Part of Series
The 5th standalone novel in the Claus Universe. The stories you never heard... Christmas is hot. When Kandi’s dad gets a mysterious call, they fly to a tropical island where the buildings are enormous and the rooms empty. Despite the heat, his sunburned client wears a heavy cloak. Kandi meets a boy living all alone in one of the empty resorts. When he goes missing, she enlists the help of the technological wonders that haunt the island to find him. What she uncovers is a much deeper mystery that will affect more than just Christmas. The world doesn’t know it yet, but Santa Claus is missing. Kandi knows where he is. And why. INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR Where did you come up with the idea of writing science fiction for holiday characters? My nephew mentioned the “secret Santa ninja elves” that visit his school during Christmas, and this spawned the idea of writing a semi-serious sci-fi version of Santa. How the ideas flesh out is a long process. I started keep track of how the story arc of my latest novel evolves, just to remember where it began. It’s all over the place. I love the challenge of bringing a story to light, letting the characters get in my head and telling me where to go. Journey of a Snowman is the third book in the Claus series. It was originally Frosty the Snowman, but Frosty is copyrighted. It didn’t matter, really. The character was better suited to be something other than Frosty. Flury is a bit more serious. . Are you getting any backlash for rewriting these Christmas legends? Not at all. In fact, a lot of readers have connected to all the unanswered questions surround them, especially Santa Claus. How does he go around the world in a night? Why is he fat? Why does he live on the North Pole? How do reindeer fly? How does he carry all those presents? All of them answered with the magic wand of science fiction… I mean, the science wand of science fiction. The stories still have the fantasy element, of course. Some leaps of imagination. And also the romance angle. Why? Because all stories have love. . What is your favorite character from the books that you have written? Socket Greeny is one of my favorites. That science fiction trilogy was my first story. I wrote it in first person and really connected with him. However, Jack Frost is in Claus (Legend of the Fat Man) and Jack (The Tale of Frost) and has become my all-time fave. He’s childish, irreverent and dangerous, but at the same time lovable. . What order should readers purchase the Claus books? Legend of the Fat Man is the best start. After that, any order works. They all can be read as standalone novels.
Author
Get my books FREE. Tell me where to send them at http://bertauski.com He grew up in the Midwest where the land is flat and the corn is tall. The winters are bleak and cold. He hated winters. He always wanted to write. But writing was hard. And he wasn’t very disciplined. The cold had nothing to do with that, but it didn’t help. That changed in grad school. After several attempts at a proposal, his major advisor was losing money on red ink and advised him to figure it out. Somehow, he did. After grad school, he and his wife and two very little children moved to the South in Charleston, South Carolina where the winters are spring and the summers are a sauna (cliche but dead on accurate). That’s when he started teaching and writing articles for trade magazines. He eventually published two textbooks on landscape design. He then transitioned to writing a column for the Post and Courier. They were all great gigs, but they weren’t fiction. That was a few years later. His daughter started reading before she could read, pretending she knew the words in books she propped on her lap. His son was a different story. In an attempt to change that, he began writing a story with him. They made up a character, gave him a name, and something to do. As with much of parenting, it did not go as planned. But the character got stuck in his head. He wanted out. A few years later, Socket Greeny was born. It was a science fiction trilogy that was gritty and thoughtful. That was 2005. He has been practicing Zen since he was 23 years old. A daily meditator, he wants to instill something meaningful in his stories that appeals to a young adult crowd as well as adult. Think Hunger Games. He hadn’t planned to write fiction, didn’t even know if he had anymore stories in him after Socket Greeny. Turns out he did.
