A themed tour through Prism Book Tours.
The Christmas story you never heard.
In the early 1800s, Nicholas, Jessica and Jon Santa attempt the first human trek to the North Pole and stumble upon an ancient race of people left over from the Ice Age. They are short, fat and hairy. They slide across the ice on scaly soles and carve their homes in the ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean. The elven are adapted to life in the extreme cold. They are as wise as they are ancient.
Their scientific advancements have yielded great inventions — time-stopping devices and gravitational spheres that build living snowmen and genetically-modified reindeer that leap great distances. Theyíve even unlocked the secrets to aging. For 40,000 years, they have lived in peace.
Until now.
An elven known as The Cold One has divided his people. Heís tired of their seclusion and wants to conquer the world. Only one elven stands between The Cold
One and total chaos. Heís white-bearded and red-coated. The Santa family will help him stop The Cold One. They will come to the aid of a legendary elven
known as…Claus.
Sura is sixteen years old when she meets Mr. Frost. Heís very short and very fat and he likes his room very, very cold. Some might say inhumanly cold. His first name isnít Jack, sheís told. And thatís all she needed to know.
Mr. Frostís love for Christmas is over-the-top and slightly psychotic. And why not? Heís made billions of dollars off the holiday he invented. Or so he claims. Rumor is heís an elven, but thatís silly. Elven arenít real. And if they were, they wouldnít live in South Carolina. They wouldnít hide in a tower and go to the basement to makeÖthings.
Nonetheless, Sura will work for this odd little recluse. Frost Plantation is where sheíll meet the love of her life. Itís where sheíll finally feel like she belongs somewhere. And itís where sheíll meet someone fatter, balder and stranger than Mr. Frost. Itís where sheíll meet Jack.
Jack hates Christmas.
Life hasnít been kind to Oliver Toye.
As if juvenile diabetes isnít enough, heís forced to live with his tyrannical grandmother in a snow-bound house. He spends his days doing chores and the nights listening to the forest rumble.
But when he discovers the first leather-bound journal, the family secrets begin to surface. The mystery of his great-grandfatherís voyage to the North Pole is revealed. Thatís when the snowman appears.
Magical and mysterious, the snowman will save Oliver more than once. But when the time comes for Oliver to discover the truth, will he have the courage? When Flury needs him, will he have the strength? When believing isnít enough, will he save the snowman from melting away?
Because sometimes even magic needs a little help.
About Tony Bertauski
And I’m a big fan of plot twists.
Through Prism Book Tours.
Frosty had a magic hat.
There was no explanation, just a special hat that turned a pile of snow into a walking, talking best friend. Flury is more than that. And doesn’t smoke.
Born on the North Pole, Flury was created by an ancient race of elven that evolved during the Ice Age and continues to live in the polar ice today. Technologically advanced, they sustain themselves with innovation and wisdom. But even the most peaceful settlements encounter danger, such as polar bears. That’s why they invented abominables.
What we call snowmen.
The life of an abominable doesn’t magically spring from a top hat. The heart of an abominable is a metal orb—an intricately carved sphere that generates an electromagnetic field and builds a body of snow around it. Abominables are intimidating and selfless. They run, they fly. Above all else, they protect.
In the late 1800s, Malcolm Toye was part of an arctic voyage that ended in disaster. The survivors of the expedition never saw him again. Malcolm had wandered into the snowy landscape to be saved by a patrolling abominable he would come to know as Flury.
His rescue, however, became more of a curse than a blessing when the elven refused to allow him safe passage back home, insisting they remain secret from humanity. Malcolm was destined to live out his days among the elven, pining for home.
Longing for his wife.
Malcolm escaped by stealing the metal orb of Flury. Quietly, he arrived back in the United States to settle down and resume a normal life. But there was nothing normal about it. As the years went by, his estate becomes shrouded in mystery and rumors.
A hundred years will go by before the mystery is solved.
Oliver Toye, a teenage type 1 diabetic, will discover the magic hidden on his grandmother’s property. He’ll read about Malcolm Toye’s journey when he finds a set of leather bound journals. He’ll see the snowman trapped on the property, and the other things that haunt the forest. Most importantly, he’ll uncover Malcolm Toye’s master plan to harm others. And why he wants to.
Flury will come to Oliver’s rescue more than once.
Life hasn’t been kind to Oliver Toye.
As if juvenile diabetes isn’t enough, he’s forced to live with his tyrannical grandmother in a snow-bound house. He spends his days doing chores and the nights listening to the forest rumble.
But when he discovers the first leather-bound journal, the family secrets begin to surface. The mystery of his great-grandfather’s voyage to the North Pole is revealed. That’s when the snowman appears.
Magical and mysterious, the snowman will save Oliver more than once. But when the time comes for Oliver to discover the truth, will he have the courage? When Flury needs him, will he have the strength? When believing isn’t enough, will he save the snowman from melting away?
Because sometimes even magic needs a little help.
About Tony Bertauski
During the day, I’m a horticulturist. While I’ve spent much of my career designing landscapes or diagnosing dying plants, I’ve always been a storyteller. My writing career began with magazine columns, landscape design textbooks, and a gardening column at the Post and Courier (Charleston, SC). However, I’ve always fancied fiction.
My grandpa never graduated high school. He retired from a steel mill in the mid-70s. He was uneducated, but he was a voracious reader. I remember going through his bookshelves of paperback sci-fi novels, smelling musty old paper, pulling Piers Anthony and Isaac Asimov off shelf and promising to bring them back. I was fascinated by robots that could think and act like people. What happened when they died?
I’m a cynical reader. I demand the writer sweep me into his/her story and carry me to the end. I’d rather sail a boat than climb a mountain. That’s the sort of stuff I want to write, not the assigned reading we got in school. I want to create stories that kept you up late.
Having a story unfold inside your head is an experience different than reading. You connect with characters in a deeper, more meaningful way. You feel them, empathize with them, cheer for them and even mourn. The challenge is to get the reader to experience the same thing, even if it’s only a fraction of what the writer feels. Not so easy.
In 2008, I won the South Carolina Fiction Open with Four Letter Words, a short story inspired by my grandfather and Alzheimer’s Disease. My first step as a novelist began when I developed a story to encourage my young son to read. This story became The Socket Greeny Saga. Socket tapped into my lifetime fascination with consciousness and identity, but this character does it from a young adult’s struggle with his place in the world.
After Socket, I thought I was done with fiction. But then the ideas kept coming, and I kept writing. Most of my work investigates the human condition and the meaning of life, but not in ordinary fashion. About half of my work is Young Adult (Socket Greeny, Claus, Foreverland) because it speaks to that age of indecision and the struggle with identity. But I like to venture into adult fiction (Halfskin, Drayton) so I can cuss. Either way, I like to be entertaining.
And I’m a big fan of plot twists.