Virtual Book Tour + #Giveaway: The Hierophant's Daughter by M.F. Sullivan @TheRealMFS @GoddessFish

The Hierophant’s Daughter

(Disgraced Martyr Trilogy #1)

by M. F. Sullivan

GENRE: Sci-fi, Horror, LGBTQ

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:

I

The Flight of the Governess

The Disgraced Governess of the United Front was blind in her right eye. Was that blood in the left, or was it damaged, too? The crash ringing in her ears kept her from thinking straight. Of course her left eye still worked: it worked well enough to prevent her from careening into the trees through which she plunged. Yet, for the tinted flecks of reality sometimes twinkling between crimson streaks, she could only imagine her total blindness with existential horror. Would the protein heal the damage? How severely was her left eye wounded? What about the one she knew to be blind—was it salvageable? Ichigawa could check, if she ever made it to the shore.

She couldn’t afford to think that way. It was a matter of “when,” not of “if.” She would never succumb. Neither could car accident, nor baying hounds, nor the Hierophant himself keep her from her goal. She had fourteen miles to the ship that would whisk her across the Pacific and deliver her to the relative safety of the Risen Sun. Then the Lazarene ceremony would be less than a week away. Cassandra’s diamond beat against her heart to pump it into double time, and with each double beat, she thought of her wife (smiling, laughing, weeping when she thought herself alone) and ran faster. A lucky thing the Governess wasn’t human! Though, had she remained human, she’d have died three centuries ago in some ghetto if she’d lived past twenty without becoming supper. Might have been the easier fate, or so she lamented each time her mind replayed the crash of the passenger-laden tanque at fifth gear against the side of their small car. How much she might have avoided!

Interview with Author M.F. Sullivan

What is your favorite ice cream flavor?

Anything with peanut butter!

Which mythological creature are you most like?

Which am I most like? Uh…haha, maybe a werewolf? Does that count? Manic depression is the original lycanthropy.

First book you remember making an indelible impression on you.

Holes and Ella Enchanted both threw me for a loop when I was a kid, both for their awesome twists. I wanted to write books like that—books that made me feel like I did the first time I heard Darth Vader tell Luke, “No—I am your father.” All these years later and I still get chills, just like I still get chills when I remember the wonderful, empowering ending of Ella Enchanted. I actually feel like grown-up Ella Enchanted readers with a taste for vampires or darker fiction would love this book trilogy, but I can’t get into that too much—spoilers!

How do you develop your plot and characters?

I tend to develop my plot through my characters. This trilogy has been a really unique experience because I forced myself to push through without taking a lot of time to figure out this or that—I wanted to endure this most harrowing portion of Dominia’s life alongside her, with her, as her as much as possible, and that meant going without the benefit of my omniscience as an author. All that necessitated creating a lot of characters and plot devices on the fly, and I had no idea what I was doing with any of them until the end of the first draft!

Basically, with every story, I go in knowing the main character and the ending, and three or four big events between which I’m excited about. Then I get to know the main character by finding the two initial traits that help me relate to them—a positive trait, and a negative trait. I’ve found that the positive trait is always linked in some way to creativity or an inherent talent—for Dominia, I connected with her in a positive way by relating to her military prowess. She’s fought 1000 battles and right around the time I was starting the trilogy, I had reached about 1,000,000 words’ worth of (mostly unpublished practice) novels written since the age of fifteen. Her state of flow in battle, I figure, is the same state of flow I feel when I write—it’s all a kind of artwork! On the negative side, Dominia is plagued by the death of her wife throughout all three books and for me, that separation of Dominia from Cassandra represents a separation of my own mind from a sense of peace or joy during depressive phases or troubling times. Throughout all three books there are a lot of moments where Dominia gives herself pep talks…I feel like I left those there for myself for when I was losing steam to finish editing future drafts!

Describe your writing space.

Oh, it’s a bit cluttered. I’ve got an overflowing to-read bookshelf and another stack of books on the desk, but beside that desk is a cat tree with a very cute black cat named Israel, whom I adopted during the editing process of this trilogy. The best part about the space is the beautiful hill and all the trees that it overlooks in our very charming neighborhood—gives me something to zone out into while I’m typing away. There’s an orchid there, too, which is just starting to rebloom—my boyfriend bought it for me last April, and it kept its blooms on for months before giving them up, but since then it’s regrown two spikes, and both are forked. It’s very satisfying to me to see it come to fruition at the same time as the Trilogy!

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!

Author Links:

Blog ~ Twitter ~ Amazon  ~ Goodreads

Buy/Review Links:

Amazon ~ NetGalley ~ Goodreads ~ Barnes & Noble

Giveaway:

$50 Amazon/BN GC

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