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2HVØRHVNØT (To Have Or Have Not): Dark Dystopian Superhero Fantasy by Jared K. Chapman ➱ Release Tour with Giveaway

 


2HVØRHVNØT: To Have or Have Not
by Jared K. Chapman
Genre: Dystopian Superhero Fantasy, Horror


Welcome to Fellowship City, where the Haves are super-powered, and the Have-Nots are just like you.

The Mighty have all the wealth, fame, power, and superpowers, but even they are subject to the monastery’s control. To maintain peace, telepathic monks see into the past, present, and future to police the other Mighty and the minority of powerless Citizens, who have nothing but their identity tags tattooed on their wrists.

Twenty-year-old Mario lives with his kid sister in one of the many camphouses on the island south of the city. Unlike the other citizens he stands in line with every morning waiting to be bussed to work, he actually likes his downtown job and the Mighty restaurateur who employs him. 

At least, he did.

This morning, the grisly, undetected murder of his boss changes everything. In a flash, Mario becomes the primary suspect and must race against time to prove his innocence in a world that oppresses the powerless.

Part READY PLAYER ONE. Part DIVERGENT. Part MINORITY REPORT. Totally Superpowered! 2HVØRHVNØT has fast-paced action, suspense, horror, and mature themes that are sure to keep readers on the edge of their seats.


**Kindle Countdown Sale Nov 3rd - 8th!!**
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Excerpt #1:
But I’m fast for a man in a black suit, he chortles at the thought. All these other workers, leaving their camphouses now and taking their sweet ass time as they stroll toward the bus stop, are probably looking at me and thinking, glad I’m not that guy.
Ahead of him, he glimpses an older woman with salt and pepper brown hair tied up in a bun with white lace, walking at a steady pace. As he closes in on her, he recognizes the stereotypical black and white uniform of a French maid she’s wearing. 
She must work for some richy-rich Mighties up in Emerald Hills, he thinks, a little jealous. They love dressing up their workers in crazy shit like that. I’m surprised she’s living in the WPC and not in the Normal slums with all the other preferred workers. I bet it’s a new gig, and she’ll be moving on up real soon.
He often ponders what life might be like if he lived outside of the WPC, wondering if a place in the Normal slums (or what the Mighty call southside ghetto) would truly afford more freedom at all. 
Having to wear a ridiculous outfit just to land a cushy job up there might not be worth it though, he thinks, loosening his collar and adjusting his necktie, as his short-lived jealousy fades away.
He hurtles by, startling her. 
She jerks out her earbuds and yells, “Watch out!”
He waves his hand in the air without looking back or slowing his gait. At the next block, he jumps up and high-fives the Luxuria Street sign.
TWWWIIIIIINNNNGGG
“Stupid kid,” barks the lady.
He laughs, picking up his pace, trying to cut ahead of the many people leaving their homes for their 7 a.m. shifts.
Come on. Come on, he thinks, racing forward, trying to ignore the soft rumbling of a crowd.
The noise builds, rising into a voluminous cacophony of chatter, as he crosses Tristia Street. He can no longer ignore the sound of the gathered mass of people waiting in the bus line, not moving an inch. 
“Son of a bitch!” he exclaims, zipping by people of all shapes and sizes, costumed and uncostumed.
In the distance, he spots a lone bus exiting Olum Bridge toward Citizen Way. He bolts toward the front of the line, passing a myriad of glowering faces. The weight of their judgment does nothing to slow him down.
“No cutting!” a woman’s voice shouts, but he disregards her and runs faster. The crowd’s murmurs merge into some foreign-sounding condemnation where the words are unintelligible, but the tone is clear. 
“I’m sorry,” he apologizes, galloping past the gawking onlookers. “I need to get to work. I can’t be late!” 
No one is fooled by his lip-service apology, but they do understand his dilemma. Not that his boss will. He’s not the most forgiving about tardiness, and the recent promotion from the kitchen to the dining room floor would likely be the first thing on the chopping block. 
I don’t want to be back in the kitchen all the time, he thinks. Or worse. It could be a lot worse.
His eyes lock onto the bus, as it creeps toward the bus stop. He rounds the front of the line, maneuvering through the crowds of other workers to inch closer to the door of the bus before it burps to a halt. He grins ear to ear. 
Mere steps away from the doorway, his smile rips from his face in a sudden jolt of panic, as a massive reptilian tail drops in front of him like a boom barrier at a railroad crossing. 
“Where do you think you’re going?” the guard inhumanly snarls. 


