Here is a video compiling all the recent reviews for Her Gilded Voice received over the last month. 

Many thanks to those willing to dedicate their time to not only read the book but to leave such thoughtful reviews so that others might find this book. Thank you. 

In just a few weeks, my wife and I will be traveling to Scotland so I can attend the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow. As luck would have it, this year also marks our 20th wedding anniversary. So, my wife and I decided to make a trip of it. The week before Worldcon, we'll take in the sights by traveling through Edinburgh, the Scottish Highlands, Glasgow, and tons in between. 
Any pub recommendations are sincerely welcome. We've never been to Scotland, and we can't wait to take in the sights, sounds, and flavors of such a rich country. 
Apart from what will surely be an amazing trip, I am increasingly excited, yet anxious about Worldcon. This will be the in-person book launch for Her Gilded Voice. I am greatly looking forward to this, but I 'm also really nervous. 
I have a lot of mixed emotions. I am beyond ecstatic to finally be able to share my story with others, and is it weird, but I also want to make Elsewhen proud. 
I'll be posting updates about the trip and Worldcon as the time approaches. 
Thanks everyone for you support. 
​---K.C. 

We are really excited to reveal the cover for Her Gilded Voice.

Elsewhen Press says, "This book sits at the intersection of cyberpunk and psychological thriller, and the cover design by Paramita Bhattacharjee and Troy Edward Nikolic reflects that perfectly."

I couldn't agree more, and I can't wait until this summer when it finally gets released. 

​Thank you for reading. 

Her Gilded Voice is coming out next year in 2024. I’m very excited about it, and I suppose it’s time to talk about where the idea came from, what it means to me, and what I hope it means to you, my readers.

I began writing this novel at a pivotal time in my life—everyone’s life, really. It was the fall of 2020, right smack dab in the middle of the covid pandemic. Where I lived in California was still on lockdown. Schools were closed; so I alternated between teaching online classes from a little card table out in our garage, to running inside to make sure my own three kids were doing okay with their online lessons.

My wife was doing the same. She’s a therapist, and all of her in-person appointments had become Zoom meetings where she set up a computer in the bedroom and talked to her clients, who were also in their bedrooms.

Suddenly, everyone was getting all of their information from the internet. More than usual. And adults, with no public spaces to socialize were diving deeper and deeper into social media echo chambers. Credible News Sites began disappearing behind paywalls, and algorithms began working in earnest to create tailor made realities for anyone active on the internet, which was pretty much everyone.

And it didn’t just affect adults. One of my own kids came to me one day with an odd question. She didn’t think birds were real. She had been convinced by something online that birds were, in fact, all flying, spying machines made by the government. I’m sad to say it took far too long to convince her otherwise, but she’s come around.

And so, the idea of Her Gilded Voice came to life. It is a story about the voices we listen to. And how those voices shape our reality.

The story’s protagonist, Lacey Clarke may be living in a futuristic American city, but the world she inhabits is not all that different from out own.  

Like other teens her age, Lacey participates in the most recent online trends and challenges. She religiously follows the feeds of her celebrity crushes. And when things seem unfair, the voice inside her head is there to help. In a lot of ways, Lacey Clarke is inspired by my own teenage daughters. I tried to picture them in the world of Her Gilded Voice. Everything Lacey does in the story, it’s only because it’s how I think my own daughters would act in the same situation. I couldn’t have written this book without them.

Literature wise, readers will no doubt mark the inspiration pulled from classics such as 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Neuromancer, and Handmaid’s Tale, while also noting more recent nods to stories like Hunger Games and Squid Game. In addition, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 novel, The Sympathizer introduced me to the concept of a narrator under interrogation. It was such a cool idea that I fell in love with it right away and was desperate to put my own spin on it.

These books and many more were the voices I listened to while writing Her Gilded Voice. Those voices were the soil from which this story grew.

But it is a story. My primary goal was to craft an engaging story of love and strength in the face of impossible odds. At its core, Her Gilded Voice is a thriller set in a sci-fi world, also a coming-of-age romance threatened by a dystopian reality.

I hope readers will connect with the characters and the dangers they face. It would please me to no end if readers could see a piece of themselves in the characters. But it isn’t up to me. I did my best. I wrote what I hope to be a story readers will enjoy. What they make of it is entirely up to them.

