The Rise & Fall of MechaniKalle: The Enhanced Edition Is Here
Ten years ago I sent Kalle Talbot out into the world for the first time. Today she’s back, and she’s never looked better.
The Rise & Fall of MechaniKalle: Enhanced Edition is now available on Kindle:
What’s new
This isn’t a fresh coat of paint on the same book. I went back through the whole novel line by line, revised the text from the first page to the last, and wrote additional chapters that fill in parts of Kalle’s story I always wanted to tell. If you read the original, you’ll find new scenes, deeper character moments, and a fuller picture of how a sixteen-year-old genius becomes the most dangerous person in the world.
A cover worth the wait
I’m thrilled to unveil the new cover art by David Leahey. A lone armored figure stands beneath a sky full of stars, with the Burj Khalifa rising in the distance and the title glowing above it in deep blue. It captures exactly what this book is: the quiet before everything changes. David also handled the full design, and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.
The story
Sweet sixteen used to mean coming of age. Now it means survival.
Since the aliens landed at Groom Lake in 1942, a teenager’s sixteenth birthday has been a gamble. A rare few wake up with extraordinary powers. One in a hundred die before they get there, and not quietly. Everyone else simply grows up.
Kalle Talbot graduated valedictorian at fifteen with two master’s degrees. The one thing she can’t engineer is the thing she wants most: to be a hero. Then a stranger offers her a fully stocked laboratory, in return for a favor to be named later. Alone there but for Esla, the AI she built as a child, Kalle creates something that will make her the most dangerous sixteen-year-old alive.
From a borrowed warehouse in Oslo to the French Foreign Legion to the top of the tallest building on Earth, Kalle is about to learn what a hero costs.
Thank you
To everyone who read the original and asked what happened next: this edition is for you. And if you’re meeting Kalle for the first time, welcome. I’d love to hear what you think. Reviews on Amazon make a real difference for independent authors, so if the book stays with you, a few words there would mean a lot.
More is coming. Esla has her own story to tell.
Daniel Blumberg