Excerpt #2: 
The Mighty are the majority, thinks Mario, shaking his head before turning contemplatively back. They have all the wealth, fame, power, and superpowers. But they ARE bored. Every day, they come into the restaurant with some air of authority, making pointless demands of the waitstaff just because they can. Something to make themselves feel important. Their lives are so mundane. They are stuck in a world where they are unable to use their powers to any potential, neither good nor evil because of the monks.
??????????????????????????????????????
webnet.mightybase search results...
Monks (see Monastery of Sol and Luna) : MIGHTYpedia Entry
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Only the highest level of Mighty are permitted to enter the Monastery of Sol and Luna. The monks are SEER-PATHS, having the ability of sight (seeing what is happening around them or nearsight, into the past or hindsight, or into the future or foresight) and telepathy (hearing and communicating through others, animals, or machines, and physically or mentally controlling others, animals, or machines). All monks have some level of sight and telepathy. For example, some monks may only have nearsight, seeing the world around them, and may only be able to communicate with animals as ZOOPATHS or machines like TECHNOPATHS. A rare few have the highest skill in all levels of sight and telepathy (including zoopathy and technopathy). These monks are called SEER-OMNIPATHS, like Sol and Luna, the first of their kind.
See related… The Enclave
The five members of the Enclave of the Monastery of Sol and Luna are all seer-omnipaths who keep constant vigil over Fellowship City, as they strive for Omnivolence or the All-Choice, seeing all choices made by everyone all at once. Because they are aware of all that is happening around them in the present and future, they can stop any misdeed from occurring by directing the lower level monks to police the Mighty. Today, there is little need for policing among the Mighty, but every once in a while, an aberrant Citizen might be punished and taken to the Solitary Internment Camp or SIC, which lies seventy-five miles west of Fellowship City beyond the Summerland Desert.
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“Hey Mario, you gonna move up or what?” Landy, a smallish hunchback of a man with a kind heart and a shrill voice, asks from behind. 
“Oh yeah, sorry,” Mario says, snapping back to reality and scooting up in the line. He glances at the clock on the watchtower, 6:17. He shakes his head.
“No worries, kid. Only making sure you’re not standing dead on us.”
Standing dead? Mario thinks. I’ve heard that before.


Excerpt #3: 

“Welcome, Intern!” sang an older woman with purple twinkling cat eyes and silver hair wrapped in a tidy bun on her head. “I’ll take him from here, Fozzie.”
She took Tommy by the arm and guided him to the back of the room. 
“Please stand right here.”
Along the long white wall, black lines marked metric heights at each major point. Tommy stood a little higher than the 1.85. 
“Stand still,” she sang. 
GRRRRDDDDDKKKKKK
The wall shifted, opening in the middle. Mario attempted to jump away, but a mechanical arm reached out, seized his arm, and thrust him back against the wall. Another mechanical arm grappled his other arm, forcing him into position. 
“What’s happening? Leave me alone!” 
“Don’t worry,” she sang again as two more arms snatched his legs, and a strap braced his neck back against the wall. “Don’t move, or it’ll hurt.”
The apparatus forced his left arm outward, revealing his ident-tag. The mechanical arm bifurcated, as a new device opened its articulating arm outward, revealing a series of needles. A thin tube filled with black ink sputtered, winding its way up one side, while a matching tube with milky white ink lined the other side. A tiny red laser dot emanated from the needle mechanism, scanning his ident-tag before digging into his flesh.
ZZIIIIZZZAAAAZZZZZIIIIINNNNG
The device zipped back and forth on the ident-tag, blacking out the numbers and leaving a perfect rectangular shape on Tommy’s arm. 
“Ouch!” he screamed in pain. “Son of a bitch! What the hell?”
“See,” cat eyes said. “If you move, it’ll hurt. Don’t worry. It’s almost done.”
A second round of zipping back and forth left white numbers emblazoned upon the black background. 
“Ahh, 11428. Very good,” she said, poking a button. 
The arms all withdrew from Tommy, forcing him to collapse onto the floor. He cradled his arm, still burning and pulsing from the pain of the forced tattoo. 
“Geez, lady, that was uncalled for,” Tommy said, trying to stand.
She punched another button, and two guards plowed through the doors. 
Tommy sighed, struggling to raise his arms. The guards picked him up and carried him away.
“Bye now, 11428,” the cat lady sang. “Have fun.”



