Have you ever wondered if Claus had a family? Who exactly is Jack Frost? How about a living, breathing snowman? Have you ever thought about how it all would work? Let Tony Bertauski's imagination and fabulous storytelling take you on a journey through a sci-fi winter wonderland! If you missed any of the stops for the tour, you're welcome to go back and check them out now...
She doesnât let go while looking him over: his hair, the stray whiskers on his chin, the insufficient winter clothing. She stares at the floor. His socks are loose at the ends of his frozen toes, specks of snow clinging to the fabric. Small puddles begin to bead on the polished floor.
âAnd how old are you?â
âFifteen.â
by Tony Bertauski
Paperback & ebook, 326 Pages
June 19th 2012
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. Theyâve 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. Heâs tired of their seclusion and wants to conquer the world. Only one elven stands between The Cold
One and total chaos. Heâs 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.
by Tony Bertauski
Paperback & ebook, 290 Pages
October 17th 2013
Sura is sixteen years old when she meets Mr. Frost. Heâs very short and very fat and he likes his room very, very cold. Some might say inhumanly cold. His first name isnât Jack, sheâs told. And thatâs all she needed to know.
Mr. Frostâs love for Christmas is over-the-top and slightly psychotic. And why not? Heâs made billions of dollars off the holiday he invented. Or so he claims. Rumor is heâs an elven, but thatâs silly. Elven arenât real. And if they were, they wouldnât live in South Carolina. They wouldnât hide in a tower and go to the basement to makeâ¦things.
Nonetheless, Sura will work for this odd little recluse. Frost Plantation is where sheâll meet the love of her life. Itâs where sheâll finally feel like she belongs somewhere. And itâs where sheâll meet someone fatter, balder and stranger than Mr. Frost. Itâs where sheâll meet Jack.
Jack hates Christmas.
by Tony Bertauski
Paperback & ebook, 300 Pages
November 15th 2014
Life hasnât been kind to Oliver Toye.
As if juvenile diabetes isnât enough, heâs 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-grandfatherâs voyage to the North Pole is revealed. Thatâs 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 isnât enough, will he save the snowman from melting away?
Because sometimes even magic needs a little help.
About Tony Bertauski
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.