In humanity’s final hours, a lucky few earn a one-way ticket to the brand-new, ultra-immersive, fantasy-based VRMMORPG, Viridian Gate Online. Making that leap of faith might mean survival, but it comes with a steep price tag: “Travelers” will forever be stranded as digital avatars inside a fantastical world filled with vicious monsters, all-powerful AIs, and cutthroat players. Let the games begin....

Somewhere within the Library, a clock is winding down. With Wendy safe, Alan needs to focus on paying his debt to the Plague Doctors of Wyrdtide by the end of the month. But a slip of the tongue doubles the amount, turning a hard task into an impossible one. His only option is to ask the master of assassins for work. But murder for money isn't the only thing Alan needs to worry about. The gods are upset with him, his old colleagues want him dead, and the Circle of Brewers is hiding more than the secrets of Alchemy.

A 3,000-year-old secret has put Zack Lancestrom within reach of power most interstellar empires would go to war over. There’s just one problem: In order to claim it, he’ll need to leave the planet, and there are gang members, feral aliens, and security forces sent by his own father standing in his way. With the starports closed to him, Zack has no choice but to assemble his own crew and steal a starship. He knows where he can find one, but the path leads straight through the Boneyard, the most lawless place on the planet.

Zack's crew survived running a Federal Fleet blockade only to fall into the clutches of an unscrupulous space captain. They have minutes to take over a ship three times the size of their shuttle before they get marched out of an airlock, and they're outnumbered eight to one. To make matters worse, the ship is carrying cargo for the biggest criminal organization in the star cluster, the Venturi Cartel, and no one has crossed them and lived. Not every problem can be solved with a gun. The Federal Fleet is still after them. The Cartel is everywhere.

Welcome to Mackurd. When the Collapse made the simple things complicated and the complicated things man-eating monsters, most people ran around like sissies and got eaten. This is not the story of those people. This is the story of unlikely heroes kicking undead pelvises and shooting monsters before their names become an issue, all while trying to keep the squad mascot from stealing all the beer. It's a short story of the Collapse, set in the world of the Black Year Series.