Her Gilded Voice

by K.C. Aegis

Overview

Lacey has a woman living inside her head ... or is it the other way around?

 

Decades from now, technology has advanced, and everyone has a 'neuro-net' wired into their brain. This provides each person with a 'voyce' inside their head that offers advice that guides and ostensibly protects them; as teen Lacey Clarke puts it: "Voyces help us all make the right decisions. They give us reason, protect us from outside chaos. And in some cases, they protect us from ourselves."

  In this republic, Lacey and her older sister, Yadira, barely make ends meet. Their lives are made worse when they discover they must pay off their late father's debt and that Lacey has been marked to become a Puzzler in a brainteaser competition in which losers are killed. Alina, Lacey's voyce, reassures her everything will be fine if only they follow the rules, but when an encounter with Ogden Oliver, a powerful Elite, ends with Alina being temporarily deactivated, Lacey is left alone with her own thoughts. For the first time in her life, she is able to perceive the world as it actually is - without augmented-reality illusions.

  As Lacey navigates the competition, she realizes she may be a pawn but one that has hitherto unknown power.

 

Cover art: Paramita Bhattacharjee & Troy Edward Nikolic

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781915304544
Publisher:	Elsewhen Press
Publication date:	06/14/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	378
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

As a kid, K.C. spent most of his weekends at a tool and die shop operating a forty-ton punch press and cutting metal with an electrical discharge machine. He spent most summers in Mexico, fishing with his dad or blowing things up with cheap m-80 firecrackers. In high school, he organized book clubs on both the football and wrestling teams. They read Stephen King and Isaac Asimov on the long bus rides to and from competitions. In hindsight, K.C. realizes this could be why they lost so many games. Too much focus on robots and clowns. He always knew he wanted to be a writer. And some have reported that he bleeds printer's ink - but it's probably just Oreos and caffeine. After high school, he married his high school sweetheart (strangely enough, they first met in the infant care center where they were both born). He and his wife worked their way through college, had three amazing little humans of their own, and did their very best to act like responsible adults despite going slowly insane. K.C. found that his dawning insanity was most helpful in writing stories. He cleared some space in the garage and raided yard sales for a suitable desk. Much of his writing took place in between feedings and diaper changes in the middle of the night. In time, he began having some success. Remember the Sunflowers and Progeny of the Storm were his first published short stories (both available on his website), and his first completed novel was a prize-winning finalist in Del Sol Press' Best First Novel Competition. Her Gilded Voice will be his first published novel. Currently, K.C. teaches Language Arts in Los Angeles County. When he isn't teaching or spending time with his family, he is often lost in thought... the fragments of his next story clanking together like bits of metal from his childhood punch press.