It's the Grand Finale for
The Claus Box Set Tour
By Tony Bertauski
Now you can purchase all three books in the Claus Series together!
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...
Launch - The Claus Universe
The story of Santa has been told a billion, billion times on the screen and the television, the written page and the digital, in short form and long, in verse and song. He’s been animated and claymated, horrified and glorified. There’s not a single word left unwritten about the jolly old fat man.
Except, maybe, not that I recall, in science fiction...
Mommabears Book Blog - Excerpt from Claus
And in March of 1820, just as the sun had begun to rise from its long winter disappearance, they set out to do what no human – Inuit or otherwise – had done before.
They would touch the North Pole.
The Arctic was stunning.
SBM Book Obsession - Characters from the Claus Universe
Elven
An ancient race that evolved through the Ice Age, the elven are short and fat with generous layers of blubber to tolerate the cold. Their fat feet are large and wide like snowshoes, the soles scaly to slide across ice. Technologically evolved, long-lived and wise, they carve their homes in the North Pole ice and secretly monitor the growth of the human race while living in harmony with their environment.
Mythical Books - Characters from Claus
Nicholas Santa
Born in the late 1700s, Nicholas Santa set out with his wife, Jessica, and son, Jon, to become the first people to journey to the North Pole. However, they discover something much more than snow. Nicholas finds himself in the middle of an elven conflict. And we discover how he becomes the immortal and mythical figure known as Santa Claus. Why does he wear a red coat? Why is he fat? Why does he laugh like that? It all makes sense.
Wishful Endings - Characters from Jack
Janack (Jack)
An elven, son of Jocah and fraternal twin of Claus. Due to a genetic abnormality, he is the only hairless elven in existence. Jack can freeze people, elven and objects with the touch of a finger. He returns to this modern day story through the science of cloning...
Letters from Annie (Douglass) Lima - Excerpt from Jack
Joe leads her into the maze. They run their hands over the flat-topped boxwoods, shuffle over the oyster shell path. The sunken garden is imbued with warmth, the kind that flows through her, melts in her stomach, opens her heart. She smiles, involuntarily, as she couldn’t frown if she tried.
The short, fat woman sits on a square pedestal inside a round pool, water dripping from her frozen hands. Light emanates from the center without a source.
“Who is she?” Sura asks.
“You’ve never heard the Myth of Jocah?”
Beck Valley Books - Characters from Flury
Flury
The snowman that lives on the property. He is rarely seen until Oliver comes to live with Grandmother. The snowman becomes his protector and slowly reveals the family secrets that have been hidden for over a hundred years.
fuonlyknew - Excerpt from Flury
“You have grown.”She doesn’t 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.
“And how old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
My Life Loves and Passion - Review
"These books were awesome. I am not a huge fan of holiday themed books for myself, but these were different. Each book is a very different story about 3 very common winter myths. I loved that these stories were not all candy and rainbows. There was such a good mix of fantasy and holiday spirit.
I started reading and before I knew it hours had passed. It pulls you in and makes you want to keep reading."
Book Babble - Review
"By the end of the book, I couldn't want to move on to the second one to find out what was going to happen next...
This book really took me on a wild ride. Every time I thought I had something figured out, the plot went in a completely different direction...
There is a great deal of humor in the story, and some really fun dialogue..."
More About the Series
Claus: Legend of the Fat Man
(Claus #1)
by Tony Bertauski
by Tony Bertauski
YA Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Holiday
Paperback & ebook, 326 Pages
June 19th 2012
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. They’ve 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. He’s tired of their seclusion and wants to conquer the world. Only one elven stands between The Cold
One and total chaos. He’s 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.
Jack: The Tale of Frost
(Claus #2)
by Tony Bertauski
by Tony Bertauski
YA Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Holiday
Paperback & ebook, 290 Pages
October 17th 2013
Paperback & ebook, 290 Pages
October 17th 2013
Sura is sixteen years old when she meets Mr. Frost. He’s very short and very fat and he likes his room very, very cold. Some might say inhumanly cold. His first name isn’t Jack, she’s told. And that’s all she needed to know.
Mr. Frost’s love for Christmas is over-the-top and slightly psychotic. And why not? He’s made billions of dollars off the holiday he invented. Or so he claims. Rumor is he’s an elven, but that’s silly. Elven aren’t real. And if they were, they wouldn’t live in South Carolina. They wouldn’t hide in a tower and go to the basement to make…things.
Nonetheless, Sura will work for this odd little recluse. Frost Plantation is where she’ll meet the love of her life. It’s where she’ll finally feel like she belongs somewhere. And it’s where she’ll meet someone fatter, balder and stranger than Mr. Frost. It’s where she’ll meet Jack.
Jack hates Christmas.
Flury: Journey of a Snowman
(Claus #3)
by Tony Bertauski
by Tony Bertauski
YA Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Holiday
Paperback & ebook, 300 Pages
November 15th 2014
Paperback & ebook, 300 Pages
November 15th 2014
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
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.
$25 Amazon gift card and the Claus Box Set ebook