And I can’t wait to see what that is.

Thanks for reading.
​
---KC Aegis

One of the reasons I got into writing had a lot to do with my high school English teacher. But it's not what you think. She wasn't supportive. In fact, she once told me there was no way I could be a writer. She didn't believe a jock like me could ever write something of value. 

Never was this more clear than the time she accused me of plagiarism. I'd written a short story about a lonely boy trying to reconnect with his dead mother on Halloween. I was quite proud of the story, and I'd spent a lot of time writing it. Unfortunately, my teacher couldn't, or wouldn't believe someone like me had written it. She said I must have copied it from somewhere. But when I asked her where she thought I'd copied it from, she had no idea, only that there was no way I could have written it. She didn't believe a jock on the varsity football and wrestling teams could do something like that. Perhaps she didn't understand that sports was just something I did. It wasn't who I was. Writing, on the other hand. Now, that was my passion. 

And she did a funny thing in telling me my writing was too good for someone like me. She planted a seed of confidence. If she thought it was too good for a high schooler, then maybe it was something I should hold on to...nurture so it could grow into something more. 

In short, my teacher's doubt only strengthened my resolve. 

This more than anything explains why I decided to pursue a degree in literature and become an English teacher myself. I wanted to learn--to really acquire--the skills necessary to become a writer. 

Fast forward a decade and I was close to getting my first book published. My agent at the time was very encouraging. He showed my book off to lots of different editors at big publishing houses...and to our surprise, one of them offered a book contract. But there was a catch. They liked my story, but they didn't think it was quite right for their market. So, instead, they wanted me to write a new book based on a vague idea they'd been tossing around. 

In response, I created three different approaches. To which, the editor picked my least favorite idea. In hindsight, I realize this should have been a red flag, but I was too committed (and desperate) to get the fabled book deal. The advance alone meant that I wouldn't have to spend the summer working in a poorly ventilated machine shop. And with the promise that my original book would be published after I wrote one for them, I couldn't say no. 

And that's why I spent the next year working on a novel I didn't feel particularly passionate about. I kept getting positive feedback and encouragement from the editor. And by the end of the year, I'd written 300 pages for them...but then...nothing. Something changed and the editor seemed to have lost interest. They ghosted me, and they let me know through my agent that they were "going in a different direction." 

I don't blame them for what happened. On the contrary, this rejection freed me to pursue the more passionate route. Her Gilded Voice was borne from their rejection. I vowed to write the approach I was most excited about--not what somebody else wanted, but what I wanted. And I couldn't be happier with what I was able to create because of this. 

And now, Her Gilded Voice will be published by Elsewhen Press.
It will be my story, the way I want it to be told. And if not for doubt of my high school teacher, or the rejection of my editor, it might not have been possible. All of this is to say that roadblocks can send you on some of the most amazing detours. 

Thanks for reading,

--K.C. Aegis

I'm very happy to announce that my novel, Her Gilded Voice will be published next year by Elsewhen Press. 

I can't wait for everyone to meet the story's flawed characters and the world of "voyces" they inhabit. It's a mix of Squid Game, 1984, Hunger Games, and so much more. It's an underdog tale filled with thrilling action, passionate romance, confounding riddles, and urgent warnings about the technology we rely on. 

I'll be releasing more details when I have them, but 2024 is the year the world will hear Her Gilded Voice. I can't wait.   

Writing has often felt like something I needed to do but lacked the time to do it well. For this reason, a lot of my early work was not unlike a kind of guerilla warfare. I was always looking for an opportunity to write: to dive in, drop a few creative bombs, then get out before I was late to any real-life responsibilities. I wrote at the DMV, the car wash, in the garage. I scribbled on notebooks while I got my teeth cleaned and carried a pad of paper with me whenever I went on a jog. My wife grew tired of all the times I woke up in the middle of the night and rummaged through the nightstand drawer for a piece of paper and something to write with. I could not control when the inspiration would strike, so I had to be ready.

            I wrote a lot of stuff in the beginning that was pretty terrible. The online community at CritiqueCircle was very good at tearing my work apart. Strangely, realizing I was a horrible writer turned out to be very helpful. It prompted me to begin searching for the idiosyncrasies that irritated readers, tear out the bad stuff by the roots, and finetune other aspects that went over well. Slowly but surely, the negative comments about my work grew more and more positive. The online strangers provided a great deal of insight I couldn’t get from cautious friends and family. Online strangers are not worried if they crush your soul, and my writing has improved because of it.

            In 2012, my writing entered a new phase in which I created a garage-office by cannibalizing discarded yard sale furniture. I am not sure if Virginia Woolf would have been proud, but for me, it was the best place of my own I could find. I began scheduling time to write keeping to a tight schedule with mandatory daily word counts. By doing this, I was able to finish my first novel in 2015. Binding Program was a ninety-thousand-word story that was sort of a mix between Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. At nearly the same time of the book’s completion, I received word that a small sci fi magazine wanted to buy a short story of mine. “Remember the Sunflowers” became my first paid submission.

            Getting a story published and finishing my first novel was a huge boost in confidence. I took this over-inflated ego to a writer’s conference in Irvine, California. Gathered in a Wyndham conference room near the John Wayne airport, I met hundreds of other hermetic introverts like myself. I had a blast meeting new people with similar interests. And aside from all the friends and critique partners I made at the conference, I was also able to glean lots of insight on how to break into the publishing world. One speaker in particular emphasized the need to create an online persona. She explained how important it was to treat your writer identity like a marketing tool. This got me thinking because I already had a career. At this point, I had been teaching seventh grade for seven years. I taught adolescents, but my writing was clearly targeted toward adults. While not explicit by most standards, it still isn’t kid friendly. So that’s why I created the pen name, K.C Aegis. The ironic thing is that soon after I created the pen name, some other writer, a dude named—you guessed it—Mark LaMonica published a book called Renaissance Porn Star. So even though I changed my name to avoid awkward questions about my work, fate stepped in and made it happen anyways.

            After the contest, I used my online persona to seek out writing contests and potential markets for my work. I got organized, systematic, and stalkerish. I began following the online habits of potential agents. I paid attention to what they were looking for and drafted queries based on their interests and “wish lists.” At the same time, some of my new friends from the conference let me know about some writer contests on Twitter. Through these, I got a lot of practice pitching my work in short tweets. This got the attention of a few editors who offered help refining my query and suggested other places to pitch. This led to me discovering the small publishing house, Del Sol Press. They offered a First Novel competition in which the two finalists would win a trip to New York where they would get to meet a bunch of big-name editors in which to pitch their work. I figured, what the heck? I didn’t think I would actually win.

            In addition to the incredible trip to New York, the contest judge offered to be my agent and began actively pitching my story. We got several bites and near misses. Several editors expressed interest, but said they could not build a consensus with the other editors in their publishing house. Things were not looking good for my first novel, but then an unusual thing happened. My agent informed me that an imprint of Penguin Random House was impressed enough by my writing that they wanted to know if I would be willing to flesh out an idea for them. What I really wanted was for them to publish my first book, but figured this might be the way to do it. Also, the money they were offering was very real and hard to turn down. Signing the contract meant I wouldn’t have to spend my summer slaving away in a poorly ventilated tool and die shop.

            I had to drop out of the Master’s program to work on the book for them. I was thrilled and terrified. I received weekly encouragement and praise from the editor, but in the end, the project sort of fizzled into an empty void in which I lost a year’s worth of time. Everything about the book deal was strange, so I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised when it ended strangely as well. My agent assures me that the failure wasn’t my fault, but I think it stands without question that if I had written a better book, or understood better what exactly the imprint wanted, then maybe they would have let me finish what I’d started.

            In any case, the death of the book deal allowed me to get back to my original pursuits. I threw myself back into the Master’s program and the novel I had been working on for the Master’s project. I had finished the first half of it during the 2017-2018 semesters. Now, the prospect of finishing the thing was enough to distract me from the soul-crushing disappointment at having achieved and then lost the fabled book deal. 

            By the end of the Master’s program, I should have my next novel ready for query. I don’t know what will happen, and I am not holding my breath. All I know is that this writing journey I am on seems to be picking up speed. Whether the destination is just around the corner or somewhere far off beyond the horizon, I figure I won’t know until I get there.
​
            Thanks for reading.