You woke up from a stimulating massage and found yourself in a stranger's bedroom in 1824! What did you do?! What do you do!? What can you do!?
All your skills, your expert-level understanding of work-arounds and pop-culture references? All useless. Your vast knowledge of the cyber-world is mocked by steam-age reality, and you can't 'predict' the future because your recollection of historical happenings since 1824 is ... unreliable.
You do have one asset, though - you're a beautiful woman with a ''modern'take on sex. In any era that will get a woman far.
Kate Thomason, twenty-first century healer, is snatched from an eight-handed clone massage in twenty-ninety-seven by H. G. Wells' time machine. She awakes in Wells' bedroom in eighteen-ninety-seven, wearing only a sheer peignoir. Whatever could Wells want her for? He tells her he can't send her back; what can she do in a world wholly foreign to her? She has ideas.
Soon Wells presents her at dinner to playwright Oscar Wilde, newspaperman Frank Harris, Professor Aronnax and other luminaries. Kate's scandalous bodice isn't the only thing on the guests' minds that evening; Professor Aronnax proposes taking the Nautilus to hunt for the Loch Ness Monster.
The gentlemen are all for the adventure. But what of Kate? Not only will the few people she knows will be abandoning her in London, but her healing skills might be needed on this dangerous expedition! With Tesla's modification the Nautilus is capable, the explorers eager and intelligent, the plan simple, but the Nautilus will be the only craft underwater, with no way to communicate. No adventure would be complete without some troubles -- but nobody anticipates the trials awaiting them.
All head off in pursuit of fame and the Loch Ness Monster while the men lounge away the voyage in study, discussion, cigars, brandy, and ploys to seduce Kate. Their advances are easily rebuffed -- but what should Kate make of the tall dark Scot commanding her dreams?
How could they anticipate the malevolent tricksters lurking in the shadows, fired by ancient grudges and poised to launch a fiendish plot! And who guessed foiling that plot would take them to Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in Tesla's dirigible as they race to unravel a diabolical scheme for avenging ancient wrongs.
Just who awaits Kate in Caledonia and beyond in this strange old world?
A romantic steampunk adventure, first in a series.
A romantic steampunk adventure, first in a series. An earlier version was released as The Reluctant Chrononaut.