Can you, for those who don't know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?

First, I want to introduce myself. I’m Jared K Chapman, not Jared Chapman the children’s author/illustrator. He does great stuff. I love reading about veggies in underwear. My three-year-old thinks that's hilarious. But that's not me.

I write genre-bending fiction generally dealing with dystopias and superpowers, so call me SciFi/fantasy, probably more on the fantasy side, but not really magic and fairies or vampires (yet...but not the kind that sparkle). My influences include Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, Vonnegut, Dick, and King. Most recently, I really liked Ready Player One and Armada for nostalgic reasons. They just make me feel like a kid again, playing video games, reading comics, and watching movies like the Last Star Fighter. Anyway, I had an interesting childhood that rendered me anxiety-ridden in full of panic. I probably have some PTSD from it... so I work that out through writing. I've been writing and telling stories as far back as I can remember. In 3rd or 4th grade, we published a book of collected stories for our class and I thought that was the best thing ever. Seeing my work in print that everyone can see... I was sold.

I wrote my first novel, some SciFi conglomeration of Star Wars and Star Trek, when I was in 6th grade, and I bet it was bloody, freaking awful. I have no way of knowing. I think I let a classmate read it and never got it back. It probably wasn't even a novel. Back then, writing 10 pages felt like 100, am I right? So, I wrote stuff here and there, and I even got an award for a poem I wrote in HS. "Best Paradoxical Love Poem." For a kid who flew back and forth between Mom and Dad and two countries every summer and school year from the age of 10 to 14, I can tell you that was a big deal. I never really had much stability in my life. After 14, I was passed around from family member to family member, living with aunt and uncle, mother, older sister, and grandfather. Hell, my first semester in junior college I was living out of my car.

It took me five years to get through JC, majoring in English, film, philosophy/RS, psychology, and finally graduating with an AA in Liberal Arts. After a few years of being married and not liking the real world, I went back to school, but this time I had focused. You see, it took me five years before because I barely graduated HS and JC wasn't much different. I didn't know how to do it. I didn't know how I needed to learn. I actually got kicked out of JC for dropping too many classes. I had to beg to go back, and I ended up graduating on Dean's list and cum laude. When I went to University, I knew what I needed to do to learn and I did it. I graduated with a double major in psychology and religious studies, earning awards from both my departments. I went on to get a master's in psychology (research side, not therapy). I'm not that kind of psychologist.

Currently, I'm a doctoral candidate studying the social psychology of extreme groups. I'm dissertating right now, but you know what I found out during my last course of my Ph.D.? I have an anxiety disorder that acts like ADD, which makes school and test-taking and reading and everything I was doing difficult. I overcame that to do what I needed to get to where I was. I struggled and worked hard. Harder than others who didn't have those handicaps to deal with. It was like I was playing golf and I'm hitting my ball 300 ft further back from everyone else. The point to all of this is not to feel bad for me or anything but to know we are amazing creatures who adapt and can do anything when we figure out how.

Sorry for rambling on. I didn't even tell you why I write what I write. I write what I want to read. I love to create worlds and the colorful, assorted people who live in those worlds. I love to tell stories about things that happen in those worlds. I love making readers feel what I try to make them feel.

I hope this gives you a good idea of who I am and where I come from. 



Jared K. Chapman is an author, filmmaker, and educator. He is a native Californian who spent his formative years at school in frigid Alberta, Canada with his father and summer vacation in arid central California with his mother. He holds degrees in psychology & religious studies and is currently a doctoral candidate studying the social psychology of extreme groups. He lives in a little oasis just east of Los Angeles with his wife and three sons. 2HVØRHVNØT is his debut novel.



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Comments

  1. Thanks for posting! I really appreciate your support. Don't forget to sign up to win one of Derek Smith's prints. He's an amazing artist, and I'm so lucky he worked on my cover. I feel like it captured my vision and draws people in before they even start to read.

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