J.K. PETRIE

Daisy Bell

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Origin: During my freshman year at university, I had a nightmare so disturbing that it birthed one of the most passionate pieces of fiction I’ve ever worked on-- Daisy Bell, an upcoming speculative fiction/feminist thriller set to be released on June 7th, 2024.

It began as an 8,000-word short story I wrote in one sitting as soon as I woke up. It has finally evolved into my first book-length work, currently complete at 208 pages.

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Synopsis: The unnamed protagonist is a young woman who lives in a small apartment with her grandmother. On her eighteenth birthday, she begins to hear a voice inside her head. It informs her that it has been observing her for her entire life. She chooses to ignore the voice, viewing it as harmless (and embarrassing to talk about.) 

One day, the voice becomes instructive. In a trance-like state, she follows its orders to walk to the edge of town, walk to the top of a cliff, and “attempt to touch the stars.” She floats upward and discovers that the stars she thought were so distant are actually LED lights on a black ceiling. When she reaches out to touch one, she is enveloped in a pure white glow and is transported to a new place. 

She wakes up in a new body and is met with a young scientist billionaire. He informs her that she is in a new universe. He tells her that her original universe was entirely his creation, a pocket universe within his own. He was the voice all along. What’s more, he terminated the world she was from and transported her to his own because he fell in love with her. She is the only survivor of her universe’s annihilation. 

As the woman is continually isolated, made into a spectacle, and objectified by the general public, she grows more determined to regain a sense of independence and find a way back to her own universe.