The Hierophant's Daughter VBT

Blurb:

By 4042 CE, the Hierophant and his Church have risen to political dominance with his cannibalistic army of genetically modified humans: martyrs. In an era when mankind's intergenerational cold wars against their long-lived predators seem close to running hot, the Holy Family is poised on the verge of complete planetary control. It will take a miracle to save humanity from extinction.

It will also take a miracle to resurrect the wife of 331-year-old General Dominia di Mephitoli, who defects during martyr year 1997 AL in search of Lazarus, the one man rumored to bring life to the dead. With the Hierophant's Project Black Sun looming over her head, she has little choice but to believe this Lazarus is really all her new friends say he is--assuming he exists at all--and that these companions of hers are really able to help her. From the foulmouthed Japanese prostitute with a few secrets of her own to the outright sapient dog who seems to judge every move, they don't inspire a lot of confidence, but the General has to take the help she can get.

After all, Dominia is no ordinary martyr. She is THE HIEROPHANT'S DAUGHTER, and her Father won't let her switch sides without a fight. Not when she still has so much to learn.

The dystopic first entry of an epic cyberpunk trilogy, THE HIEROPHANT’S DAUGHTER is a horror/sci-fi adventure sure to delight and inspire adult readers of all stripes.

Excerpt:

VIII

Miki Soto

What couldn’t a person access from the Japanese Internet? The question inspired Dominia to get out of the bathtub for another look at the card. There was no address, whether web or physical, as there hadn’t been an address on the ad floating across that billboard; instead, when she studied the lotus embossed upon the card, the DIOX-I highlighted it as though it were a link. How fascinating, this augmented reality! After fixing the device’s settings back to manual control, she “clicked” on the link with an unsteady wink, and her right field of vision was covered by the floating window of a browser. Had she cochlear implants, she would have heard some sort of music, or even a voice accompanying the woman’s writhing in and out of the browser’s dark: less a whole person, and more a disembodied assortment of lips, fingers, lower backs, and thighs. At last, the vision disappeared to present her with the crimson words, “WELCOME TO THE RED MARKET.”

A button appeared: “Connect Your Halcyon for Age Verification.” The idea of giving the women of the international and highly loathed illegal organization any information might have stopped her in a simpler time, as it surely stopped 70 percent of potential Red Market customers—the ones able to access the site, anyway, inaccessible from Europa and the Front through traditional routes. That had been all the Hierophant could do to combat in any meaningful way the world’s oldest profession-cum-cult. Far trickier than hampering Internet access was controlling in-person transactions in gold or silver, or the off-brand cryptocurrency, Redcoin; and because there were almost no freelance prostitutes left in the world, catching a working girl was difficult.

Any weird things you do when you’re alone?

Do psychedelics count?  No, really, I’m a very responsible citizen. Probably the weirdest thing I do is dabble in the esoteric arts, but that, like all things, is an extension of my writing.

What is your favorite quote and why?

Too hard! I don’t think I have one particular favorite quote—at least, it shifts all the time. But if I had to pick one it’s usually “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.” William S. Burroughs.

Who is your favorite author and why?

If you had asked me six months ago I would have still said Nabokov, but this past year I’ve read Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun and about 10 Philip K. Dick novels. I’m going to have to give it to either one of those fine fellows—Wolfe because his prose is just stunning, and his stories elevate me to another plane of existence. His prose had a really positive impact on The Disgraced Martyr Trilogy, because I read it while in the early phases of the editing process. But PKD was a visionary genius whose echoes are felt in all sci-fi to this day, whether literature or film.

What, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing?

There’s a balance of linguistic flow and plot pacing which must be delicately struck. I don’t have patience for writers who wander off for ten paragraphs telling me about a field of flowers, but I also lack patience for authors who hasten through all their descriptions and give barren, staggered sentences. I love Chuck Palahniuk but I think he has a lot of imitators in the adult fiction world right now, and they’re not all as good as he is.

Where did you get the idea for this book?

My biggest goal with this story was to give the vampire back its fangs. The archetype has been one linked to romance and sexuality since before Stoker, but I feel from a social standpoint we’ve neglected the horrific aspects of the figures for about a decade now. Is that healthy for us? I don’t really know. I’ve talked about it elsewhere so I won’t ramble here, but the first thing I wanted to do was to push vampires, or something like vampires, back into the arena of actual horror. And what’s more horrific than outright cannibalism? One step beyond the romantic blood-drinking of Dracula—but, at the same time, the horrific aspects of the martyr race in The Disgraced Martyr Trilogy are still couched in this psychosexual atmosphere, and, when it comes to the Holy Martyr Church, a religious atmosphere. I guess I wanted to explore our Western cultural tendency toward fetishization—of celebrity heroes and villains, of violence, of religion, of even our monsters—and how important it is that we examine our urge to that.

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Author Bio and Links:

M.F. Sullivan is the author of Delilah, My Woman, The Lightning Stenography Device, and a slew of plays in addition to the Trilogy. She lives in Ashland, Oregon with her boyfriend and her cat, where she attends the local Shakespeare Festival and experiments with the occult. Find more information about her work (and plenty of free essays) at https://www.paintedblindpublishing.com!

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