But every time I let my guard down, every time I blinked, I saw her terrified eyes. Yet, as soon as I woke up, the visions would just go away. I saw her open her lips and call out to me. I could feel her whenever I opened them.īut all the same, I had visions of her terrified face peering through the darkness. I could see her whenever I closed my eyes. I felt it in my body, in the thrumming of my heart. But the moment Samantha Winters disappeared, something snapped inside of me. Who knows, maybe I made the prophecy come true all on my own…or maybe it really was magic. Therefore, I wrote all my other to-be-novels and granted them titles with the letter F (no, not that word) in them. She told me that her grandmother could see the future and she could too. A girl told me the first novel I ever got published would start with the letter F. I actually called this novel “The Funnyman” based on a superstition I had. I just had to find out more about his fantastical, epic story. (They were the first few books on the lowest shelf, the only shelf I could reach when I was so small.) I wondered what would happen if gods could specifically alter human emotions without feeling any emotions themselves, how lonely that would make them. I’d read a lot about Greek and Roman mythology when I was a little kid. And I felt very alone and emotionally wanting at the time. But his eyes were sad, hiding some sort of dark secret. He floated somewhere beneath the rafters of the exit to my school building as I stated off into space and closed the door behind me. Suddenly, a prince who had a Peter-Pan-complex popped inside my head. There was ice on the grass and the sky was a startling shade of frosted blue.

The inspiration for The Funnyman came while walking from school my sophomore year of high school. I’ll certainly be looking out for Sophia’s next project! Review originally posted on Tea in the Treetops in April 2016: If you’re looking for a quick read with a cracking story and interesting world building, grab a copy of The Funnyman. But will her growing feelings for the Prince Isak, the oddly sullen god of comedy, draw her into an all-out war? 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. 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.

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.

Shattered by Sophia Sharp