Cult Survivor Releases Debut Novel on the Occult, Love and the "Primal Forces of Existence"

V. Anh Perigaea's icy-blue eyes stare out from her debut novel's cover like a thousand-year-old vampire's, speaking of pain, knowledge and things that cannot be unseen. To imagine what they perceived in her near-decade-long struggle in a cult, her subsequent attempts at whistleblowing, and the persecution that followed, all of which fell upon a lush backdrop of her life as an underground artist and musician in the well known neighborhood of Capitol Hill in Seattle, WA.

“When I left the cult I lost everything, my family, my safety, everything. When I tried to speak out, I was sued, and the lawyer I found to help me pro bono, Danford Grant, turned out to be a serial rapist, arrested six months later on eleven counts of rape and assault.”

V. Anh Perigaea's novel follows the plight of orphaned Annabelle Morton, a young woman sold to an unfortunate fate by her uncle Tiberius, who runs away and soon finds she has powers she knew nothing of, and finds friends and identity in dark places – an ancient city beneath the streets of Victorian London that delves so deep no creature in recorded history has been able to plumb it’s depths; a world rich in Occult practice and history, where sorcerers and Ars Goetia creatures rule from the depths.

“The book is a culmination of so much that I've learned,” said Perigaea in her soft, almost whisper-light voice. “It reflects my life in so many ways. There are things you learn from the discipline of a monk's life that you can’t learn any way else.”

Beyond the Blue Light is inspired not only by Perigaea's experience of the spiritual and arcane, but by her involvement in the heavy music scene of the Pacific Northwest (namely Seattle), particularly doom, noise and etheric heavy metal genres.

“The series is heavily influenced by doom in particular – in terms of aesthetic, philosophy and subject matter. The name for the series itself, “Disciples of Death”, is a lyric from an Electric Wizard song, my boyfriend’s old band, who are a huge inspiration.”

Though endowed with a variable treasure trove of topics to write on, when asked what most deeply inspires her writing, Perigaea mentions “the psychology of consciousness, the fragile, changing cocktail of experience and perception – both individual and collective. Especially the concept of a being who lived for thousands of years, what that would do to the reach of their perception, to their energy field, for having seen what they had, to have been bathed in the light of so many unique ages and spaces.”