The Aegis Protocol

by E.S. Lell

Life was never really what Darren would describe as easy, but he'd long since found a comfortable pace. His work as an industrial thief for Aegis Online certainly paid well enough, and allowed him to enjoy the kinds of freedoms that most people only dreamt of. But he still wanted out, as any bird in a gilded cage would.

Fate, however, is a harsh mistress with a twisted sense of humor. On the verge of buying out his contract, he takes on one more job that should put him over the top and discovers the hard way that things like freedom, and Y chromosomes, should never be taken for granted.

Now a guy stuck in a woman's body, he must track down the deadly Aegis Protocol that his former employer plans to use to attack the Kalijor game servers, and all of its players, while avoiding their agents, dealing with the new, and largely unwelcome, voice in his head, and keeping Xavier Quinn, the CEO of Solidarity Online, off his back. All while learning to deal with his new body, and all of the baggage that comes with it.

368 pages, Paperback

First published March 24, 2014

About the author

Born and raised in and around Denver, Colorado, I grew up with a family that encouraged imagination and looking at the world with a questioning nature.

As a result, I confounded all my teachers and was always the last to be picked when lining up for sports in gym class. But that was okay, because it gave me more time to figure out what sorts of animals might live in the methane seas of Titan!

I started writing (very, very badly) when I was in grade school, and continued ot write, on and off throughout my life. I've never formally studied writing, or literature (yet), but I have always had a keen interest in the worlds that other people created, so I have read obsessively ever since I was truly sucked in by a good fantasy novel in junior high school.

In my early teens, or maybe before then, I started playing role playing games, and instantly took to world-building and plot-mapping. I've been doing it ever since, using my time as a GM to flesh out the world of my Kalijor novels, and visa versa. I still game to this day, and am play-testing the Kalijor RPG and source books with a group of great friends and excellent critics!

My goal, through my writing, has always been more about self-defense, than entertaining others. I have all of these ideas in my head, and I feel as if keeping them there could be harmful to me in some way, so I write, as often and quickly as I can, in order to preserve what sanity I can. It was a complete shock to me, therefore, that someone expresed interest in reading my mad ravings!

I continue to write, hopefully in better and better ways, and I continue to get great feedback (not that I would stop writing if the feedback was terrible, I just might share a lot less). So, with any luck, I'll see you at the screening of the first Kalijor movie soon!