Synopsis:

When Joely runs off to San Francisco to become a stripper, she doesn’t realize that she’s entered a dark and depraved world where nothing is as it seems. Plagued by violent fantasies, she undergoes a disastrous psychic surgery that results in her assault and the breakdown of all her careful constructs. After her boyfriend disappears and her girlfriend is murdered, Joely must struggle to get a grip on reality and grow beyond the carnal desires of her flesh even while mired in them.

A contemporary novel set in San Francisco, Flesh Hell is an urban fantasy novel detailing the edgy subculture of sex workers. This is a darkly comic and erotic world in flux, shifting precariously away from reality as dragons battle angels and ghosts take up residence with hallucinatory dancers.

Book Excerpt:

“Joely, there is a darkness in you. You have called this darkness into being. You feed it, you nurture it. It grows stronger because of you. This is your hunger Joely. You have the taste of blood in your mouth; you possess a devouring spirit. You eat the poisons of your creation, it feeds you but with its own hatred. It wants to take your purity, your blessings, and make of them a hearth to roast you in its fires.”

This isn’t what I expected. I don’t want to be exorcised of my possessor, only cleared of my blind spot. Try as my conscious mind does to rationalize his words, my hinter-mind is soaking it up. Yes, yes! Speak in my own tongue and I will listen. My hinter-mind is deft and cagey, she takes what she wants. She wants to be freed. She yearns to be an enlightened New Testament prophet, decrying the instinctual, animal nature of the fore-mind. She wants to be what I am not. Is my anger not valid, I ask. Have I claimed more than my share?
Doctor’s hands like moths. If I looked, would I see my poison fly out of me? Curling smoke, a stream of blue-black bile and vented green spleen, a tsunami of bright blood. He seems kind. A dark and dreamless void, like the blackest primeval ocean lulls me, sick-sweet allure humming dive, dive, cleave into me. The sirens sing. His fingers are little erasers, rubbing me out. Dream not of wicked beasties and things that go bump in the night, of quarters and sickness, of skin, of skin, of skin. As I lay sleeping, Doctor, beneath warm currents of you, as less and less is left of me, as I dissolve lash by lash, bones crusting, dusting, blowing away, I beg you, dream not of me.

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Author Comment:

Audio clips & more information available at www.myspace.com/kirstenimanikasai

Topics/Categories:

bisexual, San Francisco, sex industry, sex workers, strippers

Genre:

Women's Studies - Interest

Type of Work:

Novel

Publishers:

iUniverse, Inc.

Purchase From:

Amazon.com

Original Publish Date:

2006-03-02

ISBNs:

0595382746 978-0595382743

Formats:

Paperback Audio CD