Media kit · Debut novel

Who Is Eve?

MICHAEL CLARK  ·  One Hairy Shepherd

A neuroscientist opens her mind to save her father. Four other lives walk in — and one of them was never invited.

Fast facts

Who Is Eve? cover
Title
Who Is Eve?
Author
Michael Clark
Imprint
One Hairy Shepherd
Genre
Dark psychological science-fiction thriller
Published
May 2026
Paperback
6 × 9 in · 388 pp · ISBN 978-0-473-78474-4
Ebook
ISBN 978-0-473-78475-1 · US$4.99
Paperback price
US $15.99
Distribution
Amazon KDP (KDP Select / Kindle Unlimited) · IngramSpark
Cover design
Michael Clark
Catalogue
National Library of New Zealand
Rights
All rights retained by the author · worldwide · translation, audio and screen available
Japanese ed.
In preparation — full translation drafted, native review in progress

Blurbs — three lengths

Logline

22 words

A neuroscientist opens her mind to save her father from dementia. Four other lives walk in — and one of them was never invited.

Short

54 words

Dr. Eve Mercer built QNR to pull her father back from dementia. When the trials ran out of time, she tested it on herself. Now four consciousnesses share her skull — a sixteenth-century samurai, a Navy SEAL, a hacker who hasn't been born yet — and something older is using all three to take her apart.

Full

196 words

Neuroscientist Eve Mercer has spent her career on one problem: memory, and what is left of a person when it goes. Her father is disappearing into dementia a little further every week, and the Cascadia Neural Research Institute is years away from an answer she does not have years to wait for.

So she injects herself with QNR.

What it opens is not a treatment. Four lives arrive and stay — Ren, a sixteenth-century onna-musha carrying an order she refused to obey; Steve, a Navy SEAL who has already made the worst decision of his life; Katie, a hacker who will not be born for another hundred years. They are not hallucinations, and they are not strangers. They are Eve, lived separately, and whatever connects them has been connected all along.

Something else came through with them. It is patient, it is fluent in everyone's grief, and it has been waiting a very long time for a door.

Who Is Eve? is a dark psychological science-fiction thriller about memory, inheritance, and what it costs to be more than one person.

The four — and the fifth

One consciousness, lived five separate times. Not merged strangers, and not an upgrade: Eve is a later iteration of the same hub that lived as the others, and QNR exploits that connection. Each thread carries its own colour through the book.

Eve Mercer Present day, Seattle. Neuroscientist at CNRI. The vessel, and the one who has to carry the others.
Ren Tagaki Sixteenth century, Japan. An onna-musha sworn to Uesugi Kagekatsu. Daughter to a lord who wanted a son.
Steve Johnston Mid-century. A Navy SEAL with two daughters and one order he should have refused.
Katie Morgan—"Glitch" Twenty-second century. A hacker who introduces herself to Eve in a mirror, and who has not been born yet.
Santiago The fifth. He reads grief the way other people read a room, and he cages the others inside their own.

Content advisory

From the author's note at the front of the book.

Detailed depictions of cognitive decline and degenerative illness (dementia), severe vehicular trauma, and the complex grief of caregiving. Graphic hand-to-hand combat and historical warfare. The psychological terror of malicious mental coercion and loss of bodily autonomy. Explicit language, and consensual explicit sexual content.

Reader discretion is advised.

Comparable titles & tropes

For readers of

Dark Matter — Blake Crouch Recursion — Blake Crouch Severance (Apple TV+) Set This House in Order — Matt Ruff The Echo Wife — Sarah Gailey

Tropes

inherited memory past lives scientist experiments on herself found family parent with dementia loss of bodily autonomy unreliable interiority corporate & political conspiracy mercy as the turning point unresolved queer longing samurai near-future hacker

Author

Michael Clark

Short bio

48 words

Michael Clark spent twenty-five years as an early childhood and primary educator before writing his first novel. He lives in Blenheim, New Zealand, with his family and a German Shepherd named Douglas Montgomery Clark Esquire the First, after whom he named his imprint. Who Is Eve? is his debut.

Full bio

132 words

Michael Clark spent twenty-five years as an early childhood and primary educator before writing his first novel. He lives in Blenheim, New Zealand, with his family and a German Shepherd named Douglas Montgomery Clark Esquire the First, after whom he named his imprint, One Hairy Shepherd.

He has long family ties to Japan, and that connection shapes the sixteenth-century thread of Who Is Eve?, where the samurai Ren speaks the Japanese of her own period rather than a modern approximation. A Japanese-language edition is in preparation with a native reviewer.

Who Is Eve? is his debut. He is at work on Ark, a near-future companion novel, and on a second book in the Eve sequence.

Interview questions

Ready to use as written — for podcasts, blog features, or a written Q&A.

  1. Eve injects an untested compound into herself to buy her father time. Did you ever write a version where she doesn't?
  2. The four aren't strangers sharing a head — they're the same consciousness, lived separately. When did that rule arrive, and did it change a book you'd already started?
  3. Ren speaks the Japanese of her own period rather than a modern approximation. What went into getting that right, and who checks it?
  4. Twenty-five years in early childhood education, and then a book this dark. What carried over?
  5. The care-home chapter is the one readers keep writing to you about. How close to home was it to write?
  6. CNRI is a non-profit and a found family, not a sinister lab — the threat comes from outside it. Why resist the obvious version?
  7. Santiago was shaped by a brutal childhood. So was Ren, by her father. What separates them?
  8. Four voices, one point of view. How did you keep them distinct on the page without labelling them?
  9. You published independently, under your own imprint. What would you tell a writer weighing that against querying?
  10. The book ends on a pilgrimage. Where does the second one start?

Praise

A heartbreaking, reflective story of family, love, courage, and more, while also remaining gripping and thrilling.

Becky Whitney Manuzzi via Goodreads

The story was written entirely perfect. No extra bulls**t, fast paced, to the point and hella entertaining and promises to catch your attention at best. Though the story contains heavily based science, it was an easy read, perfect for the readers who enjoys sci-fi but also anyone can read it.

Dharika via Goodreads

Links & contact

Author site
michaelclarkwrites.com
CNRI Terminal
terminal.whoisevenovel.com — in-universe companion site
Threads
@michaelclarkwrites
Press contact
press@michaelclarkwrites.com
Review copies
Available on request in EPUB, MOBI or PDF. The book is also free to read on Kindle Unlimited.
Assets
High-resolution cover, author photo, and a 3D cover render on request.