Hello Everyone! The 2026 Worldcon--or as some are calling it, LACon--is now less than a week away. This year, the con is right around the corner from us. And for the first time, I'll be manning a table in the dealers room. I'm so very excited to talk it up with readers and fans. Worldcon attendees are often the nicest people you can ever meet. So if you're going to Worldcon, please stop by and have a chat. I'm friendly!

And if that's not enough, I'll be sharing some space with fellow Elsewhen author, Richard Doyle and Rogelio Fojo. They'll be selling (and signing) copies of their short story collect, One Million Times. Any fans of time travel will want to pick up a copy while they can. 

As for me, I'll be talking by selling copies of my debut novel, Her Gilded Voice. The book was a finalist in last year's Small Spec Book Awards, and it's so cool to see people enjoying this book I spent so long working on. In addition, I'll be introducing my new novella series, Distorion Day. Check out the cover art below created by the one and only Matt Hubel. Simply beautiful!

So if you're at Worldcon, I hope to see you and/or meet you. Have a great Con!

It was such a pleasure to chat with Saffron Asteria on her podcast, Booked Live!
In addition to talking about my books Her Gilded Voice and Distortion Day, we touched on all sorts of topics. We talked about why I started writing, and how my writing career affects my other career as a teacher. 
Here's the Youtube link to the video. 
Thank you, Saffron. It was such a pleasure. 

https://www.youtube.com/live/MRNqJjuCpUg?si=oI5bB2w1NImpdxAi

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