Another Promo, I’m Afraid
Hot on the heels of the highly successful 99c sale of The Credulity Nexus (now back to its normal price of USD4.99 – but definitely worth it) I’m having another promotion. This time my augmented reality thriller, Heaven is a Place on Earth, is about to be knocked down to 99c. It’s already available at that price on Amazon Kindle stores around the world and at Smashwords and Kobo (but the other retailers may take a few days to catch up).
If you’re wondering what augmented reality is, just think about phone apps like Layar for Android or the Google Glass phenomenon. Then imagine that technology embedded in your brain so that computers can overlay everything you see or hear or feel with additional information. It seems like a natural extension of where mobile computing is moving. First these things are carryable, like smartphones. then they’re wearable, like Google Glass and the various “smart” watches that have come onto the market recently, eventually they will be embedded into our bodies and our brains.
In Heaven is a Place on Earth, set perhaps eighty years in the future, this whole process has run to completion. Everyone lives in a world where augmentation is always on. Everyone you meet is surrounded in a cloud of information about them. Everyone who meets you sees a better, more attractive you. The world is cleaner, tidier, your garden may be full of weeds but all anyone sees are flowers. You are embedded in networks that monitor the world, and enhance the world. People no longer travel about much. Everything you need is delivered by robot machines to your door. You meet people and do your work in virtual worlds, completely immersed in the illusion, sitting at home in sealed tanks so that there are no distractions, drip-fed your meals through catheters permanently embedded in your arm.
It might seem an unpleasant or even frightening future but it is entirely plausible and many technical and social trends are moving us in that direction.
But who are the misfits, the criminals, the terrorists in this new world? Not our protagonist, Ginny, that’s for sure. She’s just a woman trying to make a living writing soundscapes for virtual worlds. But her life is about to become a nightmare.
She has only dated Cal Coplin a couple of times when the police arrive to question her about him. He’s disappeared – something that should be completely impossible in a world where everyone is electronically tagged. And then she receives a recorded message from Cal, asking her to deliver a small package for him. Her decision to help him plunges Ginny into a world of fear, corruption, and massive deception. On the run from the police, a dangerous terrorist organisation, and a shadowy corporation, Ginny struggles to stay alive and free while she tries to understand what is happening and prevent a deadly attack on the government. But in a world dominated by augmented and virtual realities, nothing is as it seems, and the deception runs deeper than anyone could imagine.
You can get this glimpse into a strange and disturbing future for just 99c while the promo lasts. So grab your copy now from the Kindle store, or Smashwords, or Kobo.
