TITLE: The Funnyman
AUTHOR: Sophia Whittemore
BACK COVER BLURB: It isn't a laughing matter when
Diana starts to see things in the mist which other people don’t: monsters,
gods, and deadly shadows. Yet now she sees another thing, the world of the
Impetus, a reality where humans are enslaved and the once-beautiful gods are
actually tyrants. Diana must find a way to escape before the exiled king Fear,
a vengeful murderer, hunts Diana down to get back something she's stolen from
him. But will her growing feelings for the Prince Isak, the oddly sullen god of
comedy, draw her into an all-out war?
EXCERPT:
"I am
almost a king, Diana. My father would have to be dead for that to happen."
I hung my
head, moving farther from him as I realized that we had been positioned far too
close for comfort. "I’m sorry for assuming. Losing him would be a terrible
thing."
"Don’t
feel bad. He hasn’t visited me since I was a child." Isak turned back to
the mirror, his lips so tight they were a line, a dark crease forming between
his pale brows. "It’s been so long that even your great, great
grandparents were nothing more than a vague idea then."
"Immortality
sounds wonderful." I stopped myself when I sensed the envy creeping into
my words like a poison. "I’m sorry. I mean, with your father…"
"No,
don’t wish to be immortal, Diana." Now it was Isak’s turn to sound
wistful. "Pray that death comes swifter, if anything." Silence fell
like a heavy pall over our shoulders, but then Isak soldiered on. "And
about my father, well…somebody has to fight off Fear in the world of men.
Somebody has to keep you humans from killing each other, from hurting so much
that you can’t feel any other wonderful thing."
"To
laugh?"
"To
love, to live, to feel so much that your world keeps spinning, faster and
faster, in that wonderful, chaotic mess of humanity that you’d so hastily give
up. Immortality is overrated. It is nothing but the ability to live through it
all and not experience a single thing, to eat everything without tasting it at
all." Isak’s eyes shone with a desperate need. He wanted, more than
anything it seemed, to be like me, when all I wanted was to be like him.
"But it
must be a great thing, to walk on the stars."
"It
isn’t, not when shadows threaten you from below. One misstep and we turn into
the greatest monsters humanity has ever seen."
"What,
like the shadows that attacked us?" I shuddered when I thought of those
writhing, clicking bodies, so ready to consume me, body and soul, till I was
nothing left but a beating heart.
"No,
those are just byproducts of the real monsters, like famine, disease…"
"Fear."
Isak’s eyes
shifted over to mine quickly. "What did you say?"
AUTHOR BIO: Sophia Whittemore is a multiracial
author with an Indonesian mother and a Minnesotan father. She penned THE
FUNNYMAN during her sophomore year of high school at Benet Academy and published
it when she was a senior. Her love for the English language manifested itself
in eighth grade when she went to the Scripps National Spelling Bee and has
continued with other languages such as Spanish and Indonesian. Her prior
publications include "A Clock's Work" in a Handersen Publishing
magazine, “Blind Man’s Bluff” in Parallel Ink, and winning awards in the Best
Midwestern Writing competition for high school writers. She currently resides
in Chicago, Illinois with her family and food-loving mini schnauzer called
Tiger. Drawing on inspiration from her two cultural backgrounds, Sophia lives a
life playing tennis, traveling, and writing about her dual life experiences
through other characters in her works or on her blog.
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