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a book cover for Seven Robots Later with a young woman's face in shadow with windblown hair and fiery embers

Seven Robots Later

When seventeen-year-old Ko Scanlan finds a body behind a suburban pizzeria, she doesn't expect it to be her own.

One minute, Ko is dreaming of colleges and paychecks, earning enough to control her own damned life and take care of her underemployed mother. The next, she's got a surprise doppelganger and a fistful of questions. Like, how did this girl with Ko's face end up with her throat slit in sleepy Las Yerbas, California? Why are her lifeless hands clutching this weird game system? And, uh, since Ko helped herself to it, who's this dude with a glowing gun hunting her now?

But the body vanishes before the police arrive, and Ko's strangely well-armed mother doesn't recall birthing two of anyone. So as the guy with the gun closes in, Ko fires up the game system, hoping to find anything to persuade her mom to leave town. Except Ko discovers the game is much more than it seems—and uncovers secrets about her double's identity—secrets that make her begin to question her own.

Read it on Royal Road!

a headshot photograph of Dan Helfman

About Dan

Dan Helfman lives in sunny Seattle with his family and sourdough starter. When he's not writing, he's either injuring himself outdoors on a trail or indoors on a soccer field. His background is in software, ranging from animatronics for Hollywood movies to 3D modeling for oil spills. He once worked at Jim Henson's Creature Shop developing software for robots—nothing like the ones in his novels. Well, except for the giant falcon from Stuart Little 2. That thing was the stuff of nightmares.

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